A Knight Like No Other - Jocelyn Kelley
I have to say first that I *adore* the premise of this book. It makes an incredibly realistic case for how a woman would wield a sword - and have "modern sensibilities" - back in medieval days. So many romance books put women into this time period with completely "wrong" attitudes for those days. Yes it may be hard for us modern women to understand the culture back then, but women who were born into it thought of it as normal.Queen Eleanor in real life was *famous* for riding with her troops, for being very intelligent, a great strategist, a ruler in her own right. So with this role model, setting up an enclave to create her own group of loyal women, it makes a lot of sense. It is exactly what she would do - and the women in her care would grow up feeling the way she did about womens' rights. I very much like this aspect of the story. Kudos to Jocelyn.
So Avisa has grown up sheltered from the "normal medieval female life" and taught to be strong, brave, intelligent and in control. She is a teacher, she is used to a position of authority. She is good with a weapon. Then she is forced out into the "real world" and into contact with a knight. The resulting problems and issues are all quite believable. Again, many times romance novels try to do this and fail - but with the setup and background it works very well.
So why do I give this only four stars (and really would go for 3.5 if I could)?
It really comes down to poor editing. There were numerous problems here that a good editor could easily have cleaned up. There are words that are misused. There are sentences that are poorly constructed (so that the "he" of one sentence refers to the wrong person based on the previous sentence, for example). "Unusual words" that most readers wouldn't know are introduced without context or meaning.
There are numerous plot holes. Yes, I realize romance novels expect you to suspend disbelief - but some of these strain credulity that a well laid out plot of the Abbey would forget about certain key issues.
Perhaps my biggest issue is with the interaction of Avisa and Guy. He is a knight on a quest to restore his family honor. And the moment he rescues a woman in distress he begins feeling her up??? His behavior is VERY un-knight like. She was brought up to have strong self respect. She should have punched him in the head! Women in medieval times did NOT let strange men manhandle them. I actually was hoping in the first part of the book that the "hero" was going to be someone to rescue Avisa from Guy. It was troubling to realize that Guy *was* the hero. He acted more as a moral-less lecher.
It might be one thing if he was portrayed as a "dashing rogue" who had no honor. But he was supposed to be a knight ACTIVELY striving to bring honor to his family! And he was raised by a father who was the epitome of honor, too. It left a very bad taste in my mouth. I didn't want Avisa to end up with him.
I will move on to the subsequent books because, again, I adore the premise and the realism in the situation. I can only hope the author did a better job with the character interaction, basic editing and plot development.
As a final minor note for anyone reading this book - in the beginning Avisa draws arrows from a quiver on her back, i.e. over her shoulder. I'm pretty sure research has shown that real medieval archers did NOT do this - that this was a very unnatural way to carry arrows at the time. They carried them in their belt for easy access. Far easier to grab and use that way.
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