I really did it this time. I fell in love with a Viking romance hero who gets seasick.
We lovers of romance novels may be odd ducks. I’ll admit, if pressed, I just might be among the oddest of odd ducks. Perhaps I proved it when I happily devoured Maureen Castell’s second novel, The Viking’s Shadow Lady, and fell in love all over again with a new romantic hero.
Nothing strange or odd-duckish about that in itself. It happens a handful of times a week, whenever I happily devour a great new romance novel. This time, though, the hero’s main claim to romantic heroism is that odd thing I just mentioned.
Second in series
The Viking’s Shadow Lady is Book 2 of Castell’s Vikings in the Bronze Age series.
It features Beren Torsson, a Viking who gets seasick.
Maybe I need to explain how that makes him the perfect romantic hero. Bear with me on that score.
We met him first as a child in Castell’s debut novel, The Viking Who Fell Through Time. Go get it if you haven’t already read it. You’ll be very glad you did. It’s a galloping read full of people you’ll love getting to know. It also has the kind of tidbits that make you happily tell yourself, “I didn’t know that!”
Beren was born a prince somewhere in what we know as the Middle East. The parents of his heart, as he so charmingly refers to the people who adopted him, abided by his birth mother’s wishes and kept him far from that war-torn land.
He’s as much of a warrior as they come, is our Beren. Mind you, he also uses the biggest muscle of them all in a fight — his brain. He’s also an inventor and a scholar and a brilliant engineer who can work even with a device ripped out of another time.
Another world
The device he took charge of gives his people a small portal they can use to trade wonders with the inhabitants of still other places and times. That brain of his, though, didn’t let him leave well enough alone. He figured out how to make the portal big enough for people to go through.
As Shadow Lady opens, Lady Elizabeth is sailing from her British homeland to the New World with her husband and infant son. They are attacked by pirates just as Beren’s device materializes above their deck. The pirates slaughter Elizabeth’s husband and most of the other travelers. She’s seriously wounded herself.
She wakes up with her baby, alive but far away from anything resembling home, thanks to Beren’s portal.
I love the community Castell has imagined in this book and her first. The villagers have their problems, of course. Bears and raiders, to name just two. But the villagers seem color-blind in the best sense of the word, and they truly care for one another.
They care, too, for the wounded woman who survives only because of the magic medicine Beren traded for on a previous mission with his device.
That’s a pretty heroic thing, hmm? On the face of it, probably more heroic than getting seasick. But we’re getting to that.
Her hero
At first, Lady Elizabeth has no idea she has been thrown thousands of years into the past, and thousands of miles into another land. She knows only that she owes it to her son to take him home to the family, rank, and privilege awaiting him there.
Here’s where we find out that Beren is a pretty normal guy as well as a hero. If he can avoid a fuss, he will.
He, along with his family and friends, delay trying to tell her that what she wants is not possible. Almost all the village’s warriors have gone a-viking, so there’s no one to take her anywhere anyway.
While they wait for the warriors and the community’s longship to return, Beren and Elizabeth fall in like, and then they fall in love. Of course they do. He’s a great guy and a great lover. He’s a responsible adult and even interested — very interested — in her for more than the children she can bear for him. That’s more than you can say for the husband who had been arranged for her.
After a long winter, a voyage is possible again. Beren and the others try to tell her the truth, that her home, her son’s home, doesn’t exist. It won’t for centuries. She doesn’t believe them. The only way to convince her is to take her there.
So, what does our Beren do? He shows what only the strongest of men dares reveal. His frailty. He knows she’ll need him when she sees the land where her home doesn’t yet exist, when she can hide from the truth no longer. So, he joins the crew that takes her there.
Yup, the Viking who’s prone to seasickness gets on a longship. He parades his weakness in front of Elizabeth and his community, to prove the unthinkable to his lady love.
Okay, I’m poking some gentle fun at this, but if I have to be serious about it, I call his actions more heroic than slaying a whole slew of dragons.
Mind you, there is more to The Viking’s Shadow Lady than Beren. Maureen Castell has a simple, flowing style that keeps the pages turning and lets all the characters and the story shine through.
You’ll crack a lot of smiles as you’re reading the tale of Beren and Elizabeth. You’ll think about some serious things too. And you’ll have a great time.