Customer Reviews

Come the Morning (Nova Audio Books)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This was a terrific story. Realistic battles, several great characters, drama, romance, excitement, and triumph.

Waryk de Graham is a young fledgling warrior. He enters his very first battle at his father's side. When he awakens from an injury to his head, he finds his father lying dead beside him. The rest of his family lies dead as well. He is the last of the Graham name. Filled with rage, he pulls himself from the ground, grabs his father's sword, and runs to attack his enemies in surprise. He manages to kill most of them, as King David arrives with troops to help. David sees that Waryk has the potential to be a great champion. He knights Waryk there on the battle field. Waryk is now Sir Waryk de Graham, Laird Lion. He pledges his life to David's service, determined at the same time to use his father's sword to bring down the rest of his enemies.

Years later, with his father's sword in hand, Waryk has earned his king's respect. King David decides to reward Waryk by giving him a vast estate, complete with a beautiful heiress for his bride.

Mellyora MacAdin is the daughter of a former Viking warlord. Her father, Laird Adin, had long ago changed his ways and become one of King David's loyal lairds. However, he raises his daughter in the Viking tradition of teaching women to battle along with their men. Mellyora is a woman who can handle a sword against men who would attack her, her home, or her people.

When Laird Adin dies suddenly, his daughter travels to David's court in hopes of keeping her father's land, known as Blue Isle. David has already decided that Mellyora will marry Waryk, making certain that her Viking relatives can not seize the property. Mellyora escapes from the king's castle. She decides to run to her uncle's camp and ask him to help her keep Blue Isle long enough to convince the king that she is capable of defending it without a husband. While running through the forest at night, a man grabs her and questions her. When he discovers she is running from his king, Waryk makes a plan to bring her back to the castle. In the midst of his plan, he discovers that she is the woman intended to be his bride.

Over the next weeks, Mellyora and Waryk battle for control of her land and life. When the king makes it clear that he will give Blue Isle to Waryk, with or without marriage, Mellyora had no choice but to agree to marry him. Now they must work together to save Blue Isle and it's people from a secret enemy, the son of one of the men Waryk killed as a boy. This enemy, Ulric Hallsteader is determined to take Waryk's wife and land. He finds ways to attack while disguising himself as Mellyora's uncle, Daro of the Vikings. If he can cause war between Waryk and Daro, he can weaken them both. This will open Blue Isle for attack.

There were numerous terrific characters in this story. They made a truly magnificent tale. There are many men and women to root for, and plenty to fear. This keeps the story exciting and it makes putting the book down very difficult. (Hence the dark circles under my eyes after reading into the early hours of the morning.) The romances that develop are gripping and deep. While reading, you feel the joy, frustration, fear, and determination of the characters as if you were living it yourself. This is a characteristic that makes the difference between a good story and an excellent story.

My only disappointment was the fact that there were several pages of unnecessary history and background. I found myself skimming through these paragraphs to get back to the plot. However, the story was enthralling enough to make up for it.

One of the few unabridged offerings in the historical romance category, and a good choice from Brilliance. First off if you don't like romance stories this one is not for you. But, if you like Scottish/English romances this one is for you. You will follow the story of one of the King's champions (King David of Scotland that is) as he is finally "given his prize" for being a champion all these years. He is to get the Castle of Blue Isle and along with it the Heiress. But the heiress has other ideas and thinks that she can govern the lands herself, as she is the daughter of a Viking. She commences to run away which allows for an interesting first meeting of the warrior and the heiress.

There is a lot of intrigues, vengeance as well as history in this story. The author takes the time to talk a lot about the difference in what is happening in Scotland as well as England at the time. She also goes into the history of the isle and how things have changed over the years. I liked the story though at times it seemed a bit long.

This is my first Shannon Drake book, so I didn't quite know what to expect. This book differs from other historical romances I've read, in that it reads like a "story" that happens to have romance as one of the primary focal points. It's not the typical historical romance where the focus is on the beauty of the "fair maiden," the prowess of the male character, and their sparring matches before they realize they're meant to be together. Sure there's some of that here too, but there's a story as well. This is evidenced by the length of time it takes before the two characters even kiss. I guess this is more of a "mature" historical romance. However, it was enjoyable enough that I'll try another of her books. While I still prefer the "typical" historical romance, the bottom line is, would I recommend it? The answer is yes, as long as you don't expect a novel similar to some of Kathleen Woodiwiss' best (and older) novels.

I found this book to be difficult to put down! Drake does an excellent job with the dialogues, and leaves the reader anticipating the future of her characters. This book is full of historical fact, and informative. It follows the points of view of different lively, characters, which helps to broaden the perspective.

I am a great fan of Shannon Drake and think she is one of the very best medieval romance writers. However, this book, I believe the first in her Scottish series, is the worst of the five. I agree with reviewers who note there is too much history. I skipped pages and pages at times in order to keep up with the central story. Another problem is far too much "suspense," including kidnappings, escapes, attacks, battles, etc. all at the expense of romance. A lot of the dialog and many scenes are deja vu from other novels. The heroine is immature to the point where she seems stupid. And the love relationship fails to sizzle. Furthermore, in this novel, as in many other medievals, there is too much bathing. From what I know, people did not have daily baths in those days, no matter how wealthy and spoiled they were. I find that Knight Triumphant from the same series is a much MUCH better book.

Out of all of Miss Drake's books, this one has to be my favorite! I love this book so much, I'm not even sure how many times I've reread it in the past years, and I couldn't put it down the first time I read it. In a way, the story IS kind of typical. You've got the strong arrogant knight and the stubborn rebellious maiden who are forced to get married over duty. I found the book to be really fast paced. As with all of Shannon Drake's books, there's a lot of battle scenes involved so if u like a lot of that "brave and handsome knights in battle" stuff, this one's the one for you.

I really liked the heroine even though I hear a lot of complaints about how immature, bratty, and childish she was. I can actually understand how she must have felt living in an age where woman were considered weak and were powerless. She had such an exceptionally strong will to be free to rule her father's lands that it made her seem bratty. The key to the book is that she didn't hate her husband for who he was, but absolutely dispised the idea that she had been COMMANDED to marry him. Throw this heroine in with a mature but arrogant and fiery hero and you've got a really fun and entertaining read. I love their first encounter when the heroine tries to escape her fate of marriage by fleeing the King's castle.

I've read so many books where the two main characters are clawing each other in the throat one minute and then sleeping with each other in the next, totally forgetting the fact that they're suppose to be hating each other. I can say that this one's definitely different. You see a slow but gradual change in how the two characters feel toward each other...no jumping around. I felt that their personalities were more true and it made them seem more realistic. I hate the fact that by the end of most books, the characters who u fall in love with at the beginning of the book have totally changed...almost to the point where u feel as if they've become totally new characters. Shannon Drake did a good job of graduallly shaping her two main characters. At the end of the book, they're still the same two from the beginning even though it's obvious they've changed their ways and have fallen in love.

I would definitely recommand this book to anyone

I will admit, this book like every other Shannon Drake book had me hopelessly hooked to the point I was staying up to all hours of the night reading it. However, I am finding that Mrs. Drake is using the same writing style and story line to almost all of her books. Girl forced to be with guy, girl tries to escape guy several times, girl betrays guy several time, and finally girl falls in love with guy. The one thing that really got me about this book, however, is how Mellyora just couldn't accept that she was beaten. I admired her strength and was thankful that Mrs. Drake did not put in a weak pushover as her heroine but the author took Mellyora's defiance too far. It was as though Mrs. Drake realized that she had made her own character so stubborn she was forced to add in the threat of Mellyora losing the Blue Isle whether she married Waryk or not just to ensure the two lovers acknowledged their feelings in the end. When I was nearly finished the book, I was practically screaming for them to admit their love for eachother. Don't get me wrong, I loved it like I love all her other books but the characters were made too stubborn and prideful. Another pet peeve I have with Shannon Drake is she seemed to have taken an entire scene from Come the Morning and stuck it in her follow-up book, Conquer the Night. By chance, I found and read Conquer the Night first which then promted me to hunt down the first book. I was utterly shocked when I read the scene where Waryk and Mellyora first made love. Waryk stupidly makes the mistake of assuming his bride had taken lovers before him (just like Arryn did with Kyra!) When he finally realizes his mistake, he demands from Mellyora, "Why didn't you tell me?". That sounded extrodenarily familiar, so I went back and checked with the time Arryn took Kyra's virginity in Conquer the Night and sure enough, Arryn said words that greatly resembled Waryk's. Now, Mrs. Drake strikes me as being a very talented writer so I was perplexed as to how she couldn't have found a different, more creative approach to a similar situation. Both books are worth reading but don't enter the series expecting much of a difference between the books.

I decided to check out my first Shannon Drake novel, COME THE MORNING. I enjoy gripping plotting, history and political intrigue with the romance, and I thought COME THE MORNING fit the bill. Not so much though, the tempestuous romance in the first part was fun, and there's some intrigue but nothing substantive. COME THE MORNING doesn't do a good job with settings either. Drake has a tendency to veer off into some historical discourse for pages on end which doesn't seem relevant to the story at all, and unfortunately, she does it often. She doesn't really make the historical backdrop mesh with her story and romance all that well and often times, we find belabored essays on various histories or genealogies. Having strong Scottish roots herself, author Shannon Drake's love for Scotland is evident. The light-hearted romance is fun though, and unlike other books I've read, COME THE MORNING heroine's scathing, belligerent attitude towards our hero was actually enjoyable.

The Story.

Heroine Mellyora MacAdin, Lady of the beatific and verdant Blue Isle, has just lost her laird father to death. King David of Scotland summons her and his champion Laird Waryk de Graham to Stirling for plans of his own during a tumultuous time when Scotland's borders are in conflict from England down south and the Vikings to the north. Unbeknown to either Mellyora or Waryk, King David plans to arrange their marriage to solidify Blue Isle during a time of conflict. Mellyora seethes and resents giving her home to a complete stranger and attempts numerous escapes only to have Waryk capture her time and time again.

The story with Mellyora & Waryk's rather tempestuous encounters is rather fun. There's some intrigue and fighting in the second half.

The story is rather light-hearted and overall, not bad at all. I may check out some other books by Shannon Drake in the future.

This was one of the first drake novel I read, and it made me a lifelong fan of Drake. Though not the best one she has written, it is a very good read.

This was my first Shannon Drake book and have already bought the next 4 books in this series. It's excellently written with plenty of facts about the history of Scotland to make it very easy to understand. This is different from other historical romances that I've read because it actually has a ton of historical facts to thrill a curious mind while bringing the characters and this time alive. I loved how I was able to envision the landscape and the characters without being bogged down with too much description. I recommend this book too anyone interested in the medieval times and in Scotland. I look forward to reading the rest of her books in this series.