Customer Reviews

Warrior's Song: Medieval Song Quartet #4

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

What kind of rapist gets to be a hero in another book? When I first started reading this book I wasn't very impressed to begin with. I have read some of Catherine Coulter's other books and found them very enjoyable. Imagine my surprise and disgust when after I read that horrible rape scene I turn to the back of the book and-viola!- the VILIAN has his own romance staring HIM as the hero??? Just knowing this made me unable to finish the book. I realize that the plot is set hundreds of years ago and although this might have happened then I certainly don't want it happening in my reading. What ever happened to the hero having integrity? Honor? Courage? Did the author hope to make this look like a "nice" rape? It ruined the entire book for me and I doubt I will be reading the other books in this series.

I like Catherine Coulter novels. True, they're not always historically accurate, but romance readers are used to some lack of fact in most works of this genre. However, the plot line itself is so inane that most readers will have difficulty in suspending belief. This book is a rewrite of a much earlier work. I think Ms. Coulter should have abandoned ship on this project.

Our heroine is raised as a squire--a nice touch if you like the feminist, athletic bit. However, she has difficulty in grasping the most basic concepts, so protraying her as remotely intelligent or faintly likable is an exercise in futility. I liked the character of Mary, since she is the only person in the novel that displays a lick of common sense.

The lead female is so obsessively male about everything she does that this plot line is stale long before the reader has reached the halfway point in the novel. You simply want to scream "Enough already." And so the reader moves from what was at least a coherent plot to the Crusades in the blink of an eye. The husband, who started the novel as a likable character, becomes increasingly authoritarian as the plot (which should thicken and doesn't), proceeds.

A rapist, introduced earlier in the novel, is portrayed sypathetically, an error in judgement on the author's part, as well as a display of a complete lack of taste and sense. I found it offensive. The rape scene itself, which is not necessary, is too wooden and phony.

I do hope Ms. Coulter gives up on the idea of revitalizing these weak earlier novels and writes fresh material with stronger plot lines, adding more depth and some intelligence to both the characters and the plot.

When I was about 10 years younger, I used to love the "strong, silent hero" type - and so fell into reading Catherine Coulter. At that time, the rape scene did not disturb me so much (I thought she was being realistic), although I realized later that the rapist becomes a hero in another book, and shows no contrition for what he did to the victim.

What is horrendous about this book is the rewrite of the mother's character. In the original CHANDRA, Lady Dorothy (?) is helpless, weak, silly, but not deliberately malicious. In this book, she is close to absolute evil, conniving at her daughter's forced marriage to a rapist-invader and also threatening her husband with a sudden death if Chandra is not married off. And yes, this time, I did get the incestuous overtones in the relationship between Chandra and her father - almost made me feel sorry for Lady Dorothy, if *that* was going on. [Note - there is no actual incest, but the relationship is - ahem - rather strange].

Chandra and Jerval did not feel particularly romantic to me on this re-read. I must have had different tastes back then. Right now, Catherine Coulter - thanks to the trend of her writing - is going on my "do not buy" list.

Rating = 1 star (the lowest possible for a distasteful unromantic book)

I had a very hard time actually reading this book through after the first chapter in which a character who becomes a hero at the end of the book and in fact stars in his own in a future book rapes one of the characters. I think that the attempt to make him seem less hated was that he was "nice" about it. Right there, that is a huge strike against the book. I don't care if this was the times, that is why it is fiction. Rape is not a part of romance and a rapist should not be the hero of a romance...at least not by an author who I ever plan to read again. The other problem I had was with the main characters and the changes that she goes through. She becomes the nice docile wife she is meant to become and he becomes a little more tolerant after "taming" her with sex. That is supposed to be romantic? My "favorite" line to hate was when she told him she was pregnant, shut him up and then it went on to say that it was probably the last time she ever got the best of him. Sounds like a match made in sexism 101.

In reading a preview for this book, I found that this was a rewrite from a previous novel and was used to 'fit' into the 'Song Series'. It didn't fit very well from my perspective. Within the first few pages of this book, a woman is raped by a (supposed) leading character in a future novel by Ms. Coulter. It is beyond my thinking that this would equate to a "good romance". I found nothing of value in this book and would not recommend it to another. If I had wanted to read a gruesome true to life novel, I certainly would not have thought to find it located in the romance section. This book was not a romance or very well written. The characters were not well developed and were somewhat shallow and narrow. I am sorry that I purchased this book and will not purchase anything by this author again.

When I first read the rape scene in the beginning of the book, my biggest fear was that the rapist would turn out to be the hero, because of his attitude in approaching it: i.e. the "I don't want to do this but you're forcing me to" attitude. I have to say, though, that my relief was short-lived.

The hero himself does an inexplicable about-face immediately following their wedding. He goes on to reinforce all Chandra's fears about losing her identity to a man, trying to destroy all the qualities in her that he adored before the wedding. This, I think, is the most insidious part of the whole novel. It could be an excellent story of a woman whose identity deteriorates under the pressure of her husband's expectations and demands, but in the way it's presented makes it clear that we're supposed to find it romantic and that aspect really doesn't work for me.

What an awful book! There was no 'romance' at all! There was barely even any sex. Jerval boasts that he gives Chandra her "woman's pleasure", but that's about it. Sure, he lusts after her, but while he appreciated her warrior side at first, he really disapproved of it after they were married, and it seemed that the only reason she had any affection for him was because he reminded her of her father! There was definitely some strange sort of attraction going on there. And what kind of name is 'Jerval' anyway? It kept making me think of hamsters. This was my first Coulter book, and it will probably be my last.

I liked this book initially, as I had never read a romance novel before I was somewhat dubious. I had heard good things about Catherine Coulter so I decided to give her a try. The beginning was good, the firey Chandra made me laugh and I could identify with her. I also liked the sexual tension between her and Jerval, but as the novel progressed I became dissappointed, what happened to Chandra's spunk? Why did she all of a sudden become so easily dominated by Jerval? I realize that would have been realistic for the time but it was still a little dissappointing. I also found several typos throughout the book, things that should have been taken care of during editing, but I suppose getting the book on the shelves supercedes grammatical accuracy. I didn't give up on Coulter yet, however, I read The Deception which I really enjoyed, even with the incorrect conjugation of her french verbs. The Deception was a nice, exciting read and I would reccommend that. Feeling hopeful, I read The Courtship; what a waste. I didn't like the characters nor the general plot. Don't get me wrong, I like a good sex scene just as much as the other girl, but I don't want a pathetic quickie, I'm reading an "escape" novel to do just that, not to be reminded of the crappy sex I've had. Oh well, I liked Coulter enough to read three of her books, but not enough to read any more, I would reccomend Theresa Meideros or Marylyle Rogers.

I just read Warrior's Song. It was not as great as her other books. Yes, it kept you wanting to know what happened next but, there were too many events happening. Catherine Coulter rewrote this book and changed the title. She said that this is better than the original story. I don't think it is. Also, there is a disturbing rape scene in the first few chapters. This gives you a bad feeling about the book already.

Even though I'm not overly fond of Catherine Coulter, I bought this book after reading the back. It was supposed to be about a woman who was a warrior and the man who had to learn to love her and not try to change her. After I read Earth Song and found it enjoyable, I finally picked this book up and started to read it.

The book starts out with a character I recognised as a hero from another book trying to force marriage on our heroine. How does he do that? Well of course by raping her friend. I freely admit to skipping over the actual rape because I didn't want to read it. That being said, the rape didn't really color my judgment as much as it did other people.

Quite frankly there were too many things wrong with this book for it to be good. It WAS an easy read. The writing style was good and for a part of the book the banter between the characters was enjoyable.

Let's look at loose ends. The first half of the story has many many many undertones that our heroine Chandra was in love with her father and her father was also in love with her. The only reason why the two hadn't committed major incest was because neither one of them was willing to even privately face that they felt that way. There seemed to be no particular point to this, other than being incredibly gross, since after she's married it's never touched upon again. Let's not forget that the man her father chose for her is someone who looks exactly like him. Chandra's mother is an enemy and the truth about why she hated her was a foreshadowing to future issues, or so you would think, but after they are married nothing ever comes up about it again.

Even though Jerval claims to love Chandra, the reality is probably more along the lines of the fact that he's in love with her looks. As soon as they are married he decides that she has to go be his wife and give up being a warrior including everything that is strictly for men, like hunting or jousting or practicing. Instead he wants her running the household and sewing and weeding the garden and so on and so forth. Yes, Chandra was a pain sometimes but the simple fact of the matter is, if that's who she is, then why did he try to change her?

I wanted to read a story about a strong woman who was a warrior that grew up in a time where that just wasn't done. An epic style romance between her and the man who loved her, who could only have her if he accepted her the way she was. Change is everything in romance because all the characters have to change who they are to some extent to be together. In this case, Chandra changed to the point of being a completely different person, and Jerval changed only in so far as he became less accepting of Chandra as who she was instead of who he wanted her to be.

I'll agree also with other reviews that the only characters that were really enjoyable were the prince and princess. Aside from that everyone had too many issues to be really likable. And Mary was the worst of the lot because she was the wonderful epitome of everything that Jerval wanted Chandra to be. It really saddened me in the end that she had a girl. I realize that if you wanted her to have a happy ending she should have had a girl, but I kept thinking that Mark supposedly loved her but he would have hated her if she'd had a boy. There was no real test for any of the characters as to whether or not they really loved each other. Everything worked out to fall exactly as they wanted.

It ended on a disappointing note that made it from just unlikably okay to frustratingly annoying. Do I recommend this book? No way, but while most people won't like it, there will always be people who love it. This book is enjoyable for some but was not what I was looking for. If it had been described as a girl who was raised as a boy learning to be a woman, but it wasn't. So if you want to read it, I'd say if you don't have a very open mind to it, you'll be disappointed.