*Helpful hint: If you are reading this review before reading anything in this series, read A Knight to Remember then this book here (which is a direct sequel, both in time and in characters), then read Forever and a Knight (which, chronologically, actually takes place after Date Knight. I think; also involves different characters.)*

It’s unfortunate but I didn’t really have ‘fun’ with this book. Cutting off everything from roughly 0% to 68%, and everything from 96% to 100% and the book was interesting and fun-ish.

The beginning part of the book, at least up to 50 percent had ‘stuff’ happening, but it was really annoyingly wordy. Calling it purple prose might be a bit too strong, but at the very least it was leaning heavily in that direction. Could probably have been recorded with fewer words, less extravagant words. Well, melodramatic? Something.

The book opens on the one week anniversary of Virago returning from her world to be with Holly. They plan to celebrate with a date night. While heading back from a day of watching Virago joust, and get ready for the night, it gets all stormy and stuff. They get caught in rain. Lightning. Holly looks out into her backyard and . . . what do you know, there’s a bunch of women in armor back there. Virago’s quite happy. For they are ‘her’ knights (and, in addition there is also, as eventually realized, her Queen). They’ve come because they need Virago because the Queen’s life is in danger (if it matters at any point, the Queen is named Calla).

First, though, they go paint the town red, so to speak. Holly leads the merry band of knights and Queen to a lesbian bar in Boston. They get drunk, they flirt, do stuff. Then everything gets all weird when the crowd suddenly goes all quiet. And stare. At the front door, through which struts an angry woman dressed in all black armor. Vibrating with power. Accusing Virago of doing evil (as in kidnapping the queen). Eventually it comes out that, no, the queen hadn’t been kidnapped. And stuff. And they have to go back NOW! Or something. So they go back to Holly’s place so that she can get her dog. And lots of clothing. Which she doesn’t actually need, but whatever (the clothing that is; or, for that matter, the dog). All that I’ve conveyed took 50% of the book to convey. Much better than I am here, of course, but still. It was, quite frankly, not that interesting to me.

The vast majority of the rest of the book takes place back on Virago’s planet. Whose name isn’t in the book description and I don’t really know how to spell it. Aorgatoara or something like that. Things are tense. Everyone’s nervous that ‘something’ is going to happen. And the queen has to continuously put herself into danger because her city is hosting the Hero’s Tournament. And therefore if she isn’t out in the open, she’d be admitting weakness, and that’d be exactly like being defeated in war. So she has to be out there. Eventually the big bad guy finally attacks, stuff occurs, the end of the book. This occurs in the second half of the book. And, for the most part, was interesting enough, to be somewhat riveting. At least some scenes here and there.

Note - there some plot holes, and inconsistencies. Or, at least, things brought up that are not later of importance. Like, in the beginning of the book the queen is super sad and wants to resign. Which would immediately destabilize the country, and put it into prime 'taking over' mode for evil king of next door country to swoop in and take over. That was badly worded. That early 'I just want to resign' is countered later with a queen in the second half of the book who just wants to do the right thing, and stand up against King Evil; which includes putting herself out there for assassins to try to assassinate. A vague thought I had that I'm not conveying well.

So, as I indicated at the beginning, I didn’t really have the fun with the book that I expected. Part of the ‘decrease’ in tension is the simple fact that I realized instantly that the book I was reading actually took place in time, chronologically, before the second book in the series occurred. And since I’d seen how the world looked in that second book . . . I kind have had a lot of the tension that could have been there just . . . not be there. So, all in all, this barely made it to a 2.8 rating. This gets conveyed as a 3 star rating as there is no other real way of conveying something near 2.8 stars.

December 29 2015 ( )