19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
When you just want to feel good, July 7, 2001
This review is from: The Bewitched Viking (Wink & a Kiss) (Mass Market Paperback)
Poor Tykir Thorksson. His king has sent him off to capture the witch that put a spell on the king's manhood. He was prepared for danger, but he wasn't prepared for the hot-tempered red-head, her tiresome, bumbling brothers and her sheep! And to make matters worse, he's burdened with a crew of superstitious Vikings and a skald who composes some of the worst sagas ever sung. It's hard to know which is worse, being immortalized in sagas with titles like "Tykir the Great and the Flame-Haired Witch," or finding that he isn't immune to the witch's flaming hair and freckles after all.
Much as I love a good laugh, I'm always a little skeptical of novel-length humor because it's just so hard to do. To keep your reader smiling for 300-400 pages, much less laughing is one of the most difficult tasks a writer can undertake. Or as someone once said: "Dying is easy; comedy is hard." Sandra Hill provides enough good humor to keep her readers feeling good for almost four hundred pages and for that alone I have to give her high marks.
Sandra Hill knows her stuff. She knows how to keep a narrative moving, how to create believable characters, and how to make her readers smile, if not laugh out loud. Though I found myself a little uncomfortable with the opening chapter in which she seemed to be trying a little too hard to win her readers over, I did find that once the narrative settled down, it was a pleasure to read. The writing is crisp, humorous and well-balanced and the problematic elements such verbal anachronisms (The anal retentive need not apply; this book will make you nuts if you pick at it.) and a tendency to make the dark ages seem like a time when it wasn't any big deal to hop on a ship to go visit cousin Sven who has settled in Sussex with his Saxon wife and their sixteen children really don't detract from the story, in my opinion. The thing with humor, at least for me, is that all can be forgiven if the author can make me laugh.
There isn't much about this plot that we haven't seen a million times. There's a dark age version of the "meet cute" that involves sheep, but you pretty much know that the two main characters have to start out hating each other so that they can have the Big Revelation later on. Hill handles it deftly enough, never descending into bathos which would have been too easy given the backgrounds she's created for Tykir and Alinor. They never pity themselves and we're never asked to pity them either. And Hill never relies on the "idiot plot" in which two grown people can't seem to share enough information to avoid huge, painful misunderstandings that threaten to destroy their relationship at least a dozen times during the course of the story. Yes, it's hard for these two to show their feelings for each other, but Hill never takes this to the extremes that make this reviewer want to fling a book across the room.
It's actually pretty hard to feel sorry for Tykir when you consider that the man has rank, money and women falling at his feet. So when he butts heads with Lady Alinor, who keeps insisting that she's not a witch (the difference between cursing someone and putting a curse on him seems to escape the Vikings who have come to haul her off to Norway to fix the king's...problem.) it is rather amusing to watch his sense of self get rearranged. It's also hard to feel sorry for Alinor for all that she's been married three times to rich, repulsive old men for the benefit of her horrible brothers. She's tough, she's mouthy, and she is not perfect - alleluia! She makes mistakes, has bad days, feels sorry for herself occasionally, and despite all her best intentions, she finds herself responding in a very basic way to Tykir's very basic attractions. From the beginning you really have to like these two because you know that for all that they're going to irritate each other half to death, they're also really well-suited to each other. Both are smart and funny, and both are almost obsessively self-reliant.
There's not a lot of tension inherent in this particular treatment, and that's not a bad thing for humor which can be so easily damaged by too much seriousness. We're led to feel a certain amount of concern for Alinor's fate and for the fate of their relationship, but never enough to put a frown on our faces instead of a smile. The love scene - there's one rather long one - is charming, and just explicit enough to let us know what's happening without being graphic. And with the lead-in Hill gives us, the length of the scene isn't a problem; it fits nicely into the narrative without being in any way intrusive. I, for one, enjoyed the heck out of it!
Hill's characters are vivid and honest; they have weaknesses, they do silly things. Sometimes they laugh at themselves, but more often they laugh at each other. They don't change dramatically; they don't have epiphanies which turn them from sinners to saints. They simply are what they are and it's a mark of Hill's humanity as well as her skill that we do care about what happens to them. They work within the context of the story, and even the secondary characters are not only memorable but quite real.
On the whole I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys humor. This isn't a book you read when you need a good weep, but rather when you want to feel good, when you want to believe that the world is actually a fairly amusing place, and that nice things can happen if you're open to them.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A humorous take on the Vikings..., October 23, 2000
This review is from: The Bewitched Viking (Wink & a Kiss) (Mass Market Paperback)
A Viking warrior named Tykir is sent with two of his fellow warriors to "escort" a witch from England to a king who claims she has put a curse on him that caused his manpart to "take a right turn". This is where is gets tangled and out of control, lol, Alinor, the 'witch' is not a witch at all and she doesn't want to leave her home to follow some "oaf" to take off some curse she never put on in the first place. Alinor is considered by society's standards as "homely". She has bright red hair and freckles all over her body. She has never been looked at by men and she doesn't have any intention of attracting any, but Tykir, a gorgeous Viking becomes 'bewitched' with Alinor and the whole situation is turned upside down. This story is hilarious and Sandra has a knack of making her male heros extremely sexy and funny at the same time. This is the 4th book in the Viking series by her starting with--The Reluctant Viking, The Outlaw Viking, The Tarnished Lady and then The Bewitched Viking. Don't miss any of Hill's books, they are all hysterical and they will make you cry with laughter. =)
Tracy Talley~@
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great!, June 19, 2000
This review is from: The Bewitched Viking (Wink & a Kiss) (Mass Market Paperback)
I've read every one of Sandra Hill's books, and The Bewitched Viking ranks among my very favorites. Sandra Hill's humor is unsurpassed in romance, with its own special brand of quirkiness and quick wit. Alinor is wonderful - I love the 'turnabout' quality in this plot, with the heroine bewitching the man sent to 'dewitch' her. Sandra Hill's books just keep getting better and better!
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