Review: Raintree: Sanctuary by Beverly Barton

Posted July 7, 2007 by Holly in Reviews | 9 Comments

Review: Raintree: Sanctuary by Beverly BartonReviewer: Holly
Raintree: Sanctuary by Beverly Barton
Series: Raintree #3
Also in this series: Raintree: Inferno
Publisher: Silhouette
Publication Date: July 1st 2007
Genres: Fiction, Fantasy
Pages: 288
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three-stars
Series Rating: three-stars

War with their archrival, the evil Ansara clan, is unavoidable. For Mercy Raintree, a war means she must assume her position as guardian of the Sanctuary—the sacred Raintree home place deep in the Smoky Mountains. But doing so threatens to disclose her most prized secret—one Mercy has kept to herself for six years.

As the solstice looms and the battle heats up, Dranir Judah Ansara gathers his forces, intending to wipe every Raintree from the face of the land. Including Mercy, whom he's claimed as his to kill. Then he comes face-to-face with her—and with her daughter, Eve. Will Mercy's closely guarded secret change not only the outcome of the battle—but also Judah's own bitter heart?

This is the third and final chapter of the three author Raintree Trilogy and my first ever read by Beverly Barton. I’d say she did a fairly credible job of wrapping the series up.

I tried writing a summary of this book, but it just came out jumbled and confused sounding, so I’m going to take the lazy way out and link Casee’s review of it instead. Go check out her summary and then come back and read my thoughts. 🙂 (Thanks Casee!)

Alright, here we go:

The action was good. I really enjoyed the final battle between the Ansara and the Raintree, and learning more about the Ansara, whom were were led to believe were evil from the previous two books, was enlightening.

I thought the characters were interesting, but I found some of their actions to be highly annoying. Judah has vowed to kill Mercy. Even after he finds out they have a daughter together, he still plans to kill her when the time is right. He especially wants her dead so he can take his daughter home with him. While I understood his reasons – and Mercy’s for wanting to kill him – I think Barton took it a bit too far. I would say at least once a page (when we were reading from Judah’s POV) it was mentioned he was going to kill her.

It was the same for Mercy. She loved him, she hated him. She wanted him, she vowed to kill him. As a mother, I can understand her need to protect her daughter, no matter what the cost. But she waffled back and forth so much I wanted to scream!

I also had a major issue with a certain scene in the book. I think I’m going to go ahead and spoil it, so beware.

Spoilers Ahead

View Spoiler »

Eve was an interesting character. She acted extremely grown up for a six year old, which I know bothered Casee. But since my own child is extremely bright (I’m not just saying that, I swear) I didn’t think Eve’s behavior was odd. Especially since she was very powerful and seemed to have talents no other Raintree or Ansara possessed. As the story progressed and we found out more about her and what her role would be with both clans, I found myself on the fence about her, however. We’re told she was born to save her Father’s people, which seemed like a rather large responsibility for a child to have to carry. I don’t think Mercy or Judah spent enough time worrying about the toll it would take on Eve. As a mother that would have been my first concern, but it wasn’t ever mentioned. I found that rather frustrating.

I was also highly annoyed with Lorna and Hope, the heroines from the previous two novels. Towards the end of this book, Lorna decides to chase after Dante (who left her rather abruptly at the end of Inferno). I can understand this to a point. Lorna was rather powerful herself, even if she hadn’t learned to harness or control her powers yet. And the way Dante left would leave me, if I were in Lorna’s position, ready to chase after him as well.

Anyway, she takes Dante’s address book and calls Gideon (the hero from the second novel, which I never reviewed). Only he isn’t home and a woman answers for him. Lorna has no knowledge of who this woman is, but without asking any questions tells her “I’m coming to get you. We have to help our men. I’ll be there in 6 hours.” Hope says, “Ok, I’ll be waiting” and that was that.

This bothers me on several levels. One, Lorna knew secrecy was a major thing for the Raintree in general and Dante and Gideon in particular. A strange woman answers the phone and you go, “Hey. Wanna go save my man with me?” I don’t think so. But whatever, that’s not even the part that bothered me the most. What really irked me was that Gideon begged Hope to stay home, because he needed all his energy focused on the coming battle and didn’t want to have to worry about her. She’s completely mortal with no powers at all, so it made perfect sense. But in true TSTL fashion, she rushed after him, certain she could “save” him. WTF? Who does that?!?! Ugh. Then, naturally, she almost gets him killed, because she rushes right into the middle of a battle. See, shit like that pisses me off.

Deep breath Moving on now…

Despite my issues with it (and now that I’ve typed this out I see they were numerous) I still enjoyed it. My moments of annoyance were brief (with the exception of that part I spoiled..I’m still salty over that) and I was able to get past them. I think Barton wrapped the trilogy up nicely and really tied up all the loose ends left by LH and LWJ.

I would recommend the trilogy, but don’t go into it thinking this is going to be AMAZING, because IMO, it wasn’t. But it was good.

3 out of 5

The series is at follows:

Raintree: Inferno by Linda Howard
Raintree: Haunted by Linda Winstead Jones
Raintree: Sanctuary by Beverly Barton

three-stars


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9 responses to “Review: Raintree: Sanctuary by Beverly Barton

  1. Y

    wow i didn’t realize this book was coming out already. i have only read the first one. looks like i have some catching up to do *grin*

  2. Anonymous

    I hated this series. Howard set up a wonderful world with interesting characters, then left it hanging on. The second story had the most annoying heroine I’ve read in a while and left the previous plot hanging on too. Then the third book was completely maddening for the same reasons you previously stated. Since I am a masochist, I read them all because once I start a series I NEED to finish it. But this series is a dissapointing wallbanger. It never got any better – in fact, with each book it got worse.

  3. Y,
    You’ll have to let me know what you think when you do finish the last two books.

    Anon,
    I agree with you somewhat. I was annoyed with parts of all three, but I didn’t completely hate them. Still, they certainly weren’t the best things ever written and I was VERY disappointed in the endings of the first two. Ugh.

  4. I so don’t know what to think about this series… i haven’t read it yet and only have the first book by LH… I’m still debating, with all the reviews out there, whether to read it or not… the problem is those are HQN Nocturne and so I should hurry and buy the books if I want to read it ^^;

  5. So I haven’t been too intrigued by this series until this one. Not sure why, maybe I’m in a secret baby mood.

    Can I read it without the others?

  6. Nath,
    Sometimes you like stuff I don’t, so you might enjoy them more than I did. You should try them out. 🙂

    Dev,
    I’m not a series slut at all. I don’t usually care if I read books in order or not. But, I think you need to read all three in the correct order. You’d miss way too much back story about the Raintree/Ansara if you skipped the first two.

  7. Okay.. I’m glad I checked this out… I haven’t read the entire thing.. but I’m still curious enough to want to finish the series. I read the first one and thought it was meh. Not bad but not great either. I’ll let ya know what I think of the other two.

  8. Hmm, interesting.
    The storyline sounds good.
    I feel the same way as you about that first sex scene. It would be hard for me to read on after that.

  9. The Raintree series was a great idea but I also think that it fell short of what it could have been. I’ve read the first two in the series but passed on this one. I suspected that it would be like you have described and I don’t really enjoy books where the H/h are enemies.

    Inferno (book 1) had me pissed off at the hero for being a total bastard for about 3/4 of the book and then that ending!! OMG! I HATE cliff-hangers!

    I liked Haunted better but the whole pregnant thing was bizzarre.

    I agree with you that the series was good but not great. With the amount of hype surrounding the trilogy you would expect it to be fabulous but it’s just not. I wonder if they’ll try another series together?

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