The ideas were there (magically bound nubile young swordsmen to serve as guardians for the King and anyone he wants!), but the execution was messy. The novel takes place over a long span of time and, contrary to what one may think, this actually makes it more difficult to get to know the main character(s).

We start with Durendal as a young man filled with thoughts of glory and adventure in the name of his liege lord. With an ungraceful swordthrust to the heart, he becomes the babysitter of the newest Royal Mistress's brother. His life will be boredom and willing serving wenches, woe!

As he is our protagonist, naturally something awful happens to him and his ward. After this is given a good three or four pages, we kind of ... move forward into the future? All his growing up and maturing and getting past the magically-induced pain is glossed over and Durendal is suddenly a man.

This is a trend that follows throughout the book - there's one large adventure (strangely enough, also ends in tragedy!) and then Durendal's life is just one long telling without a whole lot of showing.

The one character I really liked died, of course.

Poor Wolfbiter, you were wasted.

I feel like the subtitle to this book is very misleading - this was a book about her childhood as Hutterite (and a little about attempting to live as the "English" do), not necessarily reclaiming her heritage.

I suppose an argument could be made that writing this book WAS reclaiming it in some way, but it ended so abruptly (she won a Mennonite beauty competition?!) We never really saw how Mary-Ann left her Hutterite heritage behind as she grew up and became an adult.

Regardless, I enjoyed this because it gave me insight on a subculture that I had never even heard of. I loved reading about their clothing-specific rules and my god, their food. It was like Little House on the Prairie all over again. I had a sandwich after I finished reading.