Lord of Shadows

May 23, 2011
Choosing a Frankenstein's monster as
a romantic hero is a gamble that doesn't really pay off in Rickloff's second Heirs of Kilronan paranormal Regency (after 2010's Earl of Darkness). Lady Sabrina Douglas has been hidden by a magical Irish sisterhood for the seven years since her father was murdered and her family torn apart. When an enormous, scarred man washes ashore, Sabrina heals him with magic and quickly becomes engrossed in his intense eyes and air of mystery. Daigh, as the abbess dubs him, has lost his memory, but he and Sabrina are afflicted by shared flashbacks of past lives. The plot is well woven, but Rickloff's hiccupping style of relentless sentence fragmentation ("A hand came around her shoulder. Corded. Scarred. The tip of one finger missing. Closed the book on a sigh of fluttering pages") jars the reader like a bumpy road.