Seraphim by Michele Hauf
The year is 1433. Seraphim d’Ange is a young woman riding through France on a quest for revenge… Michele Hauf attempts an elevated, old-fashioned style, but breaks that tone with anachronisms… When I read historical fantasy, I like to suspend disbelief and imagine that it really could have happened this way, but that the magical parts were “lost to history.” It doesn’t work when I can’t believe the “realistic” aspects of the story. I got about 100 pages into Seraphim; thus far there has been little plot development except for the unfolding of the backstory. Instead the book is focused on bickering and bantering which is made confusing by head-hopping and (at times) too few dialogue tags. I finally gave up when Dominique started brooding about an anti-faery comment Seraphim made — a comment she made to Baldwin when Dominique was not present. If a book is engaging in other ways, I can overlook errors like that, but in this case it was the last straw. Read the rest.
I usually like unusual names but to set a book in an historical time period and then ignore the naming conventions of the existing culture is just annoying. Having 15th century characters with 21st century sensibilities also always destroys the illusion. I won’t go looking for these books!
Yeah, the book’s not great. In the author’s defense, it’s pretty old, and she has some newer ones out that I may try sometime (though they’re about vampires, a subject about which I’m pretty jaded).
If you can usually overlook such errors as a character knowing details of a conversation they weren’t present for, you’re much more tolerant a reader than me!
Eh, I have some books where I love almost everything about it, but there’s a continuity error, and it irks the daylights out of me (and will reduce my rating) but if I like the rest of it, I’ll probably still finish and then go on to try the author’s other stuff.