Review: The Rope Dancer

I finished reading The Rope Dancer by Roberta Gellis the other day. First I'd like to say that I had no idea that rope dancer was an actual term for tight rope walkers! I thought for sure, based on the title, that she'd be, I dunno, dancing with a rope the way some would dance with a scarf. *shrug* I was all set to say the title was misleading but Victor told me it's not.

So asides from that bit of misunderstanding, I thought it was pretty good. My historical reading doesn't normally go back that far. This was set in the 1100s and reminded me just how much history I don't know. I have another book that I think has a basic overall history of England and it's nearly 1,000 pages (or at least it looks that big), so I might take a look at that and see if it is what I think it is and if I wanna read it. I've already started another book but it's not really holding my interest so I'm not opposed to switching books. I believe there were real people mentioned, if I'm remembering correctly some of these people were in that Princess of Thieves movie or whatever with Keria Knightly. But it's been something like 10 years or so since I last saw that movie.

Anyway. This is that book I mentioned I just got recently about the minstrel and the dancer. A lot of the relationships between characters seems to be built on misunderstandings. For example, he doesn't like it that she's ok with killing people. Well during a short fight she's around the corner and has her rope up and catches this guy on horseback and the rope knocks him off. She runs out to slit his throat only to find he's already dead of a broken neck. Well, the main male character comes over and asks what happened and she's all "I got him with my rope and his neck broke!" Her surprise is that the rope killed him. However, he thinks her surprise is that the guy's dead at all and this makes him love her more. The depth to which misunderstandings contribute to how much they like each other indicates to me that if they sat down for a good long talk about inner feelings they might not like each other as much.

The story was good enough, though. The writing was good. The story is more or less that wars are breaking out and they're just doing their thing, trying to survive, and by chance all meet and go around together, then the main male character (who's name is difficult to decide how to pronounce; Telor) finds his old master's dead and they go to attack the people who did it with the help of this Lord. It's pretty good. And unlike the last romance I tried this one balances story and romance pretty well. I mean there is a story and there is a romance and they're interweaved very nicely. You do see action and its nicely done, though mostly just foreplay is shown (no complaints here).

My current book is one of those mysteries I picked up at the last sale. Ugh, apparently it's part of a series and so far is not holding my interest. It's called Gone. About acting students who get killed. I might try it a little longer or I might look into that England book a little closer. My grasp of England's history is very loose and mainly pieced together from various movies. But as I'm so interested in it I might as well learn it, huh?