Single White Knight by Brynn Paulin

[reviews_and_ramblings]

The book starts in a quite sad way but soon turns in a romantic comedy. Alwyn, “Wyn”, is a XVI century English knight, but he is now without name and family, his own disowned him when he was accused to be a sodomite. It’s not clear how they found out, Wyn’s only lover, Tobias, was killed 8 year before and Wyn has never forgotten him. But now Wyn is fated to the same end, to be tortured by an enraged mob who wants to kill the deviant man. When he is almost there to loose his life, an angel appears to help him: he has the chance to follow her to an unknown destiny. Wyn is not so happy to choose the easy way out, he would probably prefer to die in battle, but something pushes him to accept the offer.

Wyn finds himself in the XXI century in the same room with a man who is too much alike Tobias to not being him; he has also almost the same name, Toby, and he knows Wyn’s language, ancient English. Wyn is sure that he is his squire, his lover, his Tobias, and indeed Toby dreamed of Wyn, but he was convinced that they were only dreams, that he was a very imaginative kid. Toby has always loved the Middle Ages and its culture, especial the English one, and now he realizes that maybe there was a reason for that.

There are two main plot in the story, one it’s Wyn’s trouble to adapt to the modern time. The author indeed started in a good way, putting various obstacles on Wyn’s path, above all the language barrier: often in a time travel novel, the differences in language are not considered; English is not the same through the ages, and if you shift a man of 800 years, what he speaks it’s not what he will listen, even if he is always in an English language country. And then, even if he finds someone like Toby who is able to speak the same language, there are words that didn’t exist, words that are very much common in our age, like “office”. Anyway, the author is aware of that, and she introduces the obstacle, but then she has also probably had to bend to the length needs, and so she chose a highway solution for her heroes.

The second theme is the comparison of the prejudices through the ages. In the XIV century, Wyn and Tobias were not able to love each other, and indeed both of them lost their life for that. In the XXI century, apparently they should have more freedom, but Toby seems reticent to the idea of being in the open; he always finds an excuse, his job, the little town, everything to prevent them to be free to claim their love. There are indeed some obstacles, but Toby’s reticence has deeper roots. When he will be free from it, then he will understand that is not impossible for them to be happy now.

To conclude, this is a book that, for different reason, could have been very heavy on the angst side, but the author chose to take a more light insight on the story, she played a lot with the knight in shining armour stuff, and the approach she had on the story is more comedy than drama.

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=558

Amazon Kindle: Single White Knight
Publisher: Total-E-Bound Publishing (September 14, 2009)

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Comments

[edenwinters.livejournal.com]

This sounds absolutely lovely! My TBR pile grows yet again.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

It's a nice time travel, right dose of drama and comedy.