Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning

More than these individual problems, however, was the overall “kitchen sink” aspect to the book.

And, even though Moning wrote this section well, Adrienne’s “understanding” why Hawk “seels” her (puts a hood over her head) seemed unacceptable to this modern woman. While handled sensually and with a fair amount of poignance, I recalled a similar plot-device in Elizabeth Lowell’s Untamed. Then there was the lengthy episode in which Hawk attempts to tame Adrienne as one would a wild falcon.

I haven’t read a passage where the hero’s manhood is compared to that of a stallion in many a year, and in this book I read it three times. Unfortunately, by the time I was finished, all that was good paled in comparison to the over-wrought and melodramatic writing. What’s not to love about a medieval set in the Highlands of Scotland, especially when mysticism and gypsies are added to the mix? Initially, the conflict, the humor, and the setting all seem to work. The jester hears Adrienne swear off love, decides she’s the perfect woman to carry out his Queen’s revenge, and takes her back in time to become the Hawk’s betrothed.Īdrienne’s confusion over having travelled in time, her instant attraction to and therefore suspicion and loathing of the Hawk, and his fate to love her set Beyond the Highland Mist up to be a good read. Eberhart was using her to smuggle, and when she found out the truth and tried to leave him, things turned nasty. Our evil jester discovers Adrienne de Simone some 500 years in the future, after her life has been ruined by the handsome Eberhart Darrow Garrett, the man she had planned to marry. How better to destroy the Hawk, who is known throughout the land as “the King’s whore” (he is such a good lover that women petition the King to order Hawk to bed them), than to compel him to fall in love with a woman who refuses to love again, especially a handsome man like the Hawk? The Queen of Fairy has gotten a bee in her bonnet about Sidheach James Lyon Douglas, third Earl of Dalkeith, and her evil jester is ready to exact revenge on her behalf.

All in all, instead of a delicately brewed cup of tea, debuting author Karen Marie Moning serves up a overly-strong stew made up of every item in her writer’s pantry.

Beyond the Highland Mist could have been a good read, but instead is mired by too many torturous episodes, plot devices used by other authors in better books, and is also filled with enough purple prose to color the evening sky to indigo.

Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning