The Enchantment

Rating:
Summary: It Started Off Well....
Review: Conor MacCloud returned from the Crusades a bitter and slightly broken man. Most of his fellow clansmen were dead and the small band that was left had barely escaped the vile dungeons of the East. Conor wanted nothing more than to return home and try to let his native Scotland heal his wounds. But Conor was not destined to have peace for quite some time. Conor returned home to his beloved Inverness, Scotland, but he returned to find his mad Uncle Simon ruling as laird of the area. Conor and his small band valiantly tried to take the castle from him, but failed. Conor had refused to take the witch Magdah's advice, but he swore to his dying kinsman that he would seek out the Peacemaker. Little did he know that the ring's magic would hurl him into modern-day Seattle where Eilan Dougan would be waiting...

Eilan was an empath and could feel what people were thinking when she touched them, but she wasn't comfortable using this power and preferred to avoid intimacy. Eilan had done her best to hide from mankind by living in a sparsely populated area of Colorado, but she agreed to return home to Seattle to run her parents' antique shop while they were on vacation. When a wild man wearing a bloody kilt suddenly appeared in the shop waving his sword and calling for the Peacemaker, Eilan was terrified and immediately called the police. Conor realized that he had frightened Eilan and tried to make her listen to him, but it was too late, Conor was carted off to jail.

Eilan instantly regretted sending Conor off with the police and knew that she needed to talk to Conor and to try and see what he wanted. Before she knew it, she had gotten Conor out of jail and was stuck with him. She spent some time introducing Conor to the wide variety of food available and the convenience of showers, but Conor chafed at the delay. He was all too aware of time passing for his people while he delayed in this wonderland. Conor knew that Eilan had to come with him willingly, but he began to despair that she would never agree...

This book started off really well and I enjoyed getting to know Conor and Eilan while they explored Seattle. This part of the book was well developed and nicely paced, but when Eilan finally agreed to return to Conor's time, the author just rushed through the past and it turned out to be only about 1/3 of the book. Eilan resisted using her powers and had no idea how to use them, but she was just suddenly able to dive in and solve everyone's problems within a few weeks of her arrival. I wish the author had spent some more time writing the latter part of the book because this could have been a wonderful story, but it just ended way too abruptly and I did not enjoy the part in Scotland. If you can find this book on sale or borrow it from your library, it is worth reading, but it is still a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: It Started Off Well....
Review: Conor MacCloud returned from the Crusades a bitter and slightly broken man. Most of his fellow clansmen were dead and the small band that was left had barely escaped the vile dungeons of the East. Conor wanted nothing more than to return home and try to let his native Scotland heal his wounds. But Conor was not destined to have peace for quite some time. Conor returned home to his beloved Inverness, Scotland, but he returned to find his mad Uncle Simon ruling as laird of the area. Conor and his small band valiantly tried to take the castle from him, but failed. Conor had refused to take the witch Magdah's advice, but he swore to his dying kinsman that he would seek out the Peacemaker. Little did he know that the ring's magic would hurl him into modern-day Seattle where Eilan Dougan would be waiting...

Eilan was an empath and could feel what people were thinking when she touched them, but she wasn't comfortable using this power and preferred to avoid intimacy. Eilan had done her best to hide from mankind by living in a sparsely populated area of Colorado, but she agreed to return home to Seattle to run her parents' antique shop while they were on vacation. When a wild man wearing a bloody kilt suddenly appeared in the shop waving his sword and calling for the Peacemaker, Eilan was terrified and immediately called the police. Conor realized that he had frightened Eilan and tried to make her listen to him, but it was too late, Conor was carted off to jail.

Eilan instantly regretted sending Conor off with the police and knew that she needed to talk to Conor and to try and see what he wanted. Before she knew it, she had gotten Conor out of jail and was stuck with him. She spent some time introducing Conor to the wide variety of food available and the convenience of showers, but Conor chafed at the delay. He was all too aware of time passing for his people while he delayed in this wonderland. Conor knew that Eilan had to come with him willingly, but he began to despair that she would never agree...

This book started off really well and I enjoyed getting to know Conor and Eilan while they explored Seattle. This part of the book was well developed and nicely paced, but when Eilan finally agreed to return to Conor's time, the author just rushed through the past and it turned out to be only about 1/3 of the book. Eilan resisted using her powers and had no idea how to use them, but she was just suddenly able to dive in and solve everyone's problems within a few weeks of her arrival. I wish the author had spent some more time writing the latter part of the book because this could have been a wonderful story, but it just ended way too abruptly and I did not enjoy the part in Scotland. If you can find this book on sale or borrow it from your library, it is worth reading, but it is still a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting and thought-provoking plot.
Review: Eilan Dougan has a gift. She can read people's thoughts. She sees the gift as a curse because she often sees what she
doesn't want to see and frightens people with her knowledge. She
also has headaches... and has been told by a doctor that she has
a tumor and will die. Eilan goes to Seattle to mind her parents'
antique shop while they are away, and one day, a bloody
highlander in a kilt appears in the shop amid the chiming of
every clock in the store. He is big and intimidating and

armed... and asks her if she is the Peacemaker. This was her
nickname in college, and she is so frightened by the combination
of events that she sends this man to jail. But when she
goes home that night, she researches the existence of a
Peacemaker legend in her mother's extensive library. When she
finds one in a book of Scottish legends, she goes to a lawyer and
gets Conor released. While he explores the wonders of 21st
century life (like football and pizza) she grapples with his

demand that she go back to his time with him. After much
thought, she accedes. He gives her a ring similar to the one he
used to go back in time, and on the full moon, they go back to
the 14th century.
Conor McCloud and his brother went on crusade nearly a
decade before. When they came back, they found their father and
sister dead and their home held by the bloodthirsty Simon
McCloud. Though this is long before the Inquisition, witches are
still greatly feared, and Simon has burned several women that he
declares witches. Now Eilan is back in this world, falling in
love with Conor, and working on her mission of peace. The witch
Magdah has told Eilan that if she does not use her power, she
will eventually die, but if she uses her power, the pain will
go away, and her hair will turn white. Her head no longer pains
her, and her hair is whiter by the day, as she uses her
abilities.

Rating:
Summary: Had SO much potential....
Review: I tried really hard to like this book. The first couple of chapters were really promising, but then the author suddenly lost track of where she was going. Stilted broken part-way descriptive sentences. No serious romance going on. I really didn't care if they ended up together. I suggest Karen Marie Moning for really great time travel romance, or for the serious time travel enthusiast - Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Both authors have never written a dud. This was definitely a dud, no offense intended to the author of course. It just didn't happen.

Rating:
Summary: Had SO much potential....
Review: I tried really hard to like this book. The first couple of chapters were really promising, but then the author suddenly lost track of where she was going. Stilted broken part-way descriptive sentences. No serious romance going on. I really didn't care if they ended up together. I suggest Karen Marie Moning for really great time travel romance, or for the serious time travel enthusiast - Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Both authors have never written a dud. This was definitely a dud, no offense intended to the author of course. It just didn't happen.

Rating:
Summary: not what it could have been
Review: I was very excited about this book when I read the back cover. Unfortunately the book doesn't live up to its potential. I liked the main plot but the author didn't spend much time describing the characters, the scenery. She left you hanging. The romantic scenes left me cold. I wish she had taken the time to really develope this story. I would pass on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Time travel and magic and anachronism
Review: When a kilted scotsman drops into her antique shop with crazy words about the 'peacemaker,' Eilan Dougan does what any woman would do--calls the cops. But she can't keep her mind off the handsome scotsman--or forget that she has long been nicknamed peacemaker. When he promises to take her back in time and to cure the inoperable tumor that is slowly killing her, Eilan agrees to the venture--mad though it may seem.

Conor McCloud has returned from a crusade only to find that his uncle has usurped his castle and is conducting a literal witch hunt. Although Conor has fought against magics of all kinds, he promises a dying friend that he'll seek out the peacemaker and bring peace to his land. He doesn't count on falling in love with a witch, but that is exactly what happens. Back in the 14th century, the two must find a way to bring love where hate is now dominant.

Author Pam Binder combines time travel with a Scotland/Medieval historical to deliver the classic alpha male to his centuries-separated true love. Readers will want to overlook several huge anachronisms (exactly how many crusades was Conor returning from, where was Turkey during the 14th century if Conor spent time there when the Byzantines still ruled much of Anatolia, and how is Conor so familiar with new world foods) but may find it harder to accept Binder's decision to hide most of the peacemaking from the reader. For me, at least, the huge problems that required magic beyond time seemed suddenly to vanish.

Rating:
Summary: A spellbinding magical romance
Review: While Conor MacCloud and his brother Rowan fought in the Crusades, their Uncle Simon seized their land and castle in Inverness, Scotland. When Conor returns from his escapades in the Mediterranean, including a stay in an Egyptian prison, he fights to regain that which is rightfully his, but his noble army loses to Simon's superior forces. The healer Magdah persuades Conor to find the Peacekeeper. He agrees and she chants in a strange language that sends him in search of a legend.

To his shock and bewilderment, Conor finds himself in twenty-first century Seattle. He persuades Eilan Dougan, an empath, that she is the Peacekeeper and his people need her on a quest through time and space. Though some welcome her in fourteenth century Scotland as a savior, others demand her death as a witch. Eilan's only hope to survive this strange world is her guide, Conor, a man she now loves with all her heart. He reciprocates her feelings and just wants to keep her safe rather than subject her to danger as called by her mission.

Pam Binder writes a spellbinding magical romance that combines elements from a time travel tale with that of the paranormal and the historical into an entertaining reading experience. The story line of THE ENCHANTMENT is action-packed and filled with romance and danger. Conor is a hero, but the tale belongs to Eilan even if she adapts to easily to a much less technological era. Ms. Binder is an enchantress whose tales inscribe a taste of magic that will send her audience in a quest to read all her novels.

Harriet Klausner