By Elizabeth English (aka Elizabeth Minogue)
Read: June 2010
Rating: Sigh.
I have been waiting to read this book since I read The Prince (Jan ’06). I loved that so much that I immediately set my sights on the only other book under this name.
Alas, The Linnet does not live up to The Prince’s standard.
Lady Maude is the daughter of a Scottish laird (and not a nice one). But that’s ok, she’s not very nice herself. In fact, she’s got a reputation as a cold-hearted bitch. It’s revealed that something horrible happened to her in her teens, that changed her from a cheerful child into a harsh woman.
Ronan Fitzgerald was apparently born into Irish nobility, but now makes his way as a minstrel and traditional healer/magician. The why is a mystery to be explained at some later point in time.
The one man who knows Mause’s trauma is now very old, and the book ends with him dying and sending Ronan to her father’s castle, without telling him WHY. Ronan and Maude spar, are attracted, etc. Typical blah, blah. He thinks he’s sensing something she’s hiding, she’s trying to keep her mind in one piece…
The most interesting thing in here is that Maude has a tenuous grip on sanity. Her mantra is ‘keep to the pattern,’ live her days by a predictable routine and nothing will go wrong, no one will suspect, she’ll make it through… This is obviously a result of her trauma. That said, we’ve yet to see her spazz out by page 90.
I am putting it down now because I’m just not interested enough to continue. The attraction between the characters lacks spark. The mysteries are bassackwards–the prologue depicts Maude’s accident (she’s injured during an England/Scotland border raid) and her father (bizarrely) insisting that no one else find out about it. Her fragile state of mind is something she worries about, but there isn’t yet any evidence for what might happen if she loses control.
For his part, Ronan’s character is completely at odds with the narrative. In the prologue, his mentor (the wise man) worries to himself that Ronan is too intellectual, too distanced to be a good healer. They use magic or sommat, and he worries that this young man cannot give himself over completely. So, what does Ronan do? He flirts with Maude and laughs and jokes like nothing’s up.
He’s also a fucking idiot. Apparently he has the skill to hold an object and see its past owner. He picks up something in the laird’s room, while the laird is there, and sees an incident some decades earlier when the laird was being a bad man, indeed. In fact, he killed a guy. Rather than exiting quietly, Ronan promptly starts yelling at him for killing this kid. He’s lucky the laird’s a tired old man, or he’d be gutted on the spot. In fact, if I were the laird, I’d make sure he’s gutted anyway. Can’t have a troubador singing about your criminal activities.
Enough of this. I have other things to do.
