By Honor Bound (Five Star First Edition Romance Series) - Hardcover

Ballard, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786218711 ISBN 13: 9780786218714

Publisher: Five Star, 1999

Synopsis

In the year 6032, Raithe defies the feudal law compelling him to kill his weaker brother in an attempt to save his people

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Ballard's debut, the first in a futuristic romance trilogy, inaugurates a new Five Star romance series that will publish four novels each quarter. The year is A.D. 6032. Raithe Serrodon is the number-two man of House Serrodon. Raithe's half-brother, Jerstrom, the High Lord of Serrodon, is mentally ill and dying. Savage far-future customs dictate that Raithe assume command by killing the half-brother he loves. Instead, Raithe seeks to marry Jerstrom to Cynnara Kyerrneth of the powerful House Kyerrneth, which will ensure Jerstrom's safety. But Cynnara lives not in 6032 A.D. but in 1999, her father having fled his time for ours. Raithe visits our present, abducts Cynnara and brings her back to the future, where men are "more animal than human" and women are "forced to follow the dictates of some primitive male." A virus called the Blood LustAgenetically engineered to create sexual attraction and reverse humanity's population declineAhas made the people of the time tribal and aggressive. The Blood Lust draws Raithe, against his will, to Cynnara. While he struggles to weigh his lust for Cynnara against his fraternal love for Jerstrom, Cynnara takes matters into her own hands. Ballard introduces neat ideas, but skips or underplays crucial events and never quite gets her plot on the move, making all her intended surprises easy to anticipate. Raithe, Cynnara and the rest conduct, in flat, vague terms, familiar arguments about science, culture and biology: "Technology has benefits, but the price is so high." Fans of futuristic romance will compare Ballard's debut to category classics by Dana Joy, Ann Maxwell or Jayne CastleAand the contrast won't make Ballard's work look good.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

In her first novel, Ballard has created an intriguing world set 4,000 years in the future as humanity is striving to recover from centuries of barbarism caused by a mutated virus. The virus was engineered to increase fertility, but it also raises emotions and is deadly unless blood from an infected individual of the opposite gender is administered in a binding ceremony. Ballard's heroine is Cynnara Kyerrneth, a circus acrobat in twentieth-century America, and the daughter of an anthropologist and a man who has traveled back in time from the distant future. The story revolves around Cynnara being kidnapped and brought to her father's era by brawny Raithe, second in command of the House Serrodon, to wed his disabled brother and thus preserve his life. As vivid as Ballard's barbaric future world is, her characters never come to life and her plot is disjointed. But she is definitely a writer to watch, and forthcoming volumes in the series are in the works. Diana Tixier Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: Five Star
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0786218711
• ISBN 13: 9780786218714
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300