*Editorial Book Review*
The King’s Champion
Boar King’s Honor Trilogy, Book #3
by Nancy Northcott
Publication Date: May 1st, 2023
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Pages: 378
Genre: Historical Fantasy with romantic elements
The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy:
A wizard’s misplaced trust
A king wrongly blamed
A bloodline cursed until they clear the king’s name.
Book 3: The King’s Champion
Caught up in the desperate evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in the summer of 1940, photojournalist Kate Shaw witnesses death and destruction that trigger disturbing visions. She doesn’t believe in magic and tries to pass them off as survivor guilt or an overactive imagination, but the increasingly intense visions force her to accept that she is not only magically Gifted but a seer.
In Dover, she meets her distant cousin Sebastian Mainwaring, Earl of Hawkstowe and an officer in the British Army. He’s also a seer and is desperate to recruit her rare Gift for the war effort. The fall of France leaves Britain standing alone as the full weight of Nazi military might threatens. Kate’s untrained Gift flares out of control, forcing her to accept Sebastian’s help in conquering it as her ethics compel her to use her ability for the cause that is right.
As this fledgling wizard comes into her own, her visions warn of an impending German invasion, Operation Sealion, which British intelligence confirms. At the same time, desire to help Sebastian, who’s doomed by a family curse arising from a centuries-old murder, leads Kate to a shadowy afterworld between life and death and the trapped, fading souls who are the roots of her family’s story. From the bloody battlefields of France to the salons of London, Kate and Sebastian race against time to free his family’s cursed souls and to stop an invasion that could doom the Allied cause.
The King’s Champion concludes Nancy’s Northcott’s exciting Boar King’s Honor Trilogy.
“There’s a wizard headed for the beach at Dunkirk. When she returns to England, you must speak with her.”
Dealing with a wizard is the last thing Major Sebastian Mainwaring wants as he focuses on ensuring Operation Dynamo’s success. The fate of Britain rests on the successful return of the soldiers from Dunkirk. The wizard was not high on his list of priorities.
Kate Shaw, a journalist from Consolidated News Union, found herself more involved with the army personnel than she anticipated. Though her boss wanted photographs, Kate couldn’t bear to just capture the last moments of the dying men around her. She wanted to help. Nevertheless, whenever she made contact with a person, she glimpsed a part of their life beyond the here and now, where there was no sound of gunfire and no death. Her imagination was simply fanciful, nothing more. She was distressed and frightened. But how did she know which way to dive to avoid the incoming shell? And how did she stop a man from bleeding to death simply by wishing it so?
Kate did not believe in magic. She always had an overactive imagination. But when she met Sebastian, she could no longer hide from the truth. She had a gift. She needed to learn how to use this gift, and she needed to learn quickly. The fate of Britain might well depend on it…
The King’s Champion (The Boar King's Honor Book 3) by Nancy Northcott, like the previous two books in this series, sent tingles down my spine. The blend of well-researched history along with the magical elements made this novel an absolute joy to read from start to finish. It is the kind of book that once started is near on impossible to turn away from — one more page became one more chapter. I was completely enthralled with this story, from that very first sentence to the final full stop. The crystalline prose and the vivacious storytelling that I have come to expect from Northcott’s writing were evident throughout this novel.
The opening of this book really threw me into the story. Kate is desperately trying to stay alive while still trying to carry out her journalism activities. Kate was a character that I instantly connected with. She is courageous, a little stubborn, and yet compassionate. As a character, she develops beautifully during this story. She does suffer terribly at the beginning of this novel because of her magical abilities and her inability to control her seer visions — Kate is bombarded with harrowing scenes of the future, but with the help of Sebastian’s unfailing support, she manages to keep hold of her sanity and to see her magic as a gift that could help the war effort as well as the man she is falling in love with.
I simply adored Sebastian. He is a wounded soldier who can only watch from the sidelines. Despite still having an important role in the army, he wishes he could fight alongside his men. Sebastian struggles with his disability throughout this novel, although he tries to stay positive for the most part, there are moments when he finds situations intolerable. Sebastian is a character that I really came to care about as this story progressed. He is unfailingly kind, but he also has a warrior’s heart. He is a true patriot. But there is more than a war he has to face. He has a responsibility to lift the curse and therefore allow his kin to find peace for their souls.
There are several ghosts in this story, some of which we met in the previous two novels when they were alive. As in life, I thought Miranda and Richard were marvellously depicted. Miranda recognises something of herself in Kate, and she is determined to help Kate in any way she can. I thought her depiction was simply marvellous.
The historical backdrop of this novel was utterly captivating. Not only was it historically accurate, and for that reason it is sometimes distressful in detail, but I also loved the way the author had connected the historical truth with the paranormal world. The story opens at Dunkirk, with an army running for its life. I thought the depiction of Dunkirk was written with a strong sense of realism. I could almost taste the fear as our brave heroine, and the men she had been sent to photograph, desperately try to avoid the Messerschmitt automatic weapons and the terror of the Stuka bombers. In the chaos, things that happen to Kate could be put down to luck, but the reader gets the sense that there is more to Kate than being an incredibly brave journalist who wants to prove that her sex did not make for a lesser story. She was as good a journalist, if not better, than many of her male counterparts, and she certainly had the courage to be a war correspondent. But the reader is given the sense that there is something more to this brave young woman than meets the eye. Was it really just luck? I think that Northcott deals with the history of this time with sensitivity as well as a dash of realism that is almost tangible.
The paranormal side of the story really drove this story along. I loved the concept of the curse and how the ancestral ghosts of Sebastian are trapped between this world and the other. The ghosts often interact with the protagonists, and they can offer advice and help, but they can never rest in peace. The curse of the Mainwaring family, which has been at the forefront of this series, comes to a dramatic conclusion in this novel, but not before considerable loss. Northcott presents her readers with a very believable ghostly world, and it was one I enjoyed reading about.
The relationship between Kate and Sebastian truly pulled at my heartstrings. There are passionate encounters in this novel, but I thought the gentle romance, and their battling of desires for each other, set within a backdrop of war and betrayal made their relationship very real in the telling. It was as if two old souls had been reunited. It is a realisation that they always knew where their relationship would go, even when war and family loyalties threatened to pull them apart.
Although this is book three of The Boar King’s Honor series it does stand very firmly on its own two feet, so it can be read as a standalone. However, you would be missing a trick if you did not read the other two books in the series. The Boar King’s Honor is a series that I cannot recommend enough. It has everything I want from a historically accurate, fantasy novel.
I Highly Recommend.
Review by Mary Anne Yarde
The Coffee Pot Book Club
The title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Nancy Northcott
Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman. Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, history, and romance.
Nancy earned her undergraduate degree in history and particularly enjoyed a summer spent studying Tudor and Stuart England at the University of Oxford. She has given presentations on the Wars of the Roses and Richard III to university classes studying Shakespeare’s play about that king. In addition, she has taught college courses on science fiction, fantasy, and society.
The Boar King’s Honor historical fantasy trilogy combines Nancy’s love of history and magic with her interest in Richard III. She also writes traditional romantic suspense, romantic spy adventures, and two other speculative fiction series, the Light Mage Wars paranormal romances and, with Jeanne Adams, the Outcast Station space mystery series.
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