The Errand Rider

by Linda Ash

Feeling unappreciated at home, Gwyn embarks on a routine errand which quickly becomes anything but. As war brews and Gwyn is drawn into the middle of it, she finds that her survival suddenly relies on her abilities – which may also prove key to saving the life of a young prince, and the entire realm.

Genres: Fiction

244 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2016

About the author

I live in Ohio with my husband, one dog, and a varying number of cats. My two children are in college.

I've always been a bit of a dreamer and my imagination is often in overdrive. Let's just say that I don't have to dig too deep to find my inner child.

Adventures are always fun, and I've had a few, but now my knees have ground to a halt, and my feet are rebellious. So my adventures are fewer, and more tame. They often involve a book, either reading or writing one. A good book can make you feel like you've just climbed a snow-clad mountain, or sprinted a desert path under the burning sun, or swum in the deep ocean alongside a whale. It feels like you're the one having the adventure. So if I'm typing away at the computer or if I'm snuggled up with a book and don't look up when you call, it's because I'm busy - off on an adventure. Try again later.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I truly did. The premise is excellent, and the main character is sympathetic and likable enough, but the storytelling suffers from way too much telling instead of showing and every character, except Gwyn, was one-dimensional, undeveloped, and experienced absolutely no growth or development. Gwyn, thankfully, wasn't as flat and featureless as that, but she wasn't much better, coming off as two-dimensional, not much thought given to her characteristics beyond, "Okay, so she's going to be 'x', 'y', and 'z'", and anything resembling change or character growth seemed so pat and cut-and-dried, I couldn't take it seriously.

On the subject of "couldn't take it seriously", the big adventure that makes up most of the novel left me facepalm'ing over the number of ways it seemed two of the people who wouldn't want it to go down the toilet were setting it up to do exactly that: make up a team of five people who have never met before, don't know each other's loyalties, backgrounds, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, skills, and give them no time to get to know each other, learn what the plan is, or work with each other before deploying; leave town in two carriages and travel in those carriages for several days, stopping each night at inns to rest; the commander never discussing, at any time, the plan for rescuing the prince with the rest of the team and they never, at any time, have practice sessions or work together; the team is never told to keep their mouths shut about the mission when around non-team members, and it never occurs to the team they should. There's also the many, many nights Gwyn and teammate were escorting the Prince back to safety, both sleeping the entire night. This is while there's a war on with the Scandians, who gave the team trouble on the way up to where the Prince was being hidden in the mountains, and who Gwyn and Finn had a narrow escape from with the Prince. They don't know for sure if they're being followed. Gwyn knows personally they'll attack at night (it happened to her earlier in the book). So, instead of erring on the side of caution, Finn and she choose to do the equivalent of hanging out a big neon sign that reads 'Scandians Please Attack Us!', and both crash out for the night.

The romance had all the thrill of flat soda, because we're not shown any signs of growing attraction between Gwyn and Designated Love Interest. We have to take the omnicient, omnipresent narrator's word for it. Yeah, okay, whatever. *shrugs* I'd find it easier to buy it if Mr. Love Interest didn't have all the appeal of a faceless cardboard cutout.

[Dave Haigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good mix of tradition and sci fi/fantasy. Pleasant story with a couple of unexpected twists. I would certainly read the authors other books given a chance.