Loki's Daughters

LOKI'S DAUGHTERS is an absolutely captivating historical romance. It is set in the 9th century in a land called Cumbria, and filled with desperate Celtic warrior women, murderous, vile Vikings, and (though it may seem a contradiction in words) brave, honorable Norsemen. The story opens with Arienh, the female protagonist, traveling to a hill to count ancient stones which serve as a calendar of sorts for her village. On her way, she encounters a fearsome Norseman whom she believes to be a Viking. She hates Vikings because her village has suffered greatly at their hands. All of the men in her village, except one old man, have been either brutally killed or captured as slaves by the savage race. Moreover, her sister, Birgit, was raped, impregnated, and struck on the head by a savage Viking during one to their pillaging raids, causing her to slowly go blind. For all of these reasons, Arienh hated all Vikings, except one - the one Viking boy who saved her life ten years ago during a raid by hiding her from the other savage ones. All of the other Vikings she had ever met had always sought to kill and destroy all her village ever had. She instantly recalls how they killed her father, brother, uncle, cousin and how they captured her other brother to sell into slavery. She is determined to prevent this Viking, upon whom she has suddenly stumbled, from harming anyone else in her village. Arienh knows that she must warn her village by sounding the alarm. She attempts to flee, but the man has already seen her and chases her, trying to stop her flight. He catches her hair and pulls her into his arms. In the ensuing struggle, she stabs him in his gut with her knife. Shock runs through both the man and Arienh. She watches him fall to the ground, blood spilling all around him, and knows that she has killed him. What she doesn't know, however, is that he is not a Viking warrior but Ronan, the boy who had saved her life ten years ago, all grown up, and there to claim her as his wife. I don't want to give the story away, so I will just say that the author of this book, Dell Jacobs' has succeeded in producing 360 pages of absolute delight filled with passion and pain, courage and fear, despair and hope, and at its core, a ten-year, long distance love affair that would not be defeated and would not die but would insist on flourishing in the hearts of its captors for all eternity. Ms. Jacobs' characters are extremely well developed and her plot is refreshing. It unfolds beautifully and keeps one turning the pages, hoping for the happy ending one craves. I must admit that the abrupt ending surprised me, for I had to look back on the preceding page to make sure I didn't skip a page. However, I loved this historical romance so much that I read it again, to quench my appetite for more.