I never read books with trashy, bodice-ripping covers, but
I happened across Karyn Monk's previous novel, "The Rebel and the Redcoat", while stranded in an airport, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not only can she contruct a breathless, gripping plot, and create rounded complex characters, but also her grasp of historical details is more profound than that of many historians. Being an historian myself, I would recommend her novels above many textbooks. The new novel,however -- which I bought expecting to disappointed -- is not just better than the previous one, it is infinitely better, and it deserves to be issued in a more dignified hardback edition -- because it belongs alongside the very best historical fiction ever written. This is a major writer. Set in medieval Scotland, "Once A Warrior" paints the most vividly accurate picture of a wild and turbulent place and time, peopling it with characters so utterly believable they live on in ones heart and mind long after the novel ends, and threading everything together with what must be one of the Great love stories in every sense: intricately constructed, heartbreakingly beautiful, enormously touching, yet also aflame with passionate eroticism, and -- very rare in this genre -- real, knee-slapping humor. Many times I laughed out loud; many times too I was also moved to tears by Ms Monk's deep, compassionate understanding of the human soul. I thoroughly endorse this novel, because I cannot imagine anyone who reads not finding it among the best books they've ever had the privilege and good fortune of coming across. If there were more such writers -- ones who entertain as much as they instruct, who inspire as often as they entrall -- no one would watch television. I thank Ms Monk from the bottom of my heart for this rare masterpiece of -- yes -- literaure. In my books she ranks alongside Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Victor Hugo and George Eliot -- and still has something to teach these past masters about the mysteries of the heart and the exigencies of thorough research.