Ladies and gentleman, I can honestly say that having been a fan of 
Lynn and Cherif's work for quite some time, I was excited to finally 
get my hands on this book. It is groundbreaking on several points.  
First off, they sought to trend-set with this book a bit, being the 
first fully illustrated romance novel in existance. Secondly, how 
many gentlemen do YOU know who try their hand penning a romance 
story? Me neither, which made diving into this one a fascinating 
literary as well as artistic delight.

Lynn outdid herself in creating the portraits for this book.  Each 
painting is breathtaking and well worth staring at for several 
hours.  Just be sure you have plenty of tissue to wipe the drool off 
your lips before you mess up your pages. 

Cherif's story was very stylized in sort of the neogothic manner.  
The predominant male perspective throughout the course of the book 
however is very refreshing and different.  He does manage to delve 
into his fair share of the romance stereotypes...fair heroine with 
porcelin skin and hair down to her you-know-what.  The hero is bold, 
courageous, chilverous, and drop dead gorgeous, of course.  Even the 
villian is pretty standard.  What you miss in this story, 
that is prevalent in most romance novels written by women however, is 
the emotional "petting" that takes place.  Cherif quite acurately 
portrays the ideal that men do not consider emotional petting an 
important aspect of romance.  Although they have the physical petting 
down pat, they usually don't really know what emotional petting is or 
how to do it for the most part.  Several instances throughout the 
course of the story, I was amused to note, were opportune moments 
where emotional petting could have been inserted, and Cherif's hero 
simply didn't know what to do...or was completely unaware of the 
need. 

From an author's perspective, I found the opportunity to compare and 
contrast male and female approaches to romance through this book 
precious and very gratifying. I definately recommend it to both 
lovers of medieval art and students of human nature. Cheers and good 
reading, folks!