OK, I'll admit - my absolute favorite thing about this book is that the real hero is Merlin's pet hedgehog. Oh, there's a human hero, of the usual tall, dark and handsome type, for love interest - but it's the hedgehog who really saves the day. He's a perfectly natural hedgehog, not an anthropomorphized animal - he just does his hedgehogly thing. As the human slave to three pet hedgehogs, I got a great kick out of him.
Let's see. Merlin hasn't invented quite as many things as Ayla (you may remember Ayla, from the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series - Ayla domesticates the horse, Ayla domesticates the dog, Ayla invents the slingshot, Ayla invents the sewing needle, Ayla invents the cotton gin - no wait, that was someone else...) but she has her share - the telephone, and, more importantly to the English forces arrayed against Napoleon, the hang glider.

This is the only romance novel I've ever even tried to convince a guy to read, and the guy liked it. He missed a bit, not being as familiar with all the "conventions" of Regency era romances as most regular readers of them are, but he still enjoyed it.

Very fun story, unique characters and situations. Good depth and detail , both for the characters and the story. My favorite book so far by this author.

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I haven't read this so here's an Amazon.com review:

"bunrab@bunrab.net" (MD, United States):
OK, I'll admit - my absolute favorite thing about this book is that the real hero is Merlin's pet hedgehog. Oh, there's a human hero, of the usual tall, dark and handsome type, for love interest - but it's the hedgehog who really saves the day. He's a perfectly natural hedgehog, not an anthropomorphized animal - he just does his hedgehogly thing. As the human slave to three pet hedgehogs, I got a great kick out of him.

Let's see. Merlin hasn't invented quite as many things as Ayla (you may remember Ayla, from the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series - Ayla domesticates the horse, Ayla domesticates the dog, Ayla invents the slingshot, Ayla invents the sewing needle, Ayla invents the cotton gin - no wait, that was someone else...) but she has her share - the telephone, and, more importantly to the English forces arrayed against Napoleon, the hang glider.

This is the only romance novel I've ever even tried to convince a guy to read, and the guy liked it. He missed a bit, not being as familiar with all the "conventions" of Regency era romances as most regular readers of them are, but he still enjoyed it.

My tastes in romances are pretty particular- I have high standards I demand of the writing, and clumsy or poorly written books turn me off. Kinsale will never fall into that category - she, along with a precious few others - Mary Balough, Edith Layton... writes well enough that if her books weren't pre-stigmatized as romances, they'd be among our better-written novels by contemporary novelists.

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