Evensong [Paperback]

...It was the heroine, Aline, who ruined the story. She started out great: feisty, independent, a dancer in a traveling troupe of entertainers, who is convinced to impersonate a well-born lady by a deceitful Duke who wishes to harm his enemy; the hero, James. (The book takes place in 1161, during the reign of Henry II.)

Aline has her own reasons for disliking James. He drunkenly attempts to molest her during one of her performances, and after she escapes from him she's afraid he'll find her and take revenge on the troupe. Also, not for nothing, the Duke promised to give Aline's father & mother employment and protection. So she decides to go ahead with the impersonation.

But once Aline begins to impersonate Clarissa, the Duke's niece and James's fiancee, she suddenly loses all her charm. She really adopts the persona of a fine, dull, wellborn lady, and she's not the fiesty independent dancer anymore.

And after Aline falls in love with James -- I thought it was really time for her to tell him about the masquerade. I lost all respect for her when she consummated their marriage without telling James the truth. Because James is illegimate, he needed a marriage with a highborn lady to give him legitimacy and power. Aline knew this, and yet she let the marriage go forward under a lie. I thought it was bad choice on the author's part not to let her confess to James much sooner than she does, and frankly Aline's actions sort of spoiled the whole love story for me. What kind of person professes to love someone, and then acts so selfishly that they don't protect the one they love from the injury caused by serious lies?

The book IS well written, particularly the first part when Aline is just Aline. The characters from Aline's dancing troupe, and her parents, add color and variety, and the plot is really lively when the Duke convinces her to impersonate Clarissa. I like Aline for her guts, and for wanting to even the score with James, who really did put a scare into her with his physical attack and his verbal threats.

But Aline's character truly weakens when she gets into the impersonation of Clarissa. The book kind of sinks into a does-HE-love-me/does-SHE-love-me?, ho-hum saga. Again, I was annoyed and disturbed by Aline's failure to confess to James soon enough, and this lack of honesty seriously flaws this story.

This book is a sequel to Ms. Camp's novel THE BLACK EARL, written in 1982. THE BLACK EARL need not be read first in order to follow EVENSONG's story, but it helps. Oddly, James is actually a more interesting, twisty, tormented-by-his-birth character in THE BLACK EARL than he is here. In EVENSONG James is much more like a re-write of his brother, Richard, the hero from THE BLACK EARL: obsessive/lusting-loving with his woman just like Richard was with his lady in THE BLACK EARL. With this story, James rather lost the allure he had for me. In EVENSONG he's still an interesting hero, but he's not as original a character as he was in the earlier book.

Just barely three stars (sigh). The cover art is superb though, I give that five stars.

This is the first romance novel I have ever read and it was nothing like I thought. I loved the plott, it kept me interested though out the book. I kept wondering when Aline would finaly fess up and the whole cat and mouse game that was played though out it was quite funny. I truely enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to reading more by Camp

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars