GODIVA

A predictable plot and weak characterizations mar this debut novel from Rose, a screenwriter. When the Danish warrior Canute attacks England in 1016, 13-year-old Godiva watches in horror as her village of Coventry is destroyed. Eleven years later, she tries to save Coventry from King Canute's unfair taxes by donating her own jewels, and then reaps the king's rage at her defiance. In this novel, unlike the legend, it is the king and not Godiva's husband who promises to abolish the tax if she rides naked through Coventry. The story is further embellished with a pagan-Christian twist: Godiva, a Christian, must dishonor herself by riding during a pagan fertility rite. Rose delivers solid descriptions of battles and scenery, but character nuance is lacking due to the author's reliance on telling over showing. (Godiva's father, for example, is introduced as "a spiritual man" who is "fair, judicious, and endlessly devoted to England.") Characters are either wholly bad or wholly good; Canute is godless and murderous, while Godiva is courageous, pious, physically lovely and kind to small animals and children. Technical problems include anachronistic dialogue, inexplicable shifts in point of view and didacticism. Although some readers may appreciate the novel's clear message that "it is worth every bit of trouble to save one life," the clunky storytelling will deflect others. (Sept.)