George and the Virgin
George and the Virgin by Lisa Cach is a time travel romance set in Medieval
England.
George is also known as St George and is a professional wrestler who approaching the end of his time off for recovering from an injury. Reluctant to return to work he has been criticised in the press since two young children tried to copy one of his trademark moves and were injured.
Letting his sister hypnotise him he finds himself sent back in time.
George at first does not believe that he has been sent back in time. He believes that everything he is seeing and hearing is actually in his mind and that he everything has some meaning for him and is a way of working his way through his problems.
Enlisted by a local woman to fight a dragon George believes that once the dragon is dead he will wake from his hypnotic state. And so he agrees to kill the dragon and free the people of the village from the yearly payment to the dragon of one virgin.
Alizon was sent to the dragon by the villagers twelve years before George arrives on the scene. Bitter with the knowledge that the organisers of the lottery of virgins take bribes and that she was not wanted in her home she goes to the dragon. But she survived and has built a home for herself and for all the girls who follow her in the years after. Taking her bitterness out on the villagers she demands more and more sheep for the dragon (demands made via Milo who is the link between the castle of the dragon the village). She and the other girls then spend their days making tapestries which they sell to foreign traders (again via Milo) and live in comparative luxury with the proceeds.
Alizon has made a good life for herself and does not want George to return to the village and tell them that she is alive. Disguising herself as a crone and hiding the girls away from him she strikes a deal that he will have three attempts to kill and dragon and if he survives the attempts and the dragon lives then George will leave. And so George settles himself into the castle convinced that he will be able to kill the beast.
George is not fooled by Alizon's disguise but he is fooled by her in that he does not know that she does not want the dragon to die. For if it dies then her world will fall apart and she will have nowhere to go. So what is she going to do about it.
She is going to help the dragon of course...but how to do that without endangering George, for whilst she has been living in the castle of the dragon it is far from a tame animal and would kill her as surely as it would kill anyone else who ventured into its cavern.
This story has two great things about it. A strong heroine who has built a wall up around her heart over the years and is not one of the meek and simpering women that are sometimes portrayed. It also has a lot of very likeable secondary characters in the form of the other virgins in the castle, each with their own personality and individual quirks. Add to the mix the amusing George and his attempts to find meaning in everything he sees and you have all the elements of a very engaging time travel romance.
RATING : 
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Also by Lisa Cach: The Changeling Bride, Bewitching the Baron, The Mermaid of Penperro and Of Midnight Born
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