Third (and last?) in the series, after Lady Robyn. Robyn returns once again to the 15th century, this time accompanied by her ditzy and oversexed assistant Heidi. After various misadventures, including an interlude with Owen Tudor and being at the scene of a town overrun by enemy forces, Robyn is reunited with Edward in London. But she faces a choice--return to the present's safety and good health-care, or face an uncertain life in the past with a potentially unfaithful Edward.

A lot of movement but not much resolution. Doesn't much read like the end of a series. It also continues to be really annoying that she never bothered to look up who Edward really is and how the history came out. ( )

Third (and last?) in the series, after Lady Robyn. Robyn returns once again to the 15th century, this time accompanied by her ditzy and oversexed assistant Heidi. After various misadventures, including an interlude with Owen Tudor and being at the scene of a town overrun by enemy forces, Robyn is reunited with Edward in London. But she faces a choice--return to the present's safety and good health-care, or face an uncertain life in the past with a potentially unfaithful Edward.

A lot of movement but not much resolution. Doesn't much read like the end of a series. It also continues to be really annoying that she never bothered to look up who Edward really is and how the history came out. ( )

This book ends so abruptly that I examined the end papers to make sure that I wasn't missing a one-page chapter. The author doesn't even tie up the loose ends in this volume, let alone the series which I had understood to be projected as a trilogy. I was seriously torn between one star and two.

I suppose that reading this book must be different for people who are familiar with the historical period and people who are not. Edward is presented as a bit more innocent and romantic than I imagine him as actually being, but I'm willing to accept it, he is pretty young. His personality actually gets a bit of retroactive revision in this volume. I kept reading the series because of the suspense of wondering whether the author was going to keep to the established history or finish with an alternative history. Well, it wasn't resolved in this book, and I am not certain that I care enough to read any more. The advice that Robyn receives to name her daughter Grace is a tip-off.

The books have been kind of fun, although not particularly good historical novels. I enjoy the juxtaposition of the two eras and Robyn's reactions. Making her a Miss Montana expert equestrian was a brilliant decision that makes her adventures more believable. The Middle Ages are a bit romantized, even if she doesn't find the era a bit smelly, I'd be longing for running water and flush toilets. Particularly incredible is Robyn's use of laptop computer to keep her diary. Even assuming that it didn't upset the locals, what fabulous batteries she must have! I also find it hard to believe that anyone who is as familiar with Shakespeare as Robyn is (she quotes Henry V's speech just before Agincourt from memory) knows so little about this era. She has apparently completely missed the Henry VI and Richard III plays. The witchcraft/religion angle is a bit problematic as well, although I'm willing to accept it for the sake of the story. It is the source of some wonderful scenes, but I'm having a little trouble with Robyn's sincere, simultaneous adoption of witchcraft and medieval Catholicism. I see the parallels, but it still seems a trifle awkward, especially since both are new to Robyn. If she had been a modern Goddess worshipper, or a really, really ecumenical Christian, it would seem a little more likely.

The writing is extremely varied: sometimes Garcia y Robertson manages extremely vivid characterizations and descriptions, and other times it is pretty lame. Each novel seems to get a little more torrid, which I don't find an improvement: there is a very formulaic quality to a lot of it.

Some people argue that romance is a product of western courtly love conventions, but I believe that it is part of the human condition. The problem is that there are different types of romance and I don't think that Garcia y Robertson has cobbled together the right bits, especially from Edward's point of view. Robyn is neither an Arthurian lily maid nor a scornful courtly love idol that she should inspire Edward to immediately determine on marriage to someone who would be so completely unacceptable by contemporary standards. (Actually, strictly speaking, the courtly love idol was married to someone else, but I think that requirement was often ignored.) I presume that the author hopes that people who know Edward's history will know that he did, as king, make a marriage that created a scandal, but even that was to a woman of an aristocratic background and one who refused to sleep with him.

There is of course, basic chemistry (which I believe is universal), and the solution in that era would have been concubinage, such as the relationship that Edward's great(s)-uncle John of Gaunt enjoyed with Katherine Swynford while he was married to his second wife. Edward never even suggests it, and especially considering Robyn's objections to being Queen and her freewheeling 21st centuries attitudes, it seems like a natural solution. It would be a little more plausible if Edward proposed the arrangement and Robyn was too jealous to accept it.

All in all, I think this is wearing a little thin. ( )