The Eagle's Song: The Eagle's Song

Lady Linnet is fascinated by an elusive stranger she glimpses at Castle Radwell, her father's home. She soon makes the man's acquaintance in typical romance style: he abducts her and her 12-year-old brother, Alan, and spirits them off to Wales. Prince Rhys ap Griffith, aka ``the Eagle,'' claims that his sister's dowry land has been wrongfully seized by Linnet's father, Earl Godfrey. Linnet is held at Rhys's home, while Alan is at the farm of Rhys's friend, but both find themselves drawn into friendship--in Linnet's case, love--with their captors. When Godfrey agrees to relinquish the disputed land, it is with mixed feelings that they return to Castle Radwell. Once home, Linnet finds herself in a quandary: her father plans to violate the agreement, launching a secret attack on Rhys, and he has promised Linnet in marriage to Osric, a ``hideous monster.'' Schemes and broken promises abound, but all are buried under the aggressively bad prose that Rogers ( Dark Whispers ) uses to evoke an 11th-century setting. The result is so dreary it is difficult to care who ends up with whom or with what land. (Dec.)