Reviews for Serpent and the Rose (War of the Rose Series #1)

The average rating for Serpent and the Rose (War of the Rose Series #1) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-26 00:00:00 Brent Jose In the beginning everything was darkness and chaos and wild magic that ran rampant and the Serpent spread its evil and destruction to all corners of the world. Then the Young God came and with him his faithful knights and ladies. He struck down the Serpent though he died in the attempt and his knights and ladies bound the Serpent for all time so its power could never corrupt the world again. They contained the magic and free spirits of the world and bound them under a strict order of closely kept mysteries that only the most highly trained and controlled can know. But the world has not forgotten the Serpent and the time when magic ran free and now one King has made his mission to break the Serpents bonds and let chaos reign again. The Knights of the Rose, descendants of the Paladins who fought for the Young God and the Ladies of the Isle descendents of the Young God's beloved Lady Magdalin and her postulants are all that stand in his way. This was a pleasant little surprise. A delicately wrought fantastical confection and very finely written high romantic fantasy where the good guys aren't entirely good and the bad guys aren't entirely wrong. The main players are Gerient a farm boy turned knight who is possessed of a magic power rarely seen and Lady Averil of Lys heir to the most powerful duchy in the land and a wielder of great power herself. Their story may be slightly predictable but their inevitable love actually comes on quite gradually and believably. And yes it might be a bit trope that they're the only ones who can hope to defeat the evil king determined to release hell on earth but they're also going to have to find a way to break through the stifling controls of the Knights and Ladies to arrive at a more perfect union of wild and controlled magic. I liked this quite a bit and imagine my surprise when the author turned out to be the nom de plume for one of my favorite fantasy and historical fiction writers, Ms. Judith Tarr. This is something of a retreat for Ms. Tarr who tends toward more historical fare for her novels but its a beautiful, if somewhat pedestrian world she's created here. Yeah there's a bit more of a damsel in distress vibe then I like in my fantasy and Ms Tarr is perhaps overly fond of the whole "women pretending to be helpless to control men" thing but taken as a whole this is a solidly written, well plotted beginning to a trilogy that I might not finish tomorrow but will surely come back to.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-14 00:00:00 David Ayers Gereient is the humble but magically gifted farmboy. Averil is the astoundingly beautiful but kind and humble lady, raised by nuns because her father couldn't bear to look at the reminder of his late wife. They each belong to allied noble orders (the Knights of the Rose and the Ladies of the Isle), and eventually they will meet and fall in love. Their love will undoubtedly be tested by the difference in their social stations and the Darkness Sweeping the Land. I don't know, however, because I gave up on this book about halfway through. This book is what you get when the Belgariad and Arthurian myth are thrown into a blender, and then only the murkiest dregs are printed. It's a terribly boring mishmash of Christianity-as-last-hope-against-the-Serpent and farmboy-loves-princess. People are perpetually telling the farmboy how humble and gifted he is. Averil is continually far too mature and skilled to be 15. And the villain gets a chapter or two to explain his Evil Plans and how Evil is all he desires and so on and so forth every time the reader is getting truly bored with the farmboy and the lady's meet-cute. There is absolutely no narrative tension, the characters are cardboard cliches, and the entire thing is one huge Fantasy Trope enacted in McEurope. It is not, however, actively horrifying or insulting, so I suppose that's something. Kathleen Bryan is actually the pseudonym of Judith Tarr, which explains a great deal.