Overall Rating: 3.90 // Action: 4 / Emotion: 4 / Romance: 4 / Sensuous: 1.5 / Suspense: 4 // Historical Flavor: 3.5 / Laughter: 0 / Tears: 5

Emma Merritt's second book in 'The Lords and Ladies Series', *Lord of Thunder*, was exciting, attention grabbing, and entertaining. The plotting moved the story along at a fast pace and was filled with plenty of action and suspense to keep one turning the pages way into the wee hours of the morning. However, near the middle of the book, there was a lull in interest because of the redundancy regarding the ongoing relationship battle between the hero and heroine.

Hero: Michael Langssonn. An extremely intelligent, skilled, drool-worthy warrior from the Northland. He was headed to Northern Scotland to take revenge against Malcolm mac Duncan for dishonoring his father's name.

Heroine: Cait nea Sholto. A beautiful, intelligent, capable, strong-willed spitfire adopted by Sholto, the most high priest of The Shelter Stone Shrine. She was falsely labeled a traitor and fled to Northern Scotland to seek help from the High King.

Action: {1} Cait fled the cloister wearing the amulet that revealed the location of the chamber holding the Shrine's treasure. {2} Gilbert sent his warriors after Cait. {3} Michael rescued Cait from the men who captured her by purchasing her.

Suspense: {1} Who was the cloister priest who was meeting with Gilbert, the man behind the raid on Glenmuir? {2} Would Michael challenge Malcolm to a duel to the death when he came face to face with his identical twin brother? {3} Would Michael ever come to love Cait?

Romance: The 'tug of war' that was the relationship between Michael and Cait took center stage throughout the entire book.

Emotion: It was easy to meld into the lives of both Michael and Cait. E.M. wrote several scenes that brought forth tears.

Sensuality: The lovemaking scenes were not of a heated, spicy nature. They contained more of the emotional thought processes of Cait than graphic descriptions of the act itself.

Secondary Characters: Not well-developed.

While *Lord of Thunder* was a wonderfully engaging and exciting read, it did not inspire the kind of interest that makes me want to read the next book in the series. See Wolf Bear Does Books (http://goo.gl/QgKfe) for a more in-depth, detailed review of *Lord of Thunder*. ( )