"A fun reincarnation story with entertaining twists and turns"
KNIGHT OF MY DREAMS is an engaging reincarnation story,
where a modern day couple is thrown into a situation that
somewhat parallels something their predecessors went
through. The heroine, Sydney Vaughn, is receiving
threatening phone calls, so her somewhat loony Aunt Vera
sends security consultant Baldwin D. Lacy (aka Winn) to
install a fancy security system in Sydney's isolated
farmhouse. When they meet, Sydney is struck by how Winn
resembles a man in a dream she's had since childhood, of a
woman named Gillian and her knight, Baldric, and their star-
crossed love affair. Sir Baldric, a landless knight, was bringing Gillian to wed
her husband, a menacing and probably wife-killing man,
Baron Nigel Redmere, in exchange for which Baldric would
receive back his family estate. Gillian is concerned that
Baron Redmere only wishes an heir and his previous wives
died as a result of not giving him one. She seeks to seduce
Baldric, giving her a fighting chance of having a child and
thus saving her life. Baldric is an honorable man who
wishes to avoid the seductive charms of his charge and
deliver her to a man he considers almost a foster-father.
Over the course of the trip, he falls in love with the fair
Gillian and begins to see his master in a new light. In modern times, Sydney has a suitor, the local sheriff,
David Monroe. Sydney had made a deathbed promise to her
mother to consider David as a husband for a year -- half of
which has past. Sydney already knows she doesn't want to
marry David, who is obsessive, violent, and not someone to
be trusted. We don't like him long before we know the truth
about him. While he thinks Sydney is a bit of a kook, with
a love of medieval armament and the color purple, Winn is
attracted to her and soon finds himself also dreaming about
the long ago lovers, thus making it clear that he and
Sydney are their reincarnated souls -- although not quite
as
one might have expected. There are some fun twists in the
story that come out in the end. As is common with this kind of book, about half of the
action takes place in medieval times, and thus has the feel
of a historical book. These sections were very well done,
the lovers well cast and detailed. Both Baldric and Gillian
have good reasons for their actions and their plight feels
real. The Baron is a total nasty and we hate him long
before we see him. The modern day sections had a completely different feel to
them, and were strikingly contemporary in flavor, an
interesting contrast to the rest of the book. The entire
forced engagement plot doesn't work all that well, because
we know that there is no way someone like David could
impose his will on Sydney, in spite of deathbed promises,
or the entire town being in his favor. We would hope that
eventually Sydney would give David his walking papers, with
or without Winn showing up. But clearly David represents a
threat to Sydney and Winn, even if his power is weak
compared to the Baron in the medieval story. And the climax
of the book where all three of them go to a local
Renaissance Fair was a lot of fun. Overall, KNIGHT OF MY DREAMS was a fun read, with
entertaining twists and turns, and well worth hunting down.
Reviewed by Janet Miller
Posted November 4, 2002
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