Customer Reviews

The Sword & the Sheath

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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I started this book the moment I got it and couldn't put it down. This is the fifth book in Vanak's Egyptian series, set in Victorian and now Edwardian-era Egypt. Fatima has just returned to Egypt from England where she lived during World War I and is not happy that her family wants her to resume the traditional role she'd play in her tribe--waiting on men and doing the laundry.

Fatima was educated in an English college and would have seen the woman's suffrage movement in England full throttle, not to mention women becoming ambulence drivers and the like during the war. She knows she's a better warrior than her twin, Asad, who is the Guardian of Tarik, the sheik's son, and proves it. She has the Sight as well, visions that trouble her and yet save Tarik's life more than once.

Fatima and Tarik have great chemistry--the woman who wants to be a warrior, and the man who wants to protect her. Tarik is gorgeous and sexy and Fatima gives back as good as she gets. The h/h grew up together, and their growing awareness of love and physical attraction for one another is delightful.

This book can stand on its own, but it's a treat to see the characters from the previous books, like revisiting old friends. All the characters are twined together in a deeply satisfying, well-written book that's a keeper for me.

Author Vanak continues her very thrilling and sensual Egyptian Khamsin warrior series featuring the off-spring of heroes and heroines from her previous novels, (see THE FALCON & THE DOVE and THE TIGER & THE TOMB) with the heir to the sheik Tarik and Fatima the twin daughter of Ramses the current sheik's Guardian. Fatima is a most unusual female not only being gifted with a psychic talent of predicting the future but also with a burning desire to become the first female Guardian Khamsin warrior as a bodyguard to her childhood friend Tarik. Not only was this a total break with tradition in a culture where women were meant to be married, produce children and care for the well being of their husbands but Tarik was aghast that Fatima wanted to be his bodyguard, when all he could think of where he wanted to find her body. That being - beneath him - in his bed - as his lover.

In this fifth novel set in Egypt Vanak once again gifts the readers with a lush, sensual tale that burns as hot as the Middle Eastern locale she sets her story in. Fatima is characterized as a very sensual exotic hot house flower - a rose with thorns who has the ability, and the burning desire to dream of being more than just wife and mother. With her psychic abilities she has saved Tarik's life several times already and loving him as she has since childhood, knows that she is the only one who can save him from the assassins who want him dead. Tarik is of course, larger than life, fashioned beautifully as handsome, sensual, and using humorous innuendoes parried back and forth with Fatima that make their dialogs a titillating exercise in foreplay. Vanak is a master storyteller who has created a stirring and extremely lush and adventuresome series that is original, hotter than sin and highly entertaining. For a taste of something different in your historical reading this is a series that shouldn't be missed and an author who knows how to deliver an exciting sensual adventure story!

Marilyn Rondeau

Ramses bin Asad Sharif's daughter Fatima dreams of becoming a Khamsin warrior though she knows females are banned from becoming warriors let alone carrying weapons. She has a deep need to prove to doubters that she can perform the duty and an even deeper obsession to keep her people safe. She feels strongly that as a Khamsin warrior she can do so especially if she also uses her gift to foresee events that have always made her unwelcome in most circles.

When Fatima saves Tarik's life due to her sight skill, he gives her a chance to become a warrior. Tarik has been friends with Fatima for years, but wants much more from her. He has waited a long time for his Tima and feels soon he will tell her how he feels about her which goes way beyond friendship. However, when his Tima comes home to keep him safe from an assassin, she catches him making love to another woman. He knows how much harder it will be to persuade his warrior woman she is the one for him when she insists she just wants to protect him from those who want him dead.

The latest Sahara Desert historical romance is a great thriller, perhaps the best in the series, due to Fatima, a unique heroine with an obsession to protect her people which means entering an exclusive male only guard. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action adventure while allowing for strong characterization and a deep sense of time and place. Readers will taste the sands as Bonnie Vanak provides an energetic, vivid yet entertaining tale.

Harriet Klausner

This book was good and i breezed through it in a day, but was a frustating read like some of the other books in this series. i get soooo frustrated because the women are supposed to be these strong women fighting for women's rights in the tribe and such like in this one where Fatima wants to be a warrior but everytime Tarik shows up she turns to pudding. i cannot even read the love sceens because i am so frustrated with these characters. he snaps his fingers and tells her on her knees and shes there baby. i get that they have to be attracted to eachother but she could at least put up a bit of a fight its like no oh wait yes yes, ridiculous. i also cant stand how all the men have been with MANY women and the women have been with no one. im not saying they have to get as much action as the men because frankly its gross im just saying that it wouldnt hurt to have a male character that hasnt had sex with half the women in the surrounding towns and that he also not be such a pig with all the im a man hear me roar crap. he needs to get over himself and she needs to grow a backbone. how can the author say she is a strong woman and then have her crying and falling all over the place. the ending is the only part i can say i was loving completly. she was finally strong and he was finally supportive. i like how they started the change in backward opion that women are weak but until like the last 30 pages i still wanted to tear this mans head off. i love vanaks books for who knows what reason but she is a good writer and these books are in a new place compared to the usuall setting and if she tweaked the hes w/ a couple hundred women/her only with him and the overrated ego he has going on including her im strong but really a weak woman complex going then her books would be perfecto! this is worth the read if you dont get as worked up as i do.

I just finished the current book in Vanak's Egyptian series. I like the book, but it is not as great as the first four novels which made me think of the Mummy movie series. This novel is about Jabari's son Tariq and Ramses' daughter Fatima. Fatima wants to be a Khamsin warrior together with her twin Asad and uphold the tribe's honor. The story is romantic and idealistic, but since I have Egyptian friends, I know that the feminist ideas in the book are too modern especially for the time and the Egyptian society of the very early 20th century. I still enjoyed the novel, but it read more like an extended series sheik book.