WARPRIZE

Author: Elizabeth Vaughan ISBN: 0765352648 6/2005 FANTASY Publisher: TOR
Futuristic, yet Primitive

She must choose between her people and her freedom... Xylara is the Daughter of the Warrior King, Xyron. With her father dead and her incompetent half-brother on the throne, the kingdom is in danger of falling to the warring Firelanders. Before she was old enough for a marriage-of-alliance, Xylara was trained as a healer. She can't usurp her brother or negotiate a peace--but she can heal the brave ones injured in battle. But not only her countrymen are wounded, and Xylara's conscience won't let Firelander warriors die when she can do something to save them. She learns their language and their customs and tries to make them as comfortable as possible, despite their prisoner-of-war status. She never expects that these deeds, done in good faith, would lead to the handsome and mysterious Firelander Warlord demanding her in exchange for a cease-fire. Xylara knows must trade the life she has always known for the well-being of her people, and so she becomes... The Warprize

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Best to rip the band-aid off quickly, so at the risk of being brutally honest, WARPRIZE is no prize. Not even second or third place. It's soooooo boring that I skipped ahead, then back again, to see if at any time it would pick up. The answer to that is no, so don't hope for that.

It's not silly, or full of grammatical errors, or even filled with crazy foreign terms and words that I struggle with. Well, not too many, anyway. A similar plot has successfully been done before, so the author has a good idea, but it's just boring. Really, really boring. I could care less what the characters are doing or who they are doing it with. They are flat beings that do nothing to spark my imagination or make me yearn for their happiness.

My biggest pet peeve is that many of the characters constantly refer to the heroine as "Warprize". Which Lara is, but to say it over and over again is annoying beyond belief. I mean, once-a-paragraph-for-at-least-half-the-book annoying. Lara attempts to get them to use her name, but they refuse, and so the dratted Warprize name continues. I suppose I feel they should get over it at some point. Especially since Lara becomes a queen and their lord's spouse.

Well, if you happen to like this one you are in luck, as there appears to be a sequel in the works. Me? I try to be optimistic and fair, but will most likely have to pass.

Shannon Johnson