When I first heard about Zoe Archer’s Blades of the Rose series, I figured it probably wasn’t for me. When it comes to my romances, especially in a historical setting, I tend to prefer them “straight”—that is, with the focus solidly on the hero and heroine’s internal conflicts with relatively little external plot to sustain the narrative tension. I certainly do not want my historical romances mucked up with paranormal elements, thank you very much, and thus, I figured Ms. Archer’s books would be a pass for me. But then someone said, “It’s like Indiana Jones, only with all the naughty bits left in.” Aha! Well, in that case…

Going into Warrior, the first in this four-book series, with that information at hand, I had built a solid set of expectations, and I’m delighted to say that none of those expectations were disappointed. I knew the book would be heavy on action, adventure, and external, magic-driven plot, but I was okay with that because I wasn’t anticipating otherwise. And on those terms, Warrior delivered in every possible way.

The story begins with Captain Gabriel Huntley, newly-resigned from the army, arriving on English soil for the first time in fifteen years with the rather vague, unsatisfying idea of settling down as a merchant and a husband. He’s clearly not enthusiastic about this plan, however, and when he encounters a man being brutally attacked in an alleyway, he rushes to the fellow’s aid. Unfortunately, he is too late to save the man, but when the dying man gives him an incomprehensible message and a compass to deliver to one Franklin Burgess in outer Mongolia, along with the mysterious phrase, “North is eternal,” and his traveling papers, Gabriel readily does just that. Having a “mission” is considerably more appealing to him than anything England has to offer.

Thalia Burgess has spent most of her life in Mongolia, and when she learns an Englishman has arrived and is inquiring after her father, she is immediately suspicious and worried. She immediately presumes that the “Heirs,” Englishmen who seek the “Sources” protected by the “Blades”, are coming to harm her father, who has recently been injured. (If you have no idea what Sources or Blades are, don’t worry; you don’t really have any idea at this point in the book, either, but it doesn’t matter. You know they’re important, that the Blades are the good guys, and the Heirs are the bad guys, and that’s really all you need to know at this point. The rest you learn as Gabriel does, which was, I thought, an effective storytelling technique.)

Of course, it turns out that Gabriel has no ill intent, and Thalia and her father quickly realize the message he has brought from their comrade presages a threat to the Source that lies in Mongolia. But Franklin Burgess is in no condition to undertake a mission to protect the Source, and so he defers that task to his daughter, who takes with her the family’s long-time and loyal Mongolian servant, Batu. Gabriel offers to assist, but is firmly refused. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from tagging along and, fairly quickly, revealing his usefulness when Thalia and Batu are ambushed by the villainous Heirs. After that incident, Thalia and Batu pretty much have no choice but to accept his assistance.

What follows is a romp across the steppes of Outer Mongolia in search of a magical object which, if not kept out of the hands of the bad guys, will result in the enslavement of the Mongolian people and possibly the world as a whole. This is all great fun, from the magical storm that first convinces Gabriel of the existence of magic to the puzzling out of the riddle of the Source’s whereabouts. I loved that throughout the story, Thalia and Gabriel each take turns being “the hero,” in the sense that each contributes equally to the solution when they encounter an obstacle. The attraction between them is also immediate, palpable, and well-rendered, and I have to say that Ms. Archer knows her way both around sexual tension and its release.

All of this said, I can’t quite call Warrior a perfect book. For me, the romantic tension wasn’t sustained long enough and neither the hero nor the heroine has to traverse a particularly large character arc in order to achieve their happily ever after. This sucked a bit of the excitement/thrill out of the climactic battle scenes for me, because I didn’t feel the characters would have any problems to resolve once they’d defeated the bad guys.

I was also a little annoyed by the fact that two of three villains want to rape the heroine. What is it about romance novel villains that seems to require that they want to commit sexual violence against the heroine? Is it supposed to demonstrate her desirability not just to the hero, but to other men as well? Because if that’s the intention, it doesn’t work for me. Rape is simply not about desire—at least not that kind of desire. The problem is, I can’t come up with any other reason for this trope to keep repeating itself, over and over again, in romance novels.

Those quibbles aside, however, I really enjoyed Warrior and am impatiently awaiting the three remaining books in the series. Two of the three heroes of the successive books are introduced in Warrior, and I particularly look forward to Scoundrel (October’s release) which features libertine Bennett Day as the hero and the daughter of one of the evil Heirs as the heroine. I’m guessing they’ll have a pretty nice character arc to traverse to get to their HEA. ~ Nonny