Today I’m reviewing The Pedlar’s Promise by Steven A. McKay.

This novelette is part of the authors The Forest Lord series and is pegged as an “exciting Forest Lord novelette for Christmas”.. Let’s give it the David’s Book Blurg treatment and find out.

Oh and keep reading.. I may have added a little competition at the end 😊

Here’s the blurb

Medieval England, December

A pedlar has been sent to Wakefield with an unexpected and apparently quite valuable Christmas gift for John Little and his friend Will Scaflock. Unfortunately, the pedlar likes his ale a little too much and somehow gets lost and ends up in the wrong town. With no other work to do, or any strange mysteries to solve for a change, the pair of bored former outlaws decide to ride out and track down their gift. Of course, things don’t quite go as smoothly as hoped and they experience a series of hair-raising adventures on the snowy roads and villages of Yorkshire before their quest finally ends with a surprise…
Will our heroes ever find their quarry? What is the mysterious gift their friend Robert Stafford has sent to them from Brandesburton? And who the hell thought it was a good idea to go riding around northern England in the depths of winter searching for a drunk old pedlar?
Pour yourself a warm glass of wassail and settle in beside the fire to find out!
The Pedlar’s Promise continues the series of short winter stories including Friar Tuck and the Christmas Devil, Faces of Darkness, The House in the Marsh, and Sworn To God, and brings some much-needed cheer to the gloomy winter months.

Review

I’m a big fan of the author and it’s sort of become a Christmas tradition to sit down with a new novella from the author at this time of year. McKay hasn’t disappointed and has written a lovely little tale featuring Little John, Will Scarlett and Tuck.

You don’t have to have read any of the other books in this series to read this one, you could easily jump in here as a taster before buying the authors longer works but having read the previous books I think it would just give the characters a little more depth and you’ll chuckle even more, trust me.

So what happens in the story you may ask. Well Tuck has asked a pedlar to bring a gift back to Will and Little John.. but he’s gone missing… To give him his dues the pedlar and Tuck were both drunk at the time. Shock..ha

Now Tuck doesn’t have time to let Will and Little John know what the gift was and knowing Will that won’t sit easy with him.. he doesn’t like the unknown.. and it’s an itch he needs to scratch so he and John set out to find the pedlar!

Chaos ensues..there’s fights.. mud.. and laughs along the way but will they find the pedlar and the gift Tuck sent? And what kind of gift would have been sooo important to send anyway?

What I rally loved about this short read was that true to form it’s a cracking fun read, but you can really tell the author had fun with this one. McKay has reached the stage in the series where he can basically take any path he wants, and it shows just how talented the author is in bringing the reader fresh and fun tales.

The Pedlar’s Promise isnt as dark or mysterious and some of the authors novellas but this one fits perfect for the season, it’s light-hearted and had me smiling the whole way through. I can quite easily see myself sitting with the kids with this one chuckling away.

Another masterful piece of literature. 5*

To find out more head to Goodreads or Amazon.

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Now on to the important matter. I while ago I meant to run a competition to win a signed book from Steven A. McKay.. and me being the divvy I am… I forgot. Argh. Can I blame the fact my girls are now 8 and driving me nuts?

Anyhoo..to make up for that I’ve made the prize even better so up for grabs is :-

A signed copy of The Druid, book 1 in the Warrior Druid of Britain series!

And also a signed poster from the 3^rd book in the series – The Northern Throne. I was very lucky when I requested one for myself ages ago the author accidently sent me two ha ha, so why not give this second one a nice new home?

What do you need to do to win? Well first of let me give the rules.

I like to keep things simple, so I use Rafflecopter and you have a few different chances to earn an entry into the competition. The competition is no way endorsed by anyone other than myself and I’m responsible for sending the prize to the winner. Unfortunately this does mean I can only open this up the UK residents only as I’ll be paying the postage. The competition is open for a week!

I will contact the winner via email to confirm their address and will post the winners name on my social media 🙂

Ready to enter? Click here