Title: White Star
Author: Beth Vaughan
Year of publication: 2009
Genre: Fantasy romance
My rating: 3 stars or C-
Orrin is a man with a dark past. His evil overlady the Baroness is dead and he must surrender himself to save his men. Lucky for him, they recently took captive Lady High Priestess Evelyn, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the usurper (though Orrin doesn’t call him the usurper, as you would expect given he’s on his side) and he can use her as a bargaining chip for the lives of his men, though he accepts his own imminent execution. He and Evelyn have more than a little bit of a thing for each other, which comes into play as her goddess tells her to save his life and he takes steps to atone for his past behaviour by going zombie-fighting.
This book did not work for me. While the opening chapters, with their strong characterisation and good dialogue, grabbed my attention, it soon became apparent that I needed to have read the first book in the series to truly enjoy the world, the situation and the characters (this is especially annoying as there is nothing on the copy I bought to suggest it was a sequel). That some of the events of the first book are still going on in the background is fine; the big flaw is that Orrin’s past is never properly explored in this book and I can only assume he was introduced properly as a villain in the first book.
We are told he has done evil acts, and that this was because he loved the Baroness (though no longer) and that he was acting to protect his men and his families. These aren’t really good enough reasons to justify invading other people’s homes and creating zombies to my mind, and therefore the fact that Evelyn’s all ‘oh, he’s just misunderstood, it’s fine that he is the object of my romantic interest’ is a bit too simple and easy for her. Either he’s truly done dark things and needs a proper redemption with a bit more guilt and angst, or he had better reasons for acting how he did and it’s therefore A-OK that he’s forgiven so easily.
The whole romance is too easy, Orrin’s token protests not withstanding; the climax is too easy and comes about 100 pages too soon, and heavily relies on the relationship between Orrin and the Baroness which again is not at all explored in this book, and then there’s a bunch of events that appear thrown in to make the book longer and provide sequel bait for the next book in the series. It felt unplanned and a little forced, the romance didn’t work for me, and the overall plot was a bit too simplistic.
Verdict
This book does not work as a stand-alone novel but if you read and liked the first in the series, you should like this one.
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