finished a book last night

just a note to say, I've finished The Blood of Roses, the sequel to The Pride of Lions by Marsha Canham. Very moving, and damn if she didn't kill off a bunch of my favorite characters!! But not the hero or heroine, although I was worried. She does manage to throw some brain twisters in - scenes that lead you to believe one thing happened, but later you discover that you made assumptions that weren't true. Even though she did it several times, I fell for it every time (although at least once I thought, no, surely there is another explanation - and there was but it surprised me nonetheless.)

Book 3 in the trilogy (Midnight Honor, I think) is about 3 of the characters in the first books, not Alex and Catherine, and apparently happens at the same time. Several reviewers remarked on this, and it sounds as though even from a different POV, it's the same actions so not as interesting. Maybe I'll read it later.

Interestingly, doing a search on the author's last name at the Compuserve book forum where so many Gabaldon fans post, I did not find any references to her. I was sure someone would recommend these books to Gabaldon fans. I googled one blogger who read them just last month, who is also a Gabaldon fan. Her impression of Pride was that it reminded her of Gone With The Wind (?? because the hero had black hair - uh, hmmmm...) but she loved Blood. She noted how some things were similar in the Outlander series but that Canham published before Outlander. I guess they were similar, writing about the same time frame and location.

I have found other sites recommending Canham's books to Gabaldon fans. Funny how I like to read other reviewers' viewpoints to see if they put into words how I felt, since I don't seem to have the ability to do that myself.