The Last Daughter of York; King of Blood and Battle

 

I didn't realize how little I read in the month of February. Hopefully I can do better in March!

"The Last Daughter of York" by Nicola Cornick was interesting. I'm not a huge fan of her prose: it was a little over the top and repetitive to me (you don't need to compare everything to something else in order to describe it), but the story was kind of interesting if you're willing to suspend disbelief. 

It alternated between Anne Lovell, who was married to King Richard III's best friend, Francis, and Serena Warren, who lives in the present day. Serena is still haunted by the disappearance a decade earlier of her twin sister, Caitlin. She gets a phone call that Caitlin's body has been found--buried in a vault that hasn't been opened since the early 1700s. It's definitely Caitlin's body, but how did a 21st century woman end up in it? 

In the 1480s, King Richard is accused of the terrible crime of killing his nephews. The oldest boy, Edward, died of the plague but Richard, Duke of York, is still alive and Richard asks Anne and Francis to help keep him safe if anything happens to him. When Richard III is killed at Bosworth, Francis brings Richard to Anne while he continues the fight against the Tudor usurper, Henry VII. All is lost at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487 and Anne can think of only one thing to help her husband escape: the Lovell Lodestar. It's a powerful magical object that saved Anne's life once, and it saves Francis and Richard too. It sends them somewhere safe: 1930s England.

Let's pause for just a second here. The Lodestar couldn't think of *anywhere* safer to send them than Europe on the brink of WWII? I mean...I can think of a *few* other times that would have been better, but hey, then there wouldn't have been a story, I get it. The story I really wanted to hear was how a man and a boy from 1487 somehow managed to survive in the 20th century. No one would have been able to understand them, since English was very different back then. It's not like they had transferrable skills. Unfortunately, she didn't get into that aspect of it. 

Like I said, it was interesting in its way and I liked that she made Richard nice. I always appreciate that. 

"King of Battle and Blood" was not what I was expecting after I read the reviews. I was expecting a vampire/human love story with some magical/fantasy elements and instead I got extremely repetitive sex. Lots of sex. Using the same words, over and over. I really wanted to send the author a thesaurus, because there are other (better) words to describe things. 

The nation of Cordova is being slowly taken over by Adrian, the vampire king. Isolde's father, King Henri, knows he can't beat Adrian's army in a fight, so he wants to offer a truce. Adrian is fine with that, but he has one condition: he wants to marry Henri's only daughter. Isolde has been trained since birth to hate and fight the vampires, so you can imagine how excited she is at the prospect of marrying one. However, she can't deny her seething attraction to him (insert epic eyeroll here) and she knows it's the best hope for her people, so she agrees. 

Apparently this is the first book in a series. Suffice it to say, I will not be reading the rest. One review on Goodreads said that she prefers a little plot with her smut, and that totally sums up my feelings for this book as well.