MY LADY`S CRUSADE

After reading thus author's previous work" Green Dragon, White Tiger" I bought everything she had published. I just enjoyed the book that much, it was an epic historical that was well told about an amazing woman (but that's another review) just like this book seemed to be. unfortunately, "My Lady's Crusade" falls into a different category of book altogether. The historical romance novel. I'm not saying this is a "romance" romance novel, with the two characters who hate each other, some sexual tension and on sex scene (which seems to be the formula) because this book has real historical context and content. Lady Eden is the wife of a crusader and is sitting at home waiting the return of her husband, when her overlord Hugo decides to rape her, have her marriage annulled and marry her, thus absorbing her land (and getting her beautiful body.) Being feisty Lady Eden runs off to London to plead her case to Eleanor of Aquitaine who is about to head off with Richard the Lion hearts wife to be Berengaria of Navarre so he can marry on his way to the Holy Land to crusade. Eden is taken in and made a Lady of Berengaria's and heads with them to Jerusalem, with the personal quest of finding her husband Stephen and taking him home. But along the way a handsome crusader Sir Tristan is met who has a mysterious romantic past that means he wants no woman-but the Lady Eden. This is kind of typical historical romance novel. Eden is constantly running off and having to be rescued by Tristan (like once a chapter) but other than that it is very good. The historical descriptions of the crusades are amazing and I learned a lot of factoids (like where the word "assassin" comes from.) What's also amazingly well done is the religious piety of each character. You can really feel it and know that it is correct for the time (being completely fanatical for now) so when someone has a dilemma you really feel their spiritual pain. In the end I was disappointed compared to the author's other book I had read, but had I just read this on its own I think I would have enjoyed it very much. I still have the rest of her works to get through, so we'll see how it all averages out. For this book, three point five stars.