Title: Chivalrous (Valiant Hearts #2)
Author: Dina L. Sleiman
Publication date: Sept 8, 2015
Rating: 2/5 stars
Synopsis:
Rating: 2/5 stars
Synopsis:
Strong and adventurous
Gwendolyn Barnes longs to be a knight like her chivalrous brothers.
However, that is not an option for her, not even in the
Arthurian-inspired Eden where she dwells. Her parents view her only as a
marriage pawn, and her domineering father is determined to see her wed
to a brutish man who will break her spirit.
When handsome, good-hearted Allen of Ellsworth arrives in Edendale searching for his place in the world, Gwendolyn spies in him the sort of fellow she could imagine marrying. Yet fate seems determined to keep them apart. Tournaments, intrigue, and battles--along with twists and turns aplenty--await these two as they struggle to find love, identity, and their true destinies.
When handsome, good-hearted Allen of Ellsworth arrives in Edendale searching for his place in the world, Gwendolyn spies in him the sort of fellow she could imagine marrying. Yet fate seems determined to keep them apart. Tournaments, intrigue, and battles--along with twists and turns aplenty--await these two as they struggle to find love, identity, and their true destinies.
My thoughts:
Chivalrous by Dina L. Sleiman was the first Christian fiction novel I read and I won’t want to start another one in the foreseeable future. I was raised a Roman Catholic and – although I have a complicated relationship with God – I do believe in Him. I pray every day and I often see His work where others see coincidences. BUT I do not have the mindset that was represented in this novel, I couldn’t and, frankly, didn’t want to make it mine.
It’s okay if someone feels God’s presence and it brings
him/her peace. It’s okay if a person silently recognizes that He leads him and
he often thinks of Him. But to have God involved in every single thought of
yours and not voice a sentence without His name... it’s called obsession in my
dictionary. Even for a medieval setting the religious reasoning was too much.
And I was surprised when suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit me because the story
didn’t start out badly.
I enjoyed the beginning, right until the point Allen
became a member of the council. This is how it went: on one page he was a
religious, but reasonable guy, on the next he was a bigoted fellow who found
fault after fault in the girl he fell in love with, a fellow who kept on
worrying that God might not like that he desires a lady of ’ill behaviour’.
Examples for the ’faults’:
„If she was capable of
fighting in a tournament as a man, what other troublesome deception might this
enticing woman be prone to?”
or
„But perhaps this was God’s
way of saving him from a woman who did not share his devotion.”
In other words: wanting to be yourself and not being
blindly religious were unacceptable traits (or lack of traits) for our knight
in shining armour.
In Gwen’s place I would have wanted to be saved from
Sir Allen and his strange way of thinking… Fortunately by the end Sir Allen began
to understand and accept Gwen the way she was (the fact that she started to
feel closer to God helped a bit), but I still would have hooked up with Randel…
So all in all God was pushed onto the reader
especially through Allen’s character and it resulted in serious eye-rolling
from my part from time to time, it basically ruined the book for me.
I gave Chivalrous
two stars only because it would have been a decent, entertaining tale without
putting that much emphasis on religion.
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