Irish-set romances are a comparative rarity, and since I continue to search for a convincing mediaeval romance, I choked down my annoyance with yet another objectifying romance cover (and awful Harlequin title) and gave Surrender To An Irish Warrior by new-to-me author Michelle Willingham a chance. By now Willingham has set several stories in twelfth-century Ireland, so I was hopeful that in this latest work her research would have attained a level that spares the reader the most common novice anachronisms.
1180. A Viking raid against the Ó Reilly clan’s home has left their village in ruins and Treharn MacEgan’s betrothed dead. On his way there to find out what happened and hunt down the perpetrators, Treharn is sidetracked by a desperately ill woman who is hiding from the world in an isolated forest shelter.
A victim of the raiders, Morren Ó Reilly’s resulting pregnancy ends in a miscarriage that might have claimed her life, too, if not for Treharn’s ministrations. Only anxiety for the fate of her one remaining family member, a young sister, who has disappeared while out seeking for help for Morren, persuades her to face people again. But even if her sister is found, and the dead are avenged in blood, neither Morren nor Treharn have faith that they will ever be able to rebuild their shattered lives. And then, just as their mutual support evolves into a fragile hint of something deeper, a devastating revelation forces them to once again re-evaluate what it means to belong.
The good news is that Surrender To An Irish Warrior is not a dress-up mediaeval. The better news is that the characters and their interactions are complex, realistic, and appealingly mature, creating a solid, compelling romance even when the clever but unevenly balanced plot peters out into an anti-climactic finale. I hope Michelle Willingham switches to writing single titles one day because I would like to see what she would do with a bigger storyline and a page count that accommodates a more ambitious historical background. If she works on her historical details for a more sharply defined period authenticity, who knows where her career path could lead in the future.
For now, however, Surrender To An Irish Warrior is very much a historical romance as opposed to a romantic historical. As in any romance, the love story is the core and focus of the book, and the category length adds to pushing history to the background both in terms of quantity and depth. What separates the history in Surrender To An Irish Warrior from commonplace historicals is that whatever period flavor is included has not been converted into a theatre stage with modern actors performing in front of historically-themed set paintings. Willingham’s characters form part of a mediaeval landscape, which, while dodgy in some of the specifics, is sincerely conceived, with research efforts integrated in a smooth, unforced way.
By 1180, Normans had taken over as the chief invaders of Ireland, but Willingham chooses to take as her subject the uneasy friendships that centuries of interactions had developed beween Irish tribes and Viking settlers. Placing Morren’s home - a cashel, or ringfort - and a neighbouring Viking longphort in southwestern Ireland, some miles upriver from modern-day Bantry (Surrender To An Irish Warrior, page 53), and the MacEgan's fictional tribal kingdom somewhere in the vicinity of Trim, she shows the effect intermarriage and trade has had on building relationships where formerly only enmity and rivalry existed. One of the key aspects that made Surrender To An Irish Warrior very sympathetic was that both principal and supporting characters reason through problems together and listen to each other, showing how tolerance and understanding can grow wherever ordinary decency and goodwill are allowed to exist.
Refreshingly, scenes which another author might seize on as the perfect excuse for launching the Big Misunderstanding are quietly turned into opportunities for characters to confront their feelings in an open, honest manner. This is particularly the case with Morren, whose pain, vulnerability, and debilitating burden of shame never blind her to the importance of being truthful or admitting her own mistakes. For example, she realises that in trying to keep Jilleen (her sister) safe from danger, she has inadvertently fostered a deep-seated fear in the girl even of their own clanspeople; as a result, she takes steps to correct this despite the hardship it means for herself.
With the imagination of a bard and the hardness of a warrior, the character of Trahern combines thoughtfulness and combativeness. While he shows delicacy in supporting Morren through her plight and is very understanding of her fears about physical closeness, his drive to exact vengeance plays a part in all his actions. As he reminds Morren, he is no saint. While the actual timeline from the couple’s first meeting (early autumn) to their first sexual encounter (shortly before the end of October/Samhain) felt too short to me for true believability, on the actual page the friendship and love between Treharn and Morren develops at a reasonable pace. The absence of mental lusting in the earlier parts of the book (thank you, author!) was as appropriate to their situations as it is unusual in romances.
If there was one thing that disturbed me about the romance between Morren and Trahern, though, it was the relationship of protector and protected. As a rape victim, Morren’s trust in people has been severely damaged and the matter of personal safety is a constant source of anxiety. As someone who has lost the woman he loved to violence, Trahern is ever vigilant about Morren’s wellbeing. Thus, he protects her and she comforts him. Eventually, the constant emphasis on this dynamic seemed to imply it constitutes normal and sufficient reason for a sound love match. I have a problem with that view.
Wounded spirits in all honour, but Morren’s internal reflections about how Trahern is protecting her and making her feel her safe go beyond a matter of needing reassurance. They are relentless, unquestioned, and persist throughout the book. Every time she looks at, thinks about, or interacts with Trahern, she seems to dwell almost exclusively on being kept safe by him. What other qualities she loves or admires about him besides his protective abilities (and storytelling skills) are never really explicitly stated - if they are stated at all. Even Trahern’s storytelling is described as having a protective effect, “weaving a spell around her grief”. When Morren looks at him, she gratefully sees someone who is willing to“lift the world on his shoulders for her.” Throughout the story, Treharn’s attitude encourages her passivity: “Last night, when she’d taken refuge in his arms, he’d wanted to shield her from the world” (page 215). I wish Morren could have been shown to apply (to her own situation) the lesson she learnt from Jilleen's reactions.
In fairness, it is only in this one aspect that I thought Morren’s personality limp. She does of her own accord resolve to face her demons, and repeatedly insists on taking part in seeking out and challenging the guilty. In the final, physical confrontation, she acquits herself capably.
While Willingham’s prose is serviceable it does not avoid some convenient clichés, and this inattention slips the author up, I think, in two cases. Firstly, it is unsettling, in a love story which attempts to deal sensitively with the issue of rape and its destructive consequences, to find the language of conquest and domination that is often so indiscriminately used in romance writing to convey male passion. Deep into the story, although Morren has actively invited Trahern’s kiss, the encounter is described in terms of an exercise of power: “Hungry and heated, he captured her mouth, coaxing her to surrender.” Secondly, Trahern is a bard whose mastery at holding his audience spellbound is commented on several times. It is a little unfortunate that the actual examples given of this supposed skill are noteworthy for their lifelessness.
Apparently, Surrender To An Irish Warrior is the concluding installment in a series about the MacEgans. There is absolutely no need to read the previous books in order to understand what is going on in the last. However, characters from the other books do appear in this one. Although there are acceptable plot reasons to justify their presence, the story does - in common with the typical series family reunion - tread water for a while as the marital bliss of the other couples is being demonstrated. Another instance where the narrative tension slackened came toward the end, when the realism that had set the tone for the story up till then was changed in favor of fairytale rosiness. In my case, it subdued the emotional impact of the ending.
All in all, while Surrender To An Irish Warrior did not bring my search for a satisfying mediaeval historical romance to a conclusion, neither did those of more famous names (Madeline Hunter, Barbara Samuels); moreover, I enjoyed myself too much to be disappointed. Michelle Willingham gave me compelling characters and a poignant love story, and within the confines of a short page count worked hard to integrate these with a realistic setting. If she chooses to continue writing short historicals, I suspect she has every chance of becoming very successful at it. But if she is interested in developing her talents in a slightly different direction, there’s this author named Elizabeth Chadwick whose early career shows how one can learn to combine romance and mediaeval history without sacrificing either...