Title: Jilliand
Author: Clare Gutierrez
Series: n/a
Lots of heartbreak, lots of passive voice
I would like to thank Clare Gutierrez, River Grove Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I kind of had a minor breakdown while reading this. This is what I wrote at the time:
This was a different kind of romance, and not the kind I like. I’m sorry, I didn’t finish it. My heart couldn’t take it. I managed to crawl past the devastating day Jilliand lost nearly everything, hanging onto hope that Rurik would find her soon. But he didn’t, and when several years passed and he married again and started a new family—while Jilliand was alive, just waiting for him to come to her—I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stopped, literally shaking my head and mumbling, “No. No. No.” I closed the program on my computer in an effort to get the heartbreaking story away from me. Maybe—probably—Jilliand and Rurik will find each other again in the future and still have their HEA, but in my personal opinion of romantic narratives, I consider that too little too late. I’m sure there are people who don’t mind these stories that ask the reader to endure hardship after hardship, but I am not one of them. I stopped reading the Outlander series for the same reason. I don’t mind stakes, I don’t mind dark, but at the end of the day, I still want it to be fiction. I’m looking to escape reality; I want it to be too good to be true.
So those are my thoughts on the romance aspect. I stand by them, though I did walk away, calm down, and come back to skim the rest of the story; I was curious to see how it ended. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be—Rurik’s “new” life wasn’t a very happy or fulfilling one for him, which he deserved—but I’m afraid I’m still not a fan of this book for many reasons.
First, inconsequential nitpicks:
If the lord was determined to make Jilliand look like a boy, he would have cut her hair. Even when he couldn’t deny she was female, he would’ve enjoyed shaming her by keeping her hair hacked off.
“…continued [Jilliand’s] education beyond what most girls not of noble birth would receive.” That’s not saying much; noblewomen weren’t any more educated than lower class women. A select few might have received a small bit of education, the basics, perhaps, but not nearly to the extent boys did.
The king used a fork, but forks weren’t commonly used in England for several hundred years yet. They were popular in Italy and France long before the English stopped being snobby about it.
There are other nitpicks, like lines that didn’t make sense, but we’ll move this along. Second, my problems with the narrative:
This book seemed to go on and on and on, felt as if it were several stories smashed together, and in large part it’s because many of the events and plot threads in this book were random and unconnected. In storytelling, setup and payoff are very, very important, and there’s the rule of three. Everything introduced needs to come back around and have an important role in the end. Quite literally, everything needs to happen for a reason. So like the guy at the beginning who sees Jilliand in the tree and helps her out? Cut it. The friend of the lord who mysteriously appears at the Viking village and gives her a hard time? Pointless. I don’t think he was ever even named. Helgi and the other survivors? Touching, but also a waste of time. Jilliand’s beautiful singing? Disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. Rurik seemed so intent on England, then he just suddenly decides to go the opposite direction, and an entire slew of characters were introduced that didn’t ultimately matter a lick.
In the same vein, there was no central antagonist; it switched to whomever happened to be around–the lord, those dudes chasing after her, the Vikings, Gouldon, Greida, Phillippe, and several others. The narrative followed Jillaind’s journey and the obstacles she came up against, and that’s fine, but if you just glance at antagonists and discard them, the reader isn’t going to care. The protagonist is only as strong as his or her foil. For example, Jamie and Claire in Outlander meet challenge after challenge, but it all comes back to the initial conflicts—she’s a woman out of time, and he’s an outlaw, both haunted—and hunted—by sadist Jack Randall.
But not every thread was left dangling; Jilliand’s secret royal heritage came back around, as did her relationship with Rurik. Gouldon’s backstory came to play, though I have my issues with that. There were recurring themes, such as faith, violence, and survival, as well as love and freedom. I think a much more accurate subtitle would have been: A Story of Faith, Violence, and Survival; those elements were featured more prominently. Jilliand found herself in a state of captivity time and again, and she was also blamed for others’ misfortune when she was the true victim, but she never committed suicide like she often thought she should; so there was some strength to her, though she often seemed annoyingly helpless and ignorant. Whether her ignorance was in character or not is an argument of book smarts versus street smarts.
Yet so much was blatantly contrived for the plot. What made me angriest was Rurik going to fricken Russia. It was so out of left field, and the way it unfolded was so nonsensical. Again, there was no setup, no mention of conflict there, no mention of his interest in the area, nothing to prelude that decision. Why did he take half the village? He told Jilliand—and therefore the audience—nothing about anything. Why, I don’t know. I can only figure he considered himself above being accountable to this woman he declared was his life. We were told he led raids to provide for his people, and I think that was about the only explanation for his actions we were privy to. I’m not even entirely sure why he was partial to Jilliand. And a lot of things he didn’t bother to tell her were things she should have asked about or naturally been told, such as the fact that Olga was his mother, or that he meant to marry Jilliand. Like not mentioning Jilliand’s name in the first chapter, I think Gutierrez was trying to manufacture intrigue, and I didn’t appreciate it. It made Rurik seem self-centered and Jilliand seem pathetically ignorant. And another thing—what the hell was he waiting for? I have no idea why Rurik waited so long to get with Jilliand. There was no reason not to!
Furthermore, it chafes me that Rurik didn’t bother confirming her death and moved on to beget an all-precious son while Jilliand waited and waited and waited for him. She had far more faith in him than he deserved. I’d like to think that if he loved her so completely, he wouldn’t have given up hope that she lived until he had proof of her death, or until he’d looked everywhere, asked everyone, and not found her. Maybe that’s an unrealistic expectation, considering he was responsible for a people and couldn’t afford to do something selfish and time-consuming like that, but at the end he himself said he’d give up a kingdom for her. If that were true, he’d have helped conquer Rus, handed over the reins to someone he trusted, and gone to find her. Also, the two of them had something of a sixth sense in regards to each other’s presence—except, of course, when Rurik was told Jilliand was dead and desperately wanted to believe she wasn’t. When the sense would actually have been useful, it abandoned him.
I don’t understand how Jilliand handled that situation, either. I have no idea what made her think that it would be easier for Rurik to find her in England when she was supposed to be in Denmark, burned village or no. When he killed her father, he himself said she had nothing tying her to England anymore, so why would he think she’d go there? There was nothing for her there—that she knew of. But then, once she was established as the king’s sister and had a bit of weight to throw around, why did she not send messengers to find Rurik? The king wanted the alliance and her happiness, so I can’t imagine he’d have said no. Why was notifying Rurik no one’s priority? Year after year, how could Jilliand have been content to hope he would come for her when she knew he no doubt thought she was dead? See what I mean? Blatantly contrived.
When you find an interesting piece of information while researching, such as that the name you chose for your hero may or may not have been the name of the man who founded Russia, think about whether or not it would serve the plot and the characters, if it would make sense, before you get too excited and decide to manipulate your story to fit in the new information. Tell one story at a time.
Lastly, style:
This read rather like a fairytale, not like modern fiction.
I wasn’t shown this story, it was told to me. An overwhelming portion of it was written in passive voice—linking verbs abounded—and it kept me at arm’s length. That’s a problem. Passive voice is instructional, and indeed there were parts that read like a personable history book. Example: “The community was much like most of those scattered around England in the 800s.” There’s a difference between a narrator and an instructor.
Gutierrez also had an odd way of constructing paragraphs. They tended to be quite long, sometimes the length of an entire page, and in one paragraph she would mash viewpoints together and give dialogue from more than one character. Her sentences were also a bit choppy at times. It came across as messy and could be confusing. Example: “Jilliand was led to the great hall reserved for men. Jilland had never been inside the hall before and hesitated now. The slave opened the door and stood expectantly. Jilliand stepped through the doorway. A quick survey proved Jilliand was the only woman inside, and there were visitors. She stood still, not sure what was expected of her. Greida watched Jilliand walk into the men’s building with jealousy near the erupting point.”
The author also doesn’t seem very skilled in dialogue. It was often stiff and unnatural, and some lines would have been better expressed as thought. Example: “‘What do I do now? I’ve lost my horse and haven’t found people or water. What will happen to me?’ she asked desperately of the growing darkness.” It makes me imagine a self-aware melodrama in which the damsel collapses weakly against something, lays the back of her hand against her forehead, and cries, “Oh, whatever shall I do?”
On top of all that, and building on my comments regarding setup and antagonists, much of the story felt superficial. The only character of consequence was Jilliand—everyone else was a plot device, ranging from useless to shallow; planets revolving around her sun. We didn’t know anything about Rurik except that he was a Viking sea king. How could he speak English so well? What happened to his father? Two or three times we were told that he and Jilliand talked about a range of subjects, but the reader never learned any of it. Gouldon’s purpose was to provide unnecessary conflict. Greida could have been an amazing character who hated Jilliand at first and then became her friend, but no, she was just a jealous hag with no rhyme or reason. Why was she so greedy for power? What was her backstory? We were teased a noble and fascinating backstory for Avila, then watched him accomplish nothing and die. You can’t use and discard characters like tissues. Something needs to matter.
Finally, time. I couldn’t draw up a timeline if I tried. At times it would sound as if weeks had passed, but really it was only a few days. Other times weeks would pass but it seemed like only a few days. Gutierrez would stick with one POV for a length of time, then back up and switch to the other POV and catch up. The timeline should have been straightforward linear—there were no flashbacks or time traveling—but with all the stopping and reversing, it became very disorienting.
Overall, this read like a rough draft of amateur work—but with great potential. I do believe Gutierrez has talent, but she’s not going to find wide acclaim like this. Also, the editor should be fired.
