Review: The Warslayer by Rosemary Edghill

[miko]

If you like fish-out-of-water stories and also Xena, you will probably get a kick out of The Warslayer by Rosemary Edghill. The main character, Glory, is the lead actress of a Xena-esque show who is approached by a trio of wizards who want her character, Vixen, to save their people. Although she explains and they're disappointed but accept that she can't help, she is still magically transported back to their world with them. What follows is a not terribly unique story, but fun none-the-less.

I liked Glory as a character, and I thought the writing was very pleasant. The worldbuilding is a bit silly, unsurprisingly, but explicably since there's supposed to be magic guiding it and similarities to the campy TV shows. I very much enjoyed the first three quarters of the book, only to be confused when there was the sudden implication of a budding romance that I hadn't noticed at all. It doesn't go anywhere and feels quite out of place, to my mind, although I'll admit that I didn't read this all concurrently so I may have missed things in picking it up and putting it down a few times.

The book is available as a free eBook from the publisher here: http://www.baenebooks.com/p-458-the-warslayer.aspx