http://www.patricia-ryan.com/The Sun and the Moon is the sequel to Silken Threads, and it is another good book, just not as good as Silken Threads. Something else for all of you Hitchcock lovers - about halfway through this book it started to sound familiar... a woman with a bad reputation is asked to spy on someone... she goes to the castle... she must get in the cellar... something is going on in the cellar... she must get the keys... she must seduce the bad guy, even though she loves the good guy. Sound familiar? Think "Notorious." Yes, The Sun and the Moon was inspired by Hitchcock's "Notorious." Not one of my favorite Hitchcock movies and that turned out to be a problem for me.
I didn't like the way Phillipa is used by the men in this book. I didn't like the way Ingrid Bergman was used in "Notorious" and I still didn't like it in this book. However, Phillipa and Hugh are both very strong characters and it was nice to be in the medieval time period again. Patricia Ryan is very good at setting up the feel of that time period, except for the over use of contemporary language. That jolted me out of the narrative and this time I wasn't able to forgive as much as I was with Silken Threads. One word especially - spy - kept irritating me. Every time I saw that word in this tale it just kept getting bigger and bigger till it consumed the whole page. Now, I tried to do some research on that word, because it just sounded so James Bond-age. I did find that it may be from the mid 13th century Frankish word espier or maybe spehon, and that the term spy-glass was around in 1706, so the use of it in this book may be correct; however, it's one of those words that I think authors should have care when using. Because, whether right or wrong, it threw me out of the story and I spent the time doing research on the stupid word instead of reading the story!
By the way, even though I'd read the book before, I'd forgotten who the real villain was... and I never saw it coming.
Anyway, if you do read Silken Threads (it behooves you to do so), you should read this one also. Just be prepared. It isn't quite as good as Silken Threads. AND, I still wish Patricia Ryan was writing historicals.
Time/Place: Medieval England
Rating:
Sensuality Rating: Almost Hot
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