Guest Review: The Viking’s Captive by Sandra Hill

Posted August 28, 2012 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 3 Comments

Publisher: Avon, Harper Collins

Judith’s review of The Viking’s Captive (Viking I series #6) by Sandra Hill.

Tyra, Warrior Princess

She is too tall, too loud, too fierce to be a good catch. But her ailing father has decreed that her four younger sisters cannot be wed ’til Tyra consents to take a husband. Alas, with no suitors begging for her hand, it looks as if the sisters will all remain virgins.

Then a journey to save her father’s life brings Tyra face to face with Adam the Healer. A god in human form, he’s tall, muscled, perfectly proportioned. Here is the physician who could cure her father, and the lover who could finally seduce her to his bed furs.

Too bad Adam refuses to fall in with her plans. Holy Runes! What’s a lady to do but truss him up, toss him over her shoulder, and sail off into the sunset to live happily ever after.

One of Western Europe’s most extended and intense struggles for power was between the Saxons and the Vikings, both invaders in the land known then as Britain. For a time the entire northern portion of Britain was under the rule of the Vikings while the Saxons ruled the southern portion of the country. So it was not out of the expected for Viking and Saxon to come into close contact, sometimes in a very sharp adversarial encounter while others were more congenial. In this story, however, Adam the Healer, a brilliant physician who readers first met as an abandoned young boy trying to survive with his younger sister on the unfriendly streets of Jorvik and who was eventually adopted by Selik and Rain Jordan as their son. Now he is grown and has traveled the world in search of medical knowledge and has achieved quite a reputation as one whose knowledge and skill is known far and wide, all the way to the Northlands. When faced with the demand to come and treat her dying father by Tyra the Viking Warrior Princess, Adam refuses but underestimates his adversary, waking up on Tyra’s longship, well on his way to her Norse home.

This story continues the tale of a young kid who had absolutely nothing going for him in book 2 of this series, whose petty crimes were only for the purpose of survival after the death of his parents and to care for his younger sister. Yet now he is a grown and educated man, living a productive life in his own right, and a testimony to the power of care and love. Yet his heart is broken at the death of his sister, and when Tyra finds him, he has been on a two-year emotional fast, having withdrawn from relationships, life, public life, refusing to see patients, denying any future with his chosen profession. It is a story of a man who not only needs to awaken to the world around him, who needs to get back in touch with the passion of his profession, but also recognize the needs that dwell within himself, no matter how dormant they may have lain for two years. It is an important story, filled with laughter and loving, with the clash of cultures that was so much a signature of the Western European development of the 10th century, and the journey of one man to come alive once again. It is also a poignant look at a woman who is powerful in her own right but who has suffered inwardly from a very wounded self-image and whose re-birth as a beautiful, sexy, and powerful woman became possible with the authentic loving of a kind and compassionate man.

This is the sixth book in a wonderful historical series that I just couldn’t put down, that I just had to plow through from book to book, to follow the stories of these gritty and realistic characters, no matter if they are transported back a thousand years or are people that live their lives through the pages of several novels. It is another treat for Sandra Hill readers, but it is also a treat for any lover of historical romance fiction with the delightful and deeply emotional love stories that are at the core of these books. This, like those before it, is a stand alone novel. But reading them in sequence makes them even more fun. First published in 2002, it has now been reviewed and somewhat re-written and re-released by Avon. It’s worth reading, by all means, if it is new to you. If you read the book 10 years ago, have another go. It is just that good.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5

The Series:
Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book has been re-released by Avon Book in January, 2011. You can buy it here or here in e-format.


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3 responses to “Guest Review: The Viking’s Captive by Sandra Hill

  1. All of Sandra hill’s books are amazing. She is just one of those authors where you can guarantee when you pick up the book–you will be laughing. I just wish she could out more books faster! LOL

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