TITLE: Navajo Red
AUTHOR: Paula Eldridge
PUBLISHER: Whiskey Creek Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 63k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.99
Irish lass Nora O’Sullivan is a mail order bride, traveling from Boston to her new husband in Santa Fe, when her wagon train is attacked. She survives with the help of a Navajo named Kee, who is on his way back to his tribe after a three-year absence to marry his childhood friend. Taking another survivor – a young boy named Jamie – they set out across the West, where they face any number of adversities. Kidnapping, sexual assault, run-ins with other tribes…they all conspire to keep Nora from reaching her destination. The only trouble is…neither one of them really wants her to go.
I’ll admit, I don’t read a lot of historicals. Some time periods just don’t interest me, or I find that authors either give too much detail so that the story turns into a history lesson instead of a story, or not enough so that the time period or new place means nothing. I picked up this book because I do like Westerns, and especially stories with Native Americans as the heroes. I was a little iffy when I was reading the excerpt, but I thought, “What the hell, let’s try it anyway.”
I probably should have listened to that iffy. The author’s style relies a lot on talking heads who relay information in really a not very interesting way. Action scenes lack the necessary detail and pacing to make them truly exciting, and exposition gets lost in a lot of telling not showing. By halfway through, I was bored silly, which frankly, shouldn’t have happened with as much as the author tried to put into the story.
Therein lies the second large issue with the book. As long as they’re written well, I’m all right with clichéd circumstances within stories. There aren’t that many original ideas out there anyway. A good author, however, can make just about anything work. But if a writer just isn’t that good, the clichés end up painted in neon orange, glaring out at the reader. Some people don’t mind that. I’m not one of them. Nora is subjugated to the stereotypical rape scene, forced into prostitution, and a host of other typical Western plot devices that had me wishing for the ending long before the ending was in sight. Add in modern terminology or knowledge scattered throughout the book, and the poor thing never really had a chance.
Poor Kee’s characterization doesn’t fare well, either. The author has made Kee a bit of an outsider to Navajo culture by having him been kidnapped three years earlier and sold into slavery. He’s spent the past three years as a shiphand, which is where he learned his perfect English. And I do mean perfect. In three years, supposedly. The only times I remembered Kee was Navajo was when either he or Nora was making an issue of the difference in their cultures. Kind of defeats the purpose of having one, doesn’t it?
Can I recommend this book? No, not really. It’s not that there’s anything horribly wrong with it – at least I wasn’t catching weird typos every other page. It’s just that there isn’t much that’s right.
AUTHOR: Paula Eldridge
PUBLISHER: Whiskey Creek Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 63k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.99
Irish lass Nora O’Sullivan is a mail order bride, traveling from Boston to her new husband in Santa Fe, when her wagon train is attacked. She survives with the help of a Navajo named Kee, who is on his way back to his tribe after a three-year absence to marry his childhood friend. Taking another survivor – a young boy named Jamie – they set out across the West, where they face any number of adversities. Kidnapping, sexual assault, run-ins with other tribes…they all conspire to keep Nora from reaching her destination. The only trouble is…neither one of them really wants her to go.
I’ll admit, I don’t read a lot of historicals. Some time periods just don’t interest me, or I find that authors either give too much detail so that the story turns into a history lesson instead of a story, or not enough so that the time period or new place means nothing. I picked up this book because I do like Westerns, and especially stories with Native Americans as the heroes. I was a little iffy when I was reading the excerpt, but I thought, “What the hell, let’s try it anyway.”
I probably should have listened to that iffy. The author’s style relies a lot on talking heads who relay information in really a not very interesting way. Action scenes lack the necessary detail and pacing to make them truly exciting, and exposition gets lost in a lot of telling not showing. By halfway through, I was bored silly, which frankly, shouldn’t have happened with as much as the author tried to put into the story.
Therein lies the second large issue with the book. As long as they’re written well, I’m all right with clichéd circumstances within stories. There aren’t that many original ideas out there anyway. A good author, however, can make just about anything work. But if a writer just isn’t that good, the clichés end up painted in neon orange, glaring out at the reader. Some people don’t mind that. I’m not one of them. Nora is subjugated to the stereotypical rape scene, forced into prostitution, and a host of other typical Western plot devices that had me wishing for the ending long before the ending was in sight. Add in modern terminology or knowledge scattered throughout the book, and the poor thing never really had a chance.
Poor Kee’s characterization doesn’t fare well, either. The author has made Kee a bit of an outsider to Navajo culture by having him been kidnapped three years earlier and sold into slavery. He’s spent the past three years as a shiphand, which is where he learned his perfect English. And I do mean perfect. In three years, supposedly. The only times I remembered Kee was Navajo was when either he or Nora was making an issue of the difference in their cultures. Kind of defeats the purpose of having one, doesn’t it?
Can I recommend this book? No, not really. It’s not that there’s anything horribly wrong with it – at least I wasn’t catching weird typos every other page. It’s just that there isn’t much that’s right.
Readability | 4/10 – Too much telling and not enough showing makes this very skimmable |
| Heroine | 5/10 – Cliched and annoying |
| Hero | 5/10 – I like Native American heroes, but too many elements of this one didn’t ring true for me. |
| Entertainment value | 3/10 – By halfway through, I just wanted it over. |
| World building | 5/10 – Hit and miss on detail, some parts were real and believable, others were reliant on reader knowledge |
| TOTAL: | 22/50 |
No comments:
Post a Comment