A Daring Sacrifice

When was the last time I read a book in a day? Going to grab the third in the series (ARC) set to publish in early 2017. Easily to say Zondervan (young adult) and Jody Helund are entertaining me![bc:Noble Knights 35511039 Noble Knights (An Uncertain Choice 0.5-3) Jody Hedlund https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498356338l/35511039.SY75.jpg 56921457]

Other reviewers said it's better than book 1 and it is...but not enough for me to think it's more than “okay.” In this one religion is almost completely absent, so at least it's not portraying that wrongly except for the near-absence of it. There is no fantasy to it, except perhaps in some manners and customs that belong in the wrong historical era. Wessex is a real place and 1390 is a real time in England's history.

There's nothing in this one that marks it as Christian fiction at all; they pray once or twice and attend a chapel service, but that's all. “Blessed Mary” is repeatedly used as an expression of shock or dismay.

Whereas the romance in book 1 was mostly chaste, this one departs from that to repeated feelings of heat, tingles, seeing her in a nightgown, seeing him injured without a shirt and feeling attracted while he's bleeding, etc etc. It's heavily physically done and then at the end one of the reading questions is cheeky enough to say something to the effect of “she lusts for him when she sees him shirtless...what does this mean about the importance of modesty?” Uh...gag? (I will never understand how it's okay to get all hot and bothered about someone's abs when they are laying there in pain and bleeding.)

The torture is less described from the first book, but it still has inaccuracies from the time period in the way they are applied. The biggest of these is a guy who's breaking the law and who decides to give his opponent an execution which is extremely public and is done to publicly humiliate them. He gives the sentence without bringing the noble before a peer review of other nobles to gain a legal conviction. As soon as this gets out, he's going to be facing his own peer review for it. The only way to avoid it is a private execution and hiding of the body because the trial itself was illegal and baseless. Not to mention that being hung, drawn, and quartered was specifically meant for traitors and enemies of the realm.

Another thing is an individual who is very hurt (dragged by a horse through town on a cobble street, hanged halfway) next grabs two swords and takes part in a free-for-all fight...uh, what? So now he's basically Ironman without the suit or what?

....so maybe it's fantasy because no way would all this happen in the real-world setting it claims??