Once a Warrior Book

Setting: Scotland, 1207

Some of the storytelling and prose was pretty good but all of the characters were DUMB. Almost insultingly so. I felt myself losing IQ points reading this but I forced myself to finish to give it a fair shake.

I've heard of heroines To Stupid to Live (TSTL), but never a whole clan. I am lead to believe that this clan has existed for 400 years but never had a line of defense, no warriors, and had never been attacked until recently? This leads to the crisis that begins the novel since the clan dont know what to do about the siege.

Then the hero visits the clan and think nothing of the whole clan taking orders from a "13 year old boy" who smells and never washes. (This would be the heroine in disguise BTW, but he didnt know that.)

I thought the monumental stupidity was over by the end but the heroine instantly forgives a woman for betraying the clan, kidnapping the heroine's sister, and endangering everyone. And then rewards her by entrusting the sister to this clanswoman yet again AS IF NOTHING HAPPENED.

TSTL indeed.

The broad way everyone else was written vs. the gritty portrayal of the hero with his drunkenness, his scars, his limp, his pain, was so huge that I wondered if the author was trying to write some sort of a parable. Then I realized that I was giving the author more credit for intelligence than she gave me as a reader. Oh well.