The Witch's Knight - SOON TO BE RELEASED!! - by Paula and Trevor Brackston

 

ARC Review - Scheduled Release Date - April 19, 2022

The Witch's Knight by Paula and Trevor Brackston

“I, Rhiannon, pledge you my allegiance, my dagger hand, my magic, and my life.

You have my oath.”

Do you enjoy stories about witches and knights in armor? You should read this book. Medieval historical fiction? You should read this book. Eternal love? Read this book. Modern suspense thriller? Yep. This book.

The Witch’s Knight, by Paula Brackston and her brother, Trevor, is an exhilarating departure from Paula’s wildly successful Witch’s and Found Things series. This collaborative work adds a thrilling new dimension which Paula’s already dedicated readers will love. (I certainly did!) Trevor’s voice adds a rumbling bass line of suspense and danger in counterpoint to Paula’s soaring sopranos of magic and romance. Dare I say this work is “magical?”

When Gwen’s home in The Black Mountains of Wales is attacked by vicious Norman baron, De Chapelle, in 1094, following William the Conqueror’s invasion of England, she confronts the baron, defending her family and village from further depredation. No match for the villainous Norman, Gwen picks a battle she cannot hope to win. He turns her own knife against her and leaves her for dead.

The few survivors of the attack desperately retreat to a small farming croft high in the mountains and carve out a meager and isolated, yet peaceful, existence. Gwen is nursed back to health and the tiny community – widows, wounded soldiers from her father’s court, orphans – becomes a family. The village grandmother, Mamgi, tutors Gwen in the art of witchcraft, encouraging her to use her abilities to protect the settlement. Gwen protects their crops and livestock from the worst of the weather and lends her skills to healing the sick.

After surviving their first winter tucked away in the Black Valley, the displaced villagers choose a small party to travel to a nearby town for much needed supplies and news. Gwen, now known as Lady Rhiannon, and two of the men track carefully into town, intent on making their trades and leaving as quickly as possible. That plan goes awry when Gwen is recognized by one of de Chappelle’s men. A traveling knight comes to her rescue and is wounded in the melee. One of the men is taken captive while the other narrowly escapes with the supply wagon.

Gwen’s savior is Tudor. While he heals, and as he is slowly accepted by the wary villagers, the two become inseparable. When de Chappelle eventually finds them, Tudor is mortally wounded in defense of the village and Gwen pleads with ancient powers to spare his life. Thus sparking a love which will transcend the limits of time and span centuries.

 

“Tudor watched her go, wondering at the way the world had a habit of spinning like a roulette wheel, snatching you onto familiar numbers at the most unexpected of times.”

 

In modern day London, Rhys Tudor is an ex-military private security contractor responsible for the safety of a nineteen year-old rich kid. When his employers purchase a posh flat in The Aurora, an extremely exclusive building, for their son, Tudor is diligent about protecting his charge. Not long after moving his ward into his new digs, a series of grisly murders take place, annihilating two entire families in the building. Suddenly, Tudor and his daughter, Emily are swept up in a terrifying whirlwind of Slavic gangsters, fighting off assailants and dodging bullets. Despite his connections with the Metropolitan Police, Tudor is unsuccessful at ferreting out the reason why he or his daughter would be targets for the mafia-like Begovich family. His quest for clues and the safety of his daughter, leads him to strange and unusual ends where coincidences and happenings are unnerving, even for a hardened soldier like Tudor.

Told as two seemingly separate stories, through two seemingly unrelated timelines, The Witch’s Knight weaves together disparate characters and incongruous eras in a beautiful dance to the final page when the two worlds eventually, finally, collide. The Brackstons hurtle their readers through time and space, never letting up on the throttle, until the last gasp, quite literally the last four paragraphs of the book. My only complaint with this work is purely selfish. I need Book Two (and Three!) to be ready for consumption. I need to know more!

From Yellow Fever to March Madness and Everything in Between

 Madness, by Mike DeLucia, was an immensely satisfying surprise. I haven't enjoyed baskedball this much since before I was kicked off the team in Junior High for popping off at the mouth. At any rate, Madness shines a well-deserved spotlight on the man who single-handedly changed the shape and speed of basketball as we know it. Now virtually unknown, Hank Liusetti overcame obstacles and heartbreak on his journey to revolutionize the sport which gave rise to greats like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson. This self-published, creative non-fiction novel had me racing up and down the court alongside Hank and his teammates from page one. With basketball season currently in full swing, I highly recommend picking this one up. Better yet, grab a second copy and gift it to the budding basketball fanatic in your life. They'll thank you for it and you'll have something to talk about when March Madness is over.

Apparently, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson spurred some middle schools to have "Yellow Fever Days" after it was published in 2011? While I can't speak to that from personal experience, I can see the value in bringing history to life for the YA crowd. I readily admit, I didn't realize Fever was a YA book until after I was invested in the narrative. And by invested, I was hooked. Our young heroine, Mattie, struggles beneath the restrictions of her overprotective mother and seeks shelter in the indulgence of her grandfather as they work to keep the family coffee house afloat in post-colonial Philadelphia. Mattie's journey to independence and discovery of her own personal strength starts when she learns of the untimely death of a friend, Polly. It isn't long before the Yellow Fever is running rampant through the streets of the city, leaving Mattie and her family to make difficult decisions about survival. Worth the read for any American History middle grade students you might know. 
 
I am a long time subscriber to Sean Dietrich's daily essay emails. You might know him as "Sean of the South"? While I was living in Utah, his short stories provided a taste of home and a bit of red clay under my feet. I assumed he made his living as a public speaker and was a bit embarrassed to discover he'd written not one but seven books! Stars of Alabama falls right into my comfortable wheelhouse of southern historical fiction. In the inimitable style of generations of southern story-tellers, Dietrich braids three seemingly unrelated tales, and a wide-ranging cast of characters, into a grand and beautiful coiffure any church lady would be proud to wear to church on Sunday mornings. Set firmly in the years between the Great Depression and the Korean War, Stars is a love story to the families we lose and the families we choose with a generous nod to redemption and grace. Heart-warming is the epitaph I'd put on the marker for Stars of Alabama. 

While searching for comp titles to use for my own work-in-progress, I stumbled upon Family Law by Gin Phillips. In the early 1980's, Lucia Gilbert is an attractive, petite attorney in Montgomery, AL, carving out a space for herself in a traditionally male dominated industry. She fights for the rights of the women and children she represents through divorce and custody proceedings. Though she has no children of her own, she becomes an unlikely mother-figure to Rachel, a teenager and child of divorce. Lucia's advocacy for women settles her and Rachel firmly in the cross-hairs of objectors. Phillips gives us a beautiful story threaded with social commentary. My one and only complaint is the abrupt and unsatisfying ending. I'm not sure, perhaps the ending itself is a sort of uncomfortable commentary on it's own. So, if you choose to add this one to your TBR list, consider yourself warned there's no happily-ever-after, or even a happy-for-now.