Giving a Book a Fair Chance

I had decided  that I wasn't going to review any more romance novels since I get very few readers of those posts.  When I finished reading the paranormal romance The Crystal Warrior by New Zealand author Maree Anderson I felt so refreshed that I had to change my plan.  After all, this my blog and I get to write what I want, when I want, and you can choose whether to read or not.

Why did this book change my mind.  I read a lot of books in a wide variety of genres.  My Friday evening is for free reading, works that I don't feel compelled to review; most of them are romances.  This week I started reading The Crystal Warrior.  I had read about fifteen pages, but it wasn't really working for me.  I called it a night.  The next day I felt that I had dismissed the book without giving it a fair chance. As Maree is a Kiwi author and I really have a thing for New Zealand (we'll be travelling there in less than three months, for our third trip), I picked it up the next day and continued reading.  It wasn't very many pages before I was submerged in the lives of Chalcedony, Wulfenite and Pietersite. 

Don't those sound like rock/crystal names.  Exactly, main characters with the name of crystals. Chalcedony, known as Chalcey to her friends, wants nothing more than to open her dance studio.  On her way to a meeting with a potential backer, she is sidetracked into an odd little shop that she had not noticed before.  Pieter, the shopkeeper, asks her to select a crystal from a display.  She feels attracted to one particular stone.  This stone is Wulfenite.

Wulfenite, or rather Wulf, was the leader of a band of warriors that was intent on abducting all the suitable women from the village where Pieter lives.  With no one from the village willing to take a stand against these warriors, Pieter determines he has to take a stand.  Using the most powerful magic he has at his command, he traps the eleven warriors in their namesake crystals and locks them inside until they are released by their true love.  Enter Chalcey into Wulf's story.

I found this story refreshing.  Chalcey wasn't looking for love, she was intent on her business.  She was an accomplished dancer with a dedicated staff and willing clientele.  All she was missing was sufficient financing.  I've read quite a few time travel type romances, and it is always interesting to see how the out-of-time person integrates into the new time.  Wulf handled this well.  He approached it as a warrior would a battle, just a different type of battle.  It was interesting to watch.  I am not a dancer, but I did enjoy the descriptions of the studio and the demonstration dances that Chalcey did with her dance partner.  Almost made me want to sign up for a dance class.

There are currently three books in the Crystal Warrior series.

Chalcedony - from Bernardine Fine Art

Wulfenite - from Minerals Zone  (yellow)


Pietersite - from Shimmerlings Jewelry