*/***** (1/5)
I had high hopes for A ROSE IN WINTER following the compelling American Civil War romance ASHES IN THE WIND (****). Unfortunately, the hero and heroine here, Erienne Fleming and Christopher Seton respectively, shattered my high hopes. Like ASHES IN THE WIND, Woodiwiss's prose and settings are strong but the characters, plotting and pacing here in A ROSE IN WINTER fell by the wayside in a predictable and disengaging manner. The novel takes place during 1792 England, a Georgian time period with all the social stratas and rogues/rakes from regency romances. I found this historical backdrop fairly routine and uninteresting. Lamentably, A ROSE IN WINTER took over a month to finish as my interest level waned the more I read. Inspired by the fairytale Beauty and the Beast, I disliked the predictable (and convenient) twist which made the Beast more than tolerable. I was frustrated by Erienne's air-headed naivete and bored by Christopher's rogue "charms" which offers nothing different from the myriad of other rakes in romance books.
I found Erienne childish, Christopher dull and the plotting dry and predictable. I thought the gist of the romance lacked merit and appeal; that is, the handsome Christopher struggling to convince Erienne to love him instead of her husband, the ugly and malformed Lord Saxton. Erienne's marriage vows appear a secondary concern to her pining attraction and response to the handsome Christopher. For example, after the Talbot ball, Christopher accosts her in the carriage ride back to Saxton Hall and Erienne responds very favorably to his kisses. Her review of the ordeal has more to do with her feelings for Christopher than potentially breaking marriage vows. Erienne is also very stupid. The identity of Lord Saxton is blatantly obvious from the moment we hear of him and yet Erienne doesn't learn of Saxton's true identity until Saxton himself reveals it. There exists a lot of evidence for her too. I found our rakish rogue, Christopher Seton, entirely ordinary for the romance genre, he doesn't possess a single distinctive quality. Many times he seemed like Superman: he's wealthy, titled, worldly, well-traveled, sexually experienced, tall, dark and handsome. Furthermore, he can deftly play cards, he's proficient at guns and deadly with swords. There's nothing to ground Christopher Seton, he seemed like a feminine concoction in beauty, power and brains (in that order through Erienne's eyes). The plotting was so insipid, I lost interest too many times. I'm trying to decipher the point of some of the vacuous plotting such as Christopher's protracted fight with Timmy Sears in a dockside bar and then traveling to London for parties, traveling back, going to a Talbot ball, etc. The romantic "tension" was anything but. I just didn't care for the "tension" which has Erienne struggling to maintain her marriage vows and easily falling prey to a handsome rake's advances side. Erienne never really accepts the malformed Lord Saxton, she's like a bimbo who pines for outward beauty above all else. The plot dealing with the Saxton family was too melodramatic while the ending stretched mercilessly. I thought KEW could have spiced up the second half by having Erienne discover the truth behind Saxton's identity herself and stage a circumstance which turns the tables on him. But alas, she's just a dumb bimbo throughout.
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
Affluent Yankee Christopher Seton owns many trading ships and he's the common flavor of tall, dark and very handsome. In a duel against Seton defending his insidious father's honor at a game of cards, Farrell Fleming loses feeling in his whole arm and consequently wallows in self-misery. Farrell's sister is none other than the beautiful Erienne Fleming, a girl who detests Seton for crippling her brother and forcing her father Avery Fleming to marry her to the highest bidder. After rejecting many potential husbands, all of them extreme cases of old, infirm and lewd, her father auctions her off. Seton offers but both Erienne and her father Avery reject Seton's proposal because they supposedly hate him. Erienne goes insofar to proclaim to the notorious rake Seton, "Were a twisted, scar-faced, hunchbacked cripple the only other man on earth, I would surely choose him over you!" I'm not so sure Avery's rejection is plausible, money always speaks louder than grudges for people like Avery Fleming. The mysterious and decrepit Lord Saxton purchases Erienne for his wife instead while also alleviating Avery Fleming of his vast debts. Despite respecting and honoring Erienne, Erienne cannot bear the awful and fearful sight of Lord Saxton. Even towards the end, Erienne cannot accept Lord Saxton because of his less-than-desirable appearance.
The story continues as the Saxton history comes to the forefront. Again, most of it is predictable and melodramatic nonsense. Seton flies around on black stallion with a black cape killing bandits and thieves as his legend grows. Even so, we have all these goons still pop up out of no where at the finale to wreak havoc. Nothing here at all.
Showing posts with label regency romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label regency romance. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Prince of Swords, by Anne Stuart [2]
**/***** (2/5)
After Stuart's thoroughly entertaining contemporary romance/suspense INTO THE FIRE (****), I was a bit disappointed by PRINCE OF SWORDS which takes place during regency England. This novel's hero Alistair MacAlpin, the sixth Earl of Glenshiel, demonstrates Anne Stuart's unparalleled knack for bad boys with a very dark edge. These aren't just pining good guys masquerading as garden-variety rakes, these really are bad boys and some of the things they think, say and do will put most romance-hero rakes to shame. Although Alistair's tortured-soul, bad-boy rake routine seemed a lot more convincing than most rake characterizations from romance books, Alistair's overwhelming state of ennui percolated my reading experience and I was actually bored by his boredom. Although I liked Alistair's dearth of morals and soulless characterization, I found myself bored by his womanizing ways, common flavor of tall, dark and handsome, wealth, title and his insouciant attitude towards life like a dilettante. Alistair just seemed like a spoiled 32 year-old baby, mad at society for exploiting his older brother's predilection to drinking and gaming. Although both are bad boys, Alistair lacked the intensity we find in INTO THE FIRE's Dillon. The prose here is better than most historical romances, the settings are above average, while the plotting/pacing below average to average. The plotting and pacing suffered from an overabundance of introspection/banter, switching to a secondary pairing (Robert Brennan and Jessamine's sister Fleur), a decided absence of any engaging events, and an anticlimactic finale. Fueled by Alistair's ennui, the characterizations seemed mostly bland and formulaic. I grew tired of Jessamine's insecurity mocking her lack of beauty both in her words and thoughts. I actually liked Robert Brennan and Fleur better than the main characters (Alistair and Jessamine).
Fleur finally moved. "[Brennan] told you to keep your hands off me," she said firmly. "Yes, I spent the night in his room last night, yes, I'm a slut and a whore. But I'm Brennan's whore."
The book obviously belongs to its bad boy Alistair MacAlpin and how he makes everyone else dance to his tune. Most chick-lit postures goody boys who undeservedly suffer a lot to be with their "feisty" (translation, bitchy) heroines. Anne Stuart however really puts her heroine through hell to save her bad boy's soul or to be with her hero. Alistair mercilessly exploits, abuses and discards Jessamine, and yet Jessamine continues to love him returning to him time and time again. Alistair obviously doesn't deserve Jessamine and he'll be first to tell you that, but somehow Jessamine strives to rescue his soul anyway. Most chick-lit has their heroes taking the first step in love, taking the first chance, fighting for their heroines and continuing to sacrifice at every turn thereafter. Not Anne Stuart. Her heroines are gluttons for punishment and it seems both Jessamine and Fleur here take gargantuan leaps of faith driven by their love for Alistair and Robert, respectively. In spite of it all, it was refreshing to see heroines fighting to be with their heroes for a change in historical romance.
Many elements of the plotting failed to engage while the pacing sagged. I found it too convenient for Alistair to learn of all the relevant characters and connections involved in the story at the outset via the eccentric Nicodemus Bottom. Alistair knows of Jessamine's connection with the iniquitous Bow Street runner Josiah Clegg which places Jessamine at a disadvantage with Alistair throughout. Alistair accurately views the other Bow Street runner Robert Brennan a scrupulous man. Alistair knows of Brennan's attraction to Jessamine's sister Fleur and uses that later at the party to occupy Brennan. Even though the book characterizes Brennan as a clever, strong man, Brennan was always a step behind. Even at the very end, Brennan falls for the same trick twice (Alistair diverts his attention elsewhere) and he just appears impotent overall. The alternating passages between Fleur and Jessamine before the love scene crippled the pacing. Interminable musings without anything happening grates my soul and these passages specialized in such musings. The party at Blaine Manor was pointless and Alistair taking Jessamine on a pilfering "adventure" seemed less of an adventure than an excursion on repetitious introspection and banter.
The Story.
Impoverished Lady Jessamine Maitland, her sister Fleur and their mother have fallen on hard times after her father debauched the family inheritance. Twenty-three year-old virgin Jessamine, decked out in plain gray garb and not nearly as pretty as her younger eighteen year-old sister Fleur, single-handedly sustains her family through her Tarot card reading talents. A gypsy tutors Jessamine on the arcane arts of card reading and warns that should she ever lose her virginity, her card-reading talents will also disappear. Jessamine's unique card-reading talents aid the wicked Bow Street runner Josiah Clegg to apprehend criminals. Jessamine is saving to help finance her beautiful younger sister's coming-out thereby ensnaring a wealthy gentleman who will secure their family's future.
Notoriously dubbed the "Cat," the sixth Earl of Glenshiel (Alistair) finds a solution to his boredom by stealing from the sinfully rich and prosperous. Tall, dark and handsome, a lewd rake, and exhibiting the common "alpha" traits, Alistair espies Jessamine at a party (he's just stolen some jewels). Jessamine entertains the guests via her card-reading talents. Alistair is immediately attracted to Jessamine and doggedly pursues her for sex. He even makes it clear to her that he wishes to deflower her and then abandon her.
Things slowly progress at a party in Blaine Manor attended by all the characters: Jessamine, Alistair, Jessamine's sister Fleur, Robert Brennan and Josiah Clegg. Nothing much happens except Alistair's continued mission to deflower and ruin Jessamine. Alistair knows Jessamine is in collusion with Clegg and endeavors to give her reasons not divulge his secret identity as the notorious "Cat." Robert Brennan and Josiah Clegg both are after the "Cat" and Clegg pressures Jessamine to divine the Cat's identity from the cards. Jess waits and waits all the while subconsciously knowing the Cat's identity.
I found the ending with one final heist involving the crown jewels very rushed and anticlimactic. Despite Jessamine's love and devotion, it takes a lot for Alistair to finally come to grips with his love for her. But such are Anne Stuart's bad boys, they don't make it easy.
After Stuart's thoroughly entertaining contemporary romance/suspense INTO THE FIRE (****), I was a bit disappointed by PRINCE OF SWORDS which takes place during regency England. This novel's hero Alistair MacAlpin, the sixth Earl of Glenshiel, demonstrates Anne Stuart's unparalleled knack for bad boys with a very dark edge. These aren't just pining good guys masquerading as garden-variety rakes, these really are bad boys and some of the things they think, say and do will put most romance-hero rakes to shame. Although Alistair's tortured-soul, bad-boy rake routine seemed a lot more convincing than most rake characterizations from romance books, Alistair's overwhelming state of ennui percolated my reading experience and I was actually bored by his boredom. Although I liked Alistair's dearth of morals and soulless characterization, I found myself bored by his womanizing ways, common flavor of tall, dark and handsome, wealth, title and his insouciant attitude towards life like a dilettante. Alistair just seemed like a spoiled 32 year-old baby, mad at society for exploiting his older brother's predilection to drinking and gaming. Although both are bad boys, Alistair lacked the intensity we find in INTO THE FIRE's Dillon. The prose here is better than most historical romances, the settings are above average, while the plotting/pacing below average to average. The plotting and pacing suffered from an overabundance of introspection/banter, switching to a secondary pairing (Robert Brennan and Jessamine's sister Fleur), a decided absence of any engaging events, and an anticlimactic finale. Fueled by Alistair's ennui, the characterizations seemed mostly bland and formulaic. I grew tired of Jessamine's insecurity mocking her lack of beauty both in her words and thoughts. I actually liked Robert Brennan and Fleur better than the main characters (Alistair and Jessamine).
Fleur finally moved. "[Brennan] told you to keep your hands off me," she said firmly. "Yes, I spent the night in his room last night, yes, I'm a slut and a whore. But I'm Brennan's whore."
The book obviously belongs to its bad boy Alistair MacAlpin and how he makes everyone else dance to his tune. Most chick-lit postures goody boys who undeservedly suffer a lot to be with their "feisty" (translation, bitchy) heroines. Anne Stuart however really puts her heroine through hell to save her bad boy's soul or to be with her hero. Alistair mercilessly exploits, abuses and discards Jessamine, and yet Jessamine continues to love him returning to him time and time again. Alistair obviously doesn't deserve Jessamine and he'll be first to tell you that, but somehow Jessamine strives to rescue his soul anyway. Most chick-lit has their heroes taking the first step in love, taking the first chance, fighting for their heroines and continuing to sacrifice at every turn thereafter. Not Anne Stuart. Her heroines are gluttons for punishment and it seems both Jessamine and Fleur here take gargantuan leaps of faith driven by their love for Alistair and Robert, respectively. In spite of it all, it was refreshing to see heroines fighting to be with their heroes for a change in historical romance.
Many elements of the plotting failed to engage while the pacing sagged. I found it too convenient for Alistair to learn of all the relevant characters and connections involved in the story at the outset via the eccentric Nicodemus Bottom. Alistair knows of Jessamine's connection with the iniquitous Bow Street runner Josiah Clegg which places Jessamine at a disadvantage with Alistair throughout. Alistair accurately views the other Bow Street runner Robert Brennan a scrupulous man. Alistair knows of Brennan's attraction to Jessamine's sister Fleur and uses that later at the party to occupy Brennan. Even though the book characterizes Brennan as a clever, strong man, Brennan was always a step behind. Even at the very end, Brennan falls for the same trick twice (Alistair diverts his attention elsewhere) and he just appears impotent overall. The alternating passages between Fleur and Jessamine before the love scene crippled the pacing. Interminable musings without anything happening grates my soul and these passages specialized in such musings. The party at Blaine Manor was pointless and Alistair taking Jessamine on a pilfering "adventure" seemed less of an adventure than an excursion on repetitious introspection and banter.
The Story.
Impoverished Lady Jessamine Maitland, her sister Fleur and their mother have fallen on hard times after her father debauched the family inheritance. Twenty-three year-old virgin Jessamine, decked out in plain gray garb and not nearly as pretty as her younger eighteen year-old sister Fleur, single-handedly sustains her family through her Tarot card reading talents. A gypsy tutors Jessamine on the arcane arts of card reading and warns that should she ever lose her virginity, her card-reading talents will also disappear. Jessamine's unique card-reading talents aid the wicked Bow Street runner Josiah Clegg to apprehend criminals. Jessamine is saving to help finance her beautiful younger sister's coming-out thereby ensnaring a wealthy gentleman who will secure their family's future.
Notoriously dubbed the "Cat," the sixth Earl of Glenshiel (Alistair) finds a solution to his boredom by stealing from the sinfully rich and prosperous. Tall, dark and handsome, a lewd rake, and exhibiting the common "alpha" traits, Alistair espies Jessamine at a party (he's just stolen some jewels). Jessamine entertains the guests via her card-reading talents. Alistair is immediately attracted to Jessamine and doggedly pursues her for sex. He even makes it clear to her that he wishes to deflower her and then abandon her.
Things slowly progress at a party in Blaine Manor attended by all the characters: Jessamine, Alistair, Jessamine's sister Fleur, Robert Brennan and Josiah Clegg. Nothing much happens except Alistair's continued mission to deflower and ruin Jessamine. Alistair knows Jessamine is in collusion with Clegg and endeavors to give her reasons not divulge his secret identity as the notorious "Cat." Robert Brennan and Josiah Clegg both are after the "Cat" and Clegg pressures Jessamine to divine the Cat's identity from the cards. Jess waits and waits all the while subconsciously knowing the Cat's identity.
I found the ending with one final heist involving the crown jewels very rushed and anticlimactic. Despite Jessamine's love and devotion, it takes a lot for Alistair to finally come to grips with his love for her. But such are Anne Stuart's bad boys, they don't make it easy.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Lady of Sin, by Madeline Hunter [1]
*/***** (1/5)
Only those moments featuring the mystery plot with the orphaned boy Harry engaged my interest in LADY OF SIN. The rest of this book contained way too much repetitive introspection and inane thoughts mixed in with the "romantic" exchanges that quickly evaporated my attention span. More than ever, I noticed endless paragraphs of insipid, meandering introspection interspersed between the conversation. I often lost the thread of both the thoughts and the conversation and I didn't care to pick up either of them actually. The romance was lackluster, the pacing awfully slooooooow, the plotting (regarding an orphaned boy's parentage) too sparse, Charlotte too selfish and shallow, and Nathaniel too weak and forgettable. Charlotte really doesn't have a leg to stand on, her self-serving interests aim to preserve her social status and her family's social status in British aristocracy at the expense of an orphaned boy's potential birthright (who lived in poverty). As many times as the book would have us believe Nathaniel an "honorable" man, it's really too easy him to sever the orphaned boy from his birthright or to forget justice for murder (the boy's mother) all in exchange for sex with Charlotte. As much as the book would likes to describe the depths of the emotional connection between Charlotte and Nathaniel (same idea repeated using different words over and over), it still just seemed like meaningless sex (nothing wrong with that really). The sex scenes suffered from all the repetitive introspective musings that forced an emotional connection between the h/h. Extraneous events continued from prior books (THE SINNER, THE ROMANTIC) plague this one such as the birth of Dante's child and Pen's wedding. Seeing Pen and Julian finally wed was actually nice, though would have been much nicer to see it through Pen or Julian's eyes. I kept wanting to see Adrian Burchard from THE CHARMER, but alas, he isn't part of the Duclairc family. I disliked the resolution of this novel too: I found it too tidy while selfishly skewed towards Charlotte's interests. I don't feel Nathaniel did enough to prove (or disprove) the orphaned boy's possible legitimacy.
Who does this book belong to? Definitely Charlotte, because although Nathaniel begins the investigation, he bows out early and often because of the sex with Charlotte. It's Charlotte who compels Nathaniel to see it through. The Lady of Sin title seemed a misnomer though, she's pretty bland and the one night of scandalous sex she has occurs prior to this book. She's a lady that values her social status above truth, justice or honor. So in that way, I suppose she's sinful, but not in the promiscuous sense.
This book likes to keep telling its readers how things are instead of showing us. The book likes to keep telling us Charlotte and Nathaniel hate each other when every indication in this book seems contrary to these assertions. The book likes to tell us Charlotte and Nathaniel share a deep, emotional connection (again and again in many different words) but again I found no emotional link between the two. The book likes to tell us how clever Charlotte is but some of the things she deduces has less to do with brilliance and more to do with common sense. The book likes to tell us how honorable Nathaniel is and how he pursues truth and justice but I found all of his actions in this book contradictory to this characterization.
Why does Nathaniel wish to abandon his quest for the truth behind the boy Harry's parentage after sex with Charlotte? He's really a weak character, and no, it doesn't show that he somehow "loves" Charlotte because he's willing to abandon the truth after what the book tell us is an emotional and physical high with Charlotte. It shows he's fickle, he lets his groin guide him, and that he's completely whipped. It should be about right and wrong, but instead he's willing to accommodate Charlotte (he spent the night giving Charlotte pleasure) because uncovering a secret behind Harry's true parentage would uproot Charlotte's family. Doesn't he care about the truth or doing the right thing? After a village shows no sign of the woman Jenny (who knows more about the boy), he has a "spry" step and he's happy that there's no sign of the woman who could tell them more about the boy Harry! Oh my god, please, if he wasn't remotely whipped before, he is now. He's wants to accommodate Charlotte's wishes after she allows him to pleasure her all night, and he wants to retreat from the truth or flee from doing the right thing in exchange for sex with Charlotte (because any potential truth could create a chasm between Nathaniel and Charlotte). Later, when Charlotte discovers the full truth, Nathaniel offers Charlotte comfort and pleasure and resolves to never speak of it again (because it upset Charlotte so much). Was the sex good enough to deny a boy his true birthright or to dig deeper behind it? Nathaniel's consistent answer to all their roadblocks: oh yeah, let's just have more sex, push off the difficult choices for later! I don't view any of these cowering retreats from truth and justice in Nathaniel as noble, and they're bartered with sex from Charlotte. Look at STEALING HEAVEN's Marcus: he found a way to be with Nesta and avoid open rebellion from the Welsh. Marcus and Nesta's contradicting wishes and their mutual passion didn't effeminate Marcus like it does LADY OF SIN's Nathaniel.
Charlotte is one annoying, shallow, selfish, snide heroine. There isn't a single quality -- with the possible exception of appearance -- to recommend her. And not really appearance either because she's "ethereal" through Nathaniel's eyes while Nathaniel is "handsome" through her eyes (over and over). Don't you love how romance heroes are so deep while their heroine counterparts fairly single-minded over height, muscles and handsome appearance? LADY OF SIN reminded me again of this ploy in the romance genre; that is, making the heroes deep and above appearances while the heroines very superficial. Charlotte wishes to protect her family from what she perceives are "scandalous lies" despite the possible authenticity of the "lies." She spurns any truth that would denigrate her reputation and her family's reputation. In fact, she's proud that amongst her family (her two brothers, and her older sister Penelope from THE ROMANTIC), only she is invited to all of the esteemed social circles. Amongst her family, she notes only her name and reputation maintains high standards for self-righteousness and eludes social censure. She values social status over truth or doing the right thing. When evidence finally indicates a legitimate and as yet unknown heir (not Ambrose the child she loves), Charlotte grieves that her life will be ruined. Cry some more, Charlotte? What, will she have to live in poverty? Will the child she loves (Ambrose) not know a comfortable life? None of this, she's genuinely more concerned about her social status and her family's social status than the truth and bestowing another child his rightful inheritance. Another child (Harry / Jose / Joseph) that has only known strife, poverty and hardship. Another child that has no family or real home. And here is our heroine Charlotte only concerned about herself. She even considers whoring herself to Nathaniel to ensure his silence, which she essentially does anyway since Nathaniel is so whipped he's willing to deny a boy's birthright in exchange for sex with Charlotte. Charlotte's "ghosts from the past" after she (and we as the reader) discover the full truth are lame and the very fact that she struggles with them unwarranted.
The emotional melodrama Charlotte suffers over the potential loss of her happiness if another child earns his rightful title and inheritance was beyond absurd and very frustrating to read. Not like she's been living a joyful and fulfilling life all this time because if that were the case, she would not have ventured to an orgy party (off-screen and prior to LADY OF SIN). Nathaniel was too eager to abandon his quest for the truth after sex with Charlotte.
All in all, poor characterizations, subpar plotting and pacing and below average prose. The best part of this novel? The preview to THE RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****), which I'll have to read again at some point.
Only those moments featuring the mystery plot with the orphaned boy Harry engaged my interest in LADY OF SIN. The rest of this book contained way too much repetitive introspection and inane thoughts mixed in with the "romantic" exchanges that quickly evaporated my attention span. More than ever, I noticed endless paragraphs of insipid, meandering introspection interspersed between the conversation. I often lost the thread of both the thoughts and the conversation and I didn't care to pick up either of them actually. The romance was lackluster, the pacing awfully slooooooow, the plotting (regarding an orphaned boy's parentage) too sparse, Charlotte too selfish and shallow, and Nathaniel too weak and forgettable. Charlotte really doesn't have a leg to stand on, her self-serving interests aim to preserve her social status and her family's social status in British aristocracy at the expense of an orphaned boy's potential birthright (who lived in poverty). As many times as the book would have us believe Nathaniel an "honorable" man, it's really too easy him to sever the orphaned boy from his birthright or to forget justice for murder (the boy's mother) all in exchange for sex with Charlotte. As much as the book would likes to describe the depths of the emotional connection between Charlotte and Nathaniel (same idea repeated using different words over and over), it still just seemed like meaningless sex (nothing wrong with that really). The sex scenes suffered from all the repetitive introspective musings that forced an emotional connection between the h/h. Extraneous events continued from prior books (THE SINNER, THE ROMANTIC) plague this one such as the birth of Dante's child and Pen's wedding. Seeing Pen and Julian finally wed was actually nice, though would have been much nicer to see it through Pen or Julian's eyes. I kept wanting to see Adrian Burchard from THE CHARMER, but alas, he isn't part of the Duclairc family. I disliked the resolution of this novel too: I found it too tidy while selfishly skewed towards Charlotte's interests. I don't feel Nathaniel did enough to prove (or disprove) the orphaned boy's possible legitimacy.
Who does this book belong to? Definitely Charlotte, because although Nathaniel begins the investigation, he bows out early and often because of the sex with Charlotte. It's Charlotte who compels Nathaniel to see it through. The Lady of Sin title seemed a misnomer though, she's pretty bland and the one night of scandalous sex she has occurs prior to this book. She's a lady that values her social status above truth, justice or honor. So in that way, I suppose she's sinful, but not in the promiscuous sense.
This book likes to keep telling its readers how things are instead of showing us. The book likes to keep telling us Charlotte and Nathaniel hate each other when every indication in this book seems contrary to these assertions. The book likes to tell us Charlotte and Nathaniel share a deep, emotional connection (again and again in many different words) but again I found no emotional link between the two. The book likes to tell us how clever Charlotte is but some of the things she deduces has less to do with brilliance and more to do with common sense. The book likes to tell us how honorable Nathaniel is and how he pursues truth and justice but I found all of his actions in this book contradictory to this characterization.
Why does Nathaniel wish to abandon his quest for the truth behind the boy Harry's parentage after sex with Charlotte? He's really a weak character, and no, it doesn't show that he somehow "loves" Charlotte because he's willing to abandon the truth after what the book tell us is an emotional and physical high with Charlotte. It shows he's fickle, he lets his groin guide him, and that he's completely whipped. It should be about right and wrong, but instead he's willing to accommodate Charlotte (he spent the night giving Charlotte pleasure) because uncovering a secret behind Harry's true parentage would uproot Charlotte's family. Doesn't he care about the truth or doing the right thing? After a village shows no sign of the woman Jenny (who knows more about the boy), he has a "spry" step and he's happy that there's no sign of the woman who could tell them more about the boy Harry! Oh my god, please, if he wasn't remotely whipped before, he is now. He's wants to accommodate Charlotte's wishes after she allows him to pleasure her all night, and he wants to retreat from the truth or flee from doing the right thing in exchange for sex with Charlotte (because any potential truth could create a chasm between Nathaniel and Charlotte). Later, when Charlotte discovers the full truth, Nathaniel offers Charlotte comfort and pleasure and resolves to never speak of it again (because it upset Charlotte so much). Was the sex good enough to deny a boy his true birthright or to dig deeper behind it? Nathaniel's consistent answer to all their roadblocks: oh yeah, let's just have more sex, push off the difficult choices for later! I don't view any of these cowering retreats from truth and justice in Nathaniel as noble, and they're bartered with sex from Charlotte. Look at STEALING HEAVEN's Marcus: he found a way to be with Nesta and avoid open rebellion from the Welsh. Marcus and Nesta's contradicting wishes and their mutual passion didn't effeminate Marcus like it does LADY OF SIN's Nathaniel.
Charlotte is one annoying, shallow, selfish, snide heroine. There isn't a single quality -- with the possible exception of appearance -- to recommend her. And not really appearance either because she's "ethereal" through Nathaniel's eyes while Nathaniel is "handsome" through her eyes (over and over). Don't you love how romance heroes are so deep while their heroine counterparts fairly single-minded over height, muscles and handsome appearance? LADY OF SIN reminded me again of this ploy in the romance genre; that is, making the heroes deep and above appearances while the heroines very superficial. Charlotte wishes to protect her family from what she perceives are "scandalous lies" despite the possible authenticity of the "lies." She spurns any truth that would denigrate her reputation and her family's reputation. In fact, she's proud that amongst her family (her two brothers, and her older sister Penelope from THE ROMANTIC), only she is invited to all of the esteemed social circles. Amongst her family, she notes only her name and reputation maintains high standards for self-righteousness and eludes social censure. She values social status over truth or doing the right thing. When evidence finally indicates a legitimate and as yet unknown heir (not Ambrose the child she loves), Charlotte grieves that her life will be ruined. Cry some more, Charlotte? What, will she have to live in poverty? Will the child she loves (Ambrose) not know a comfortable life? None of this, she's genuinely more concerned about her social status and her family's social status than the truth and bestowing another child his rightful inheritance. Another child (Harry / Jose / Joseph) that has only known strife, poverty and hardship. Another child that has no family or real home. And here is our heroine Charlotte only concerned about herself. She even considers whoring herself to Nathaniel to ensure his silence, which she essentially does anyway since Nathaniel is so whipped he's willing to deny a boy's birthright in exchange for sex with Charlotte. Charlotte's "ghosts from the past" after she (and we as the reader) discover the full truth are lame and the very fact that she struggles with them unwarranted.
The emotional melodrama Charlotte suffers over the potential loss of her happiness if another child earns his rightful title and inheritance was beyond absurd and very frustrating to read. Not like she's been living a joyful and fulfilling life all this time because if that were the case, she would not have ventured to an orgy party (off-screen and prior to LADY OF SIN). Nathaniel was too eager to abandon his quest for the truth after sex with Charlotte.
All in all, poor characterizations, subpar plotting and pacing and below average prose. The best part of this novel? The preview to THE RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****), which I'll have to read again at some point.
Friday, February 1, 2008
The Romantic, by Madeline Hunter [4]
****/***** (4/5)
1. The Seducer (**)
2. The Saint (*)
3. The Charmer (****)
4. The Sinner (SKIP)
5. The Romantic (****)
Madeline Hunter's dark, strong and silent heroes continue to enthrall in the final installment in this series on the Dueling Society. Unlike THE CHARMER (which belonged to its heroine), this novel thoroughly belongs to its tall, dark, handsome and silent hero who is a romantic at heart: Julian Hampton. A solicitor by profession and lacking the title and wealth of other romance heroes, Julian Hampton's pithy and succinct eloquence shields a poetic, romantic heart that yearns for the woman he's loved since he was a youth. From the amusing letters he's conjuring to write to the happily-married ladies who thrust eligible ladies at him, Julian exudes a sly sense of humor. The eligible ladies fail to excite him however because for all of his teenage and adult life, Julian Hampton's heart surreptitiously aches for Penelope, the notorious Countess of Glasbury and Viscount Leclere's sister (from THE SAINT). THE SEDUCER and THE SAINT builds the foundation for Julian and Penelope's story here in THE ROMANTIC. Although THE CHARMER features the best historical backdrop, THE ROMANTIC contains the strongest plotting and pacing of the series, engaging me and surprising me even as I predicted other elements. There's suspense, adventure, murder, a trial, whodunit mystery, and of course, romance and passion. I was thankful that even though Julian yearns for Penelope his whole life, the book avoids the copious pining and repetitive introspection which would take away from his character. One thing you have to love about Madeline Hunter's characters and stories: her stories offer more historical backdrop and plotting than the average romance book while her characters are doing something beyond seeking and having sex. Here, Penelope is very proud of authoring a piece on married womens' rights.
THE ROMANTIC is probably the darkest book in the series as well. Penelope isn't a virgin and she's married: separated from her husband, the earl of Glasbury, who engages in sordid sexual activity including BDSM. Penelope's notorious reputation, Julian's angst over Pen's affairs following her separation with the earl, Pen and Julian's advanced age (both are 'old' for romance stories) and the reprobate earl's insidious designs all make for a dark read. I found some of the early, seductive interaction between Julian and Penelope a bit jarring. I think the book tried to build chemistry by making Pen feel for Julian early but it didn't seem to fit. For instance, after returning from Naples and faced with the terror of returning to the depraved earl, Julian comforts Pen in his strong but silent manner with a hand-to-hand touch or a squeeze on her shoulder. These subtle touches sends shivers of anticipation through Pen, and it didn't fit after all these years. This is the first time she's noticing Julian in such a manner? Why, all of a sudden now, I mean she's known Julian her whole life, right? Sleeping next to Julian's room and taking a bath in Julian's cottage all seem to force the sensuality between the two too early as Pen enjoys the delicious seduction. Still, I enjoyed Julian's angry reaction to Pen's list of potential conspirators in a public affair to force the earl to divorce her. She leaves out Julian as a potential candidate, and he's furious.
Another thing you have to love about Madeline Hunter's stories: both the hero and heroine end up giving to each other in love. The giving and loving is mutual. As much as Julian protects and loves Pen his whole life, Pen helps him and takes care of him at the end. You could tell she's really awed by the depth of his love and loves him in kind. She did seem too ignorant of the depth of his love though, always making excuses for his loyal protection and love earlier. When she still couldn't surmise the recipient of Julian's unsent love letters during the trial at the end, her ignorance started to grate. However, Pen's ignorance added to the drama and tension in the plotting. I would have hoped the book made Pen's ignorance of Julian's profound love deliberate on her part. Like she knew subconsciously the depths of Julian's love for her but couldn't face it because she felt she was unworthy or she was afraid to believe in it. Alas, there's no such admission, she simply says she had no idea and that she's honored by Julian's lifelong love for her. Despite her persistent ignorance, I did feel Pen deserved Julian. It's clear Pen is very compassionate always abandoning her interests for the sake of others'. Pen says she married Anthony because he was an earl and she was young and stupid but that wasn't the complete picture. I couldn't abide Pen marrying the earl in the first place, but then we learn financial straits handicapped Pen's family during her first season. The earl of Glasbury's generous offer compelled Pen to accept and she later convinced herself that it was her fault. Then after separation, she avoided outright confrontation with the earl because she wants to shelter her family from scandal as much as possible. Yes, I think Pen is very deserving of Julian's undying love and devotion. I could understand Julian's love for Pen since they grew up together and Julian witnessed first-hand Pen's compassion serving as her family's solicitor.
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
After a comfortable separation between the earl and countess of Glasbury lasting many years, the earl desires to sire an heir off the countess, Penelope. The reasons which previously checked the cruel earl's hand no longer matter seem to matter to him, and he demands his conjugal rights as a husband and master of his wife. The earl is, after all, well into his 40s while the countess Penelope well into her 30s. The earl harbors a cruel streak in sex as he enjoys inflicting pain and subordinating his sexual partners. A virginal Penelope didn't know any better at the beginning of her marriage, and finally flees after witnessing the earl's horrible treatment of another child. She divulges the worst to her friend and solicitor Julian Hampton. We know from THE SEDUCER that Hampton secured a permanent separation for Penelope by threatening to reveal the worst of the earl's twisted pleasures. Now, years later, the earl wants her back to sire an heir and no revelations of his sordid depravities will check him. English law bestows all the rights in marriage to the husband, especially an aristocrat, and Penelope has no choice but to run for her life.
Penelope runs straight to Julian Hampton like she did before and Julian promises to protect her from the earl. They retreat to Julian's rustic cottage but eventually the earl discovers Penelope's whereabouts. They again flee, this time to meet the one witness who could convince society that the earl has wronged Penelope. When they find the witness deceased, Penelope feels she has no choice but to flee the country and travel to America. Julian eventually convinces her to face the problem head-on and make a choice for herself instead of trying to protect her friends and family. Both decide to engage in a very public affair of convenience, hoping to incite the earl to file for divorce.
The story grows and evolves with twists and turns, getting stronger the more you read it. Pen's strife to escape the earl meshes with her burgeoning feelings for Julian. In the end, the varying elements of suspense, mystery, love and passion manage to entertain and engage.
1. The Seducer (**)
2. The Saint (*)
3. The Charmer (****)
4. The Sinner (SKIP)
5. The Romantic (****)
Madeline Hunter's dark, strong and silent heroes continue to enthrall in the final installment in this series on the Dueling Society. Unlike THE CHARMER (which belonged to its heroine), this novel thoroughly belongs to its tall, dark, handsome and silent hero who is a romantic at heart: Julian Hampton. A solicitor by profession and lacking the title and wealth of other romance heroes, Julian Hampton's pithy and succinct eloquence shields a poetic, romantic heart that yearns for the woman he's loved since he was a youth. From the amusing letters he's conjuring to write to the happily-married ladies who thrust eligible ladies at him, Julian exudes a sly sense of humor. The eligible ladies fail to excite him however because for all of his teenage and adult life, Julian Hampton's heart surreptitiously aches for Penelope, the notorious Countess of Glasbury and Viscount Leclere's sister (from THE SAINT). THE SEDUCER and THE SAINT builds the foundation for Julian and Penelope's story here in THE ROMANTIC. Although THE CHARMER features the best historical backdrop, THE ROMANTIC contains the strongest plotting and pacing of the series, engaging me and surprising me even as I predicted other elements. There's suspense, adventure, murder, a trial, whodunit mystery, and of course, romance and passion. I was thankful that even though Julian yearns for Penelope his whole life, the book avoids the copious pining and repetitive introspection which would take away from his character. One thing you have to love about Madeline Hunter's characters and stories: her stories offer more historical backdrop and plotting than the average romance book while her characters are doing something beyond seeking and having sex. Here, Penelope is very proud of authoring a piece on married womens' rights.
THE ROMANTIC is probably the darkest book in the series as well. Penelope isn't a virgin and she's married: separated from her husband, the earl of Glasbury, who engages in sordid sexual activity including BDSM. Penelope's notorious reputation, Julian's angst over Pen's affairs following her separation with the earl, Pen and Julian's advanced age (both are 'old' for romance stories) and the reprobate earl's insidious designs all make for a dark read. I found some of the early, seductive interaction between Julian and Penelope a bit jarring. I think the book tried to build chemistry by making Pen feel for Julian early but it didn't seem to fit. For instance, after returning from Naples and faced with the terror of returning to the depraved earl, Julian comforts Pen in his strong but silent manner with a hand-to-hand touch or a squeeze on her shoulder. These subtle touches sends shivers of anticipation through Pen, and it didn't fit after all these years. This is the first time she's noticing Julian in such a manner? Why, all of a sudden now, I mean she's known Julian her whole life, right? Sleeping next to Julian's room and taking a bath in Julian's cottage all seem to force the sensuality between the two too early as Pen enjoys the delicious seduction. Still, I enjoyed Julian's angry reaction to Pen's list of potential conspirators in a public affair to force the earl to divorce her. She leaves out Julian as a potential candidate, and he's furious.
Another thing you have to love about Madeline Hunter's stories: both the hero and heroine end up giving to each other in love. The giving and loving is mutual. As much as Julian protects and loves Pen his whole life, Pen helps him and takes care of him at the end. You could tell she's really awed by the depth of his love and loves him in kind. She did seem too ignorant of the depth of his love though, always making excuses for his loyal protection and love earlier. When she still couldn't surmise the recipient of Julian's unsent love letters during the trial at the end, her ignorance started to grate. However, Pen's ignorance added to the drama and tension in the plotting. I would have hoped the book made Pen's ignorance of Julian's profound love deliberate on her part. Like she knew subconsciously the depths of Julian's love for her but couldn't face it because she felt she was unworthy or she was afraid to believe in it. Alas, there's no such admission, she simply says she had no idea and that she's honored by Julian's lifelong love for her. Despite her persistent ignorance, I did feel Pen deserved Julian. It's clear Pen is very compassionate always abandoning her interests for the sake of others'. Pen says she married Anthony because he was an earl and she was young and stupid but that wasn't the complete picture. I couldn't abide Pen marrying the earl in the first place, but then we learn financial straits handicapped Pen's family during her first season. The earl of Glasbury's generous offer compelled Pen to accept and she later convinced herself that it was her fault. Then after separation, she avoided outright confrontation with the earl because she wants to shelter her family from scandal as much as possible. Yes, I think Pen is very deserving of Julian's undying love and devotion. I could understand Julian's love for Pen since they grew up together and Julian witnessed first-hand Pen's compassion serving as her family's solicitor.
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
After a comfortable separation between the earl and countess of Glasbury lasting many years, the earl desires to sire an heir off the countess, Penelope. The reasons which previously checked the cruel earl's hand no longer matter seem to matter to him, and he demands his conjugal rights as a husband and master of his wife. The earl is, after all, well into his 40s while the countess Penelope well into her 30s. The earl harbors a cruel streak in sex as he enjoys inflicting pain and subordinating his sexual partners. A virginal Penelope didn't know any better at the beginning of her marriage, and finally flees after witnessing the earl's horrible treatment of another child. She divulges the worst to her friend and solicitor Julian Hampton. We know from THE SEDUCER that Hampton secured a permanent separation for Penelope by threatening to reveal the worst of the earl's twisted pleasures. Now, years later, the earl wants her back to sire an heir and no revelations of his sordid depravities will check him. English law bestows all the rights in marriage to the husband, especially an aristocrat, and Penelope has no choice but to run for her life.
Penelope runs straight to Julian Hampton like she did before and Julian promises to protect her from the earl. They retreat to Julian's rustic cottage but eventually the earl discovers Penelope's whereabouts. They again flee, this time to meet the one witness who could convince society that the earl has wronged Penelope. When they find the witness deceased, Penelope feels she has no choice but to flee the country and travel to America. Julian eventually convinces her to face the problem head-on and make a choice for herself instead of trying to protect her friends and family. Both decide to engage in a very public affair of convenience, hoping to incite the earl to file for divorce.
The story grows and evolves with twists and turns, getting stronger the more you read it. Pen's strife to escape the earl meshes with her burgeoning feelings for Julian. In the end, the varying elements of suspense, mystery, love and passion manage to entertain and engage.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Charmer, by Madeline Hunter [4]
****/***** (4/5)
The Dueling Society Series
1. The Seducer (**) - Daniel
2. The Saint (*) - Vergil
3. The Charmer (****) - Adrian
4. The Sinner (SKIP) - Dante
5. The Romantic - Julian
I was charmed by Hunter's 3rd installment in this Dueling Society series entitled THE CHARMER; finally a story in this series I can get behind! Although the inspiration for this novel lies with Adrian Burchard, THE CHARMER soundly belongs to his heroine Sophia Raughley, the new Duchess of Everdon. Remarkably, provisional laws granted by British royalty allows a daughter to inherit the Dukedom of Everdon after sons. Following the death of Sophia's cruel father, Sophia now comes into Everdon's title and vast estates. Only Sophia doesn't want any of it. THE CHARMER contains by far the strongest historical backdrop in this series and I always appreciate a story which offers more than the run-of-the-mill romance. Reform over aristocracy's power in the English Parliament entangles the new Duchess as each side of the Reform movement vies for Everdon's power over its 12 elected M.P.'s in the House of Commons. Everdon also holds a vital seat in the House of Lords and although the Duchess cannot sit in the House of Lords, the one she marries can.
Like most of Hunter's novels, the book is emotionally charged. Sophia's demons and tortured history take center stage and Adrian mitigates Sophia's journey from the frightened girl constantly running away to a woman who finally assumes responsibility and gives in love. Since THE CHARMER gradually reveals Sophia's demons, at first I found myself disliking Sophia who just seemed like a spoiled brat. But I found myself doing a 180 on her by the end of the novel as I grew to empathize her after learning of the treatment she receives from her father and her struggle with her tremendous guilt (over her brother and betraying reform activist Captain Brutus). It's a tribute to Hunter's writing and plotting that compels the evolution of the reader's opinion of a character along with the character. As for Adrian, I truly treasure Hunter's heroes like Adrian Burchard because even though he isn't the notorious rake of every other romance novel, he makes a substantial impact and the story wouldn't work if he didn't push Sophia at every step. He's dark, and unlike heroes who command a room when they walk in it, Adrian's power lies in the background since he's an accomplished spy. I always enjoy Hunter's heroes who aren't born into title and wealth. The prose is excellent, the characters poignant (especially Sophia), the h/h chemistry evident and I found the plotting and pacing equal parts political, witty, engaging, comical and suspenseful. THE CHARMER is the first book in this series from which the meticulous setup from the previous two novels finally hits home. I don't have too many complaints with this novel, and it's worth a re-read actually.
The Story.
After the Duke of Everdon passes away, the Iron Duke, the Duke of Wellington, dispatches his protege Adrian Burchard to fetch Everdon's errant daughter, the new Duchess of Everdon, Sophia Raughley, from Paris. Wellington and other members of the aristocracy along with the King of England require Everdon's vast influence to defeat a hotly-contested Reform bill currently in the House of Commons. Seven years ago, 29 year-old Sophia Raughley escaped her home, country and father following very traumatic events to while away in leisure and comfort in Paris. Adrian boldly a enters a staged harem scene in Sophia's home in Paris and whisks away a foxed and scantily-clad Sophia from further debauchery. Great, Adrian thinks, he has to deal with a debauched duchess and force her to accept a responsibility she renounces. Adrian perseveres however and after some fun games of wit and clashing of wills, Sophia finds herself back at Everdon's seat in Marleigh and suddenly visited by the King of England, the Duke of Wellington and other key members of the aristocracy. Wellington's political party - the Toreys - want Sophia to direct her subordinate boroughs to vote against the reform currently in the House of Commons while a prior amorous acquaintance, the radical Captain Brutus, threatens Sophia to support the reform. Wellington also wants Sophia to marry Gerard Stidolph according to her late father's wishes.
She's torn from both sides of the reform bill, she's haunted by demons from the past, and the King and Wellington want her to marry someone whom she despises. In the midst of it all, Adrian Burchard accompanies Sophia in her journey to overcome demons from the past and present as she travels to her boroughs and meets her M.P.s in the House of Commons. The tension between Sophia and Adrian slowly builds and their chemistry resonated. Whenever Sophia wants to run away from it all as she's done previously, Adrian lends a firm yet supporting gentle hand of reassurance. Adrian is fascinated by Sophia's layers and slowly but surely, he digs deeper to learn and love each layer.
There's truly some hilarious moments in the novel like Jacques' accusation that English men don't measure up to the lovemaking of Frenchmen and Adrian's funny rescue of Sophia and her menagerie from a burning house. There's really some witty banter between Sophia and Adrian that only Madeline Hunter can deliver on. There's always a danger in this type of novel focusing on a heroine's plight that the hero disappears and blends into the background but that's not the case here. Adrian Burchard makes a substantial impact from beginning to end.
Worth a re-read? No doubt.
The Dueling Society Series
1. The Seducer (**) - Daniel
2. The Saint (*) - Vergil
3. The Charmer (****) - Adrian
4. The Sinner (SKIP) - Dante
5. The Romantic - Julian
I was charmed by Hunter's 3rd installment in this Dueling Society series entitled THE CHARMER; finally a story in this series I can get behind! Although the inspiration for this novel lies with Adrian Burchard, THE CHARMER soundly belongs to his heroine Sophia Raughley, the new Duchess of Everdon. Remarkably, provisional laws granted by British royalty allows a daughter to inherit the Dukedom of Everdon after sons. Following the death of Sophia's cruel father, Sophia now comes into Everdon's title and vast estates. Only Sophia doesn't want any of it. THE CHARMER contains by far the strongest historical backdrop in this series and I always appreciate a story which offers more than the run-of-the-mill romance. Reform over aristocracy's power in the English Parliament entangles the new Duchess as each side of the Reform movement vies for Everdon's power over its 12 elected M.P.'s in the House of Commons. Everdon also holds a vital seat in the House of Lords and although the Duchess cannot sit in the House of Lords, the one she marries can.
Like most of Hunter's novels, the book is emotionally charged. Sophia's demons and tortured history take center stage and Adrian mitigates Sophia's journey from the frightened girl constantly running away to a woman who finally assumes responsibility and gives in love. Since THE CHARMER gradually reveals Sophia's demons, at first I found myself disliking Sophia who just seemed like a spoiled brat. But I found myself doing a 180 on her by the end of the novel as I grew to empathize her after learning of the treatment she receives from her father and her struggle with her tremendous guilt (over her brother and betraying reform activist Captain Brutus). It's a tribute to Hunter's writing and plotting that compels the evolution of the reader's opinion of a character along with the character. As for Adrian, I truly treasure Hunter's heroes like Adrian Burchard because even though he isn't the notorious rake of every other romance novel, he makes a substantial impact and the story wouldn't work if he didn't push Sophia at every step. He's dark, and unlike heroes who command a room when they walk in it, Adrian's power lies in the background since he's an accomplished spy. I always enjoy Hunter's heroes who aren't born into title and wealth. The prose is excellent, the characters poignant (especially Sophia), the h/h chemistry evident and I found the plotting and pacing equal parts political, witty, engaging, comical and suspenseful. THE CHARMER is the first book in this series from which the meticulous setup from the previous two novels finally hits home. I don't have too many complaints with this novel, and it's worth a re-read actually.
The Story.
After the Duke of Everdon passes away, the Iron Duke, the Duke of Wellington, dispatches his protege Adrian Burchard to fetch Everdon's errant daughter, the new Duchess of Everdon, Sophia Raughley, from Paris. Wellington and other members of the aristocracy along with the King of England require Everdon's vast influence to defeat a hotly-contested Reform bill currently in the House of Commons. Seven years ago, 29 year-old Sophia Raughley escaped her home, country and father following very traumatic events to while away in leisure and comfort in Paris. Adrian boldly a enters a staged harem scene in Sophia's home in Paris and whisks away a foxed and scantily-clad Sophia from further debauchery. Great, Adrian thinks, he has to deal with a debauched duchess and force her to accept a responsibility she renounces. Adrian perseveres however and after some fun games of wit and clashing of wills, Sophia finds herself back at Everdon's seat in Marleigh and suddenly visited by the King of England, the Duke of Wellington and other key members of the aristocracy. Wellington's political party - the Toreys - want Sophia to direct her subordinate boroughs to vote against the reform currently in the House of Commons while a prior amorous acquaintance, the radical Captain Brutus, threatens Sophia to support the reform. Wellington also wants Sophia to marry Gerard Stidolph according to her late father's wishes.
She's torn from both sides of the reform bill, she's haunted by demons from the past, and the King and Wellington want her to marry someone whom she despises. In the midst of it all, Adrian Burchard accompanies Sophia in her journey to overcome demons from the past and present as she travels to her boroughs and meets her M.P.s in the House of Commons. The tension between Sophia and Adrian slowly builds and their chemistry resonated. Whenever Sophia wants to run away from it all as she's done previously, Adrian lends a firm yet supporting gentle hand of reassurance. Adrian is fascinated by Sophia's layers and slowly but surely, he digs deeper to learn and love each layer.
There's truly some hilarious moments in the novel like Jacques' accusation that English men don't measure up to the lovemaking of Frenchmen and Adrian's funny rescue of Sophia and her menagerie from a burning house. There's really some witty banter between Sophia and Adrian that only Madeline Hunter can deliver on. There's always a danger in this type of novel focusing on a heroine's plight that the hero disappears and blends into the background but that's not the case here. Adrian Burchard makes a substantial impact from beginning to end.
Worth a re-read? No doubt.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Stranger I Married, by Sylvia Day [0]
/***** (0/5)
THE STRANGER I MARRIED depicts two taming-the-rake routines, and it's clear Sylvia Day enjoys her heroes giving chase and pining quite a bit. The routine dealing with our main hero and heroine is mostly imbalanced and unjustified. I hated both lead characters (Gerard/Gray and Isabel) and the soapy plotting was so bad it needed a secondary pairing (Rhys and Abby) to fill the pages. For an erotica, the love scenes here are just plain. ASK FOR IT (**) is much better in that department. There's no doubt appearance plays a role in attraction, but I found Day's infatuation with superficial appearances even towards the end exhausting. If I didn't know any better, one big cock is as good as any other for Isabel. I had a hard time understanding why Isabel loves Grayson other than his size. I guess that's enough for Isabel. Grayson pines so much throughout the second half and voices so much tender drivel for Isabel's delight, I believed him I suppose. But she really doesn't do anything to earn all that pining because she never trusts him.
A prior pregnancy ending in death makes Grayson very fearful of losing Isabel to childbirth. Instead of Isabel staying and talking him through it, Day has Isabel's brother Rhys coach Grayson like some idiot (Grayson also fails to recognize Isabel's misgivings for making their marriage legit when it's so plainly obvious). Rhys explains that Grayson should take the risk of pregnancy and childbirth to keep Isabel. Day's heroine Isabel here mistrusts, seethes and curses Grayson throughout the novel and even runs from him after both admit their love for each other in the end. The answer to every heroine's problems: when things aren't going exactly the way you want it, CUT and RUN! Make the hero give chase, test him repeatedly, say and do nothing to show your affections. The denouement showcases Isabel at the height of her bitchiness when endless words of love, caring and giving fail to convince Isabel ("I pledge my troth to you, my wife. Not for my needs, but for yours..." blah, blah, blah. Later: "Will you let me in?" Isabel: "Why?" Grayson: "I want to give you all that I am to you. Including children..." blah, blah, blah. Isabel's answer: "I agree to talk. Nothing more." My thoughts: B---, !$#@$! Then from Grayson: More blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. pining to prove himself; Grayson, along with having perfect abs, perfect butt, biceps, a monster cock, a title, and abundant wealth, is also a poet).
The entire story has Grayson needing to prove himself for Isabel and win her affections as if Isabel has been some chaste virgin her whole life. I found it repetitive and strenuous to read. There's nothing there, Isabel does little more than seethe and lambaste Grayson the entire book because she believes Grayson is exactly like her first husband who cheated on her. Isabel holds it against Grayson that years ago he was "cheating" on the woman ("Em") he professed to love (who was married) with another woman. Despite the fact that both the women went into the affair with Grayson eyes wide open and knew of his libertine ways. Despite the fact that Isabel has had many paramours herself between her first husband and Grayson. Why is it that Grayson has to constantly prove himself? Because Day has some perverted notion to reform him? But he was already reformed by the time he returns to Isabel after his hiatus. Isabel believes Grayson wants to sire a child off her and so Grayson assiduously spills his seed elsewhere to allay those concerns (every time). Many times Isabel thinks Grayson with other people and so Grayson must assuage her concerns there. Isabel never surrenders all of herself to Grayson because she believes him exactly like her cheating first husband. If anything, It was Isabel's mistrust and commitment issues that needed reforming. When the issue with children drives our lovers apart, it's again Grayson who needs to prove himself and chase Isabel. I'd love to see Grayson finally discover bliss with someone else after she drives him away. Screw Isabel if she doesn't know she has a good thing when she has it.
More than once, the book talks about how true love is about accepting the other person with their faults. I don't see any faults with Grayson: he's physically perfect, amply-endowed, titled, and wealthy. Arrogance, high-handedness and lascivious debauchery in heroes are actually celebrated in historical romances like they are in THE STRANGER I MARRIED (Rhys is a celebrated rake too). Hence, I don't consider these qualities all that bad since sexual experience in heroes is a prerequisite more than anything else. It's why readers of romance gravitate towards alpha heroes so much. While threatening Isabel's last paramour Hargreaves in the second half, Grayson (Gerard) thinks to himself that Isabel was not a fickle woman to leave Hargreaves for him. Which is bullshit because a muscled body, big cock and a quick recovery time in bed are pretty much all it takes for Isabel to submit to Grayson and ditch Hargreaves. I'd say that's pretty fickle. Sex is great [with Grayson] and she gets multiple orgasms for every one of Grayson's. That's nice, Grayson is your regular cartoon pimp complete with trimmings of a tortured love story from his past.
The plotting is mostly immature and soapy. Everyone in the book seeks a good fuck and lusts for the forbidden affair which appeals so much to women (Isabel, Grayson, Grayson's brother, Isabel's parents outside marriage, etc.). You have a marriage bargain that invites both spouses to sleep with everyone but each other. Neither recognize potential problems that could arise from such an arrangement. Then once Grayson decides he wants his wife for himself, you have these episodic jealousies and outings introduced by other characters. Twice, Isabel chances on Grayson and his former mistress Lady Stanhope (Barbara) in a compromising situation from which Isabel draws all the wrong conclusions and mistrusts Grayson even more. There's even a scorned mistress and an evil mother posing road blocks as they try to confound Grayson and Isabel's lusty relationship with misunderstandings and misconceptions. After all of Isabel's misconceptions and misunderstandings are out of the way, there's the children issue which rears its ugly head. First, it's hard to believe that Isabel would remain childless with so many men considering the time period's inadequate contraceptive methods. Second, if she wants children so much, just pick a guy to screw like she has previously and get a child off him! The book is so inane, it turns its attentions to a second pairing: Isabel's rakehell brother Rhys (aren't they all rakes?) and the virgin spinster Abby. Just so we have at least one pairing where there's a handsome rake deflowering the ordinary-of-appearance virgin.
THE STRANGER I MARRIED depicts two taming-the-rake routines, and it's clear Sylvia Day enjoys her heroes giving chase and pining quite a bit. The routine dealing with our main hero and heroine is mostly imbalanced and unjustified. I hated both lead characters (Gerard/Gray and Isabel) and the soapy plotting was so bad it needed a secondary pairing (Rhys and Abby) to fill the pages. For an erotica, the love scenes here are just plain. ASK FOR IT (**) is much better in that department. There's no doubt appearance plays a role in attraction, but I found Day's infatuation with superficial appearances even towards the end exhausting. If I didn't know any better, one big cock is as good as any other for Isabel. I had a hard time understanding why Isabel loves Grayson other than his size. I guess that's enough for Isabel. Grayson pines so much throughout the second half and voices so much tender drivel for Isabel's delight, I believed him I suppose. But she really doesn't do anything to earn all that pining because she never trusts him.
A prior pregnancy ending in death makes Grayson very fearful of losing Isabel to childbirth. Instead of Isabel staying and talking him through it, Day has Isabel's brother Rhys coach Grayson like some idiot (Grayson also fails to recognize Isabel's misgivings for making their marriage legit when it's so plainly obvious). Rhys explains that Grayson should take the risk of pregnancy and childbirth to keep Isabel. Day's heroine Isabel here mistrusts, seethes and curses Grayson throughout the novel and even runs from him after both admit their love for each other in the end. The answer to every heroine's problems: when things aren't going exactly the way you want it, CUT and RUN! Make the hero give chase, test him repeatedly, say and do nothing to show your affections. The denouement showcases Isabel at the height of her bitchiness when endless words of love, caring and giving fail to convince Isabel ("I pledge my troth to you, my wife. Not for my needs, but for yours..." blah, blah, blah. Later: "Will you let me in?" Isabel: "Why?" Grayson: "I want to give you all that I am to you. Including children..." blah, blah, blah. Isabel's answer: "I agree to talk. Nothing more." My thoughts: B---, !$#@$! Then from Grayson: More blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. pining to prove himself; Grayson, along with having perfect abs, perfect butt, biceps, a monster cock, a title, and abundant wealth, is also a poet).
The entire story has Grayson needing to prove himself for Isabel and win her affections as if Isabel has been some chaste virgin her whole life. I found it repetitive and strenuous to read. There's nothing there, Isabel does little more than seethe and lambaste Grayson the entire book because she believes Grayson is exactly like her first husband who cheated on her. Isabel holds it against Grayson that years ago he was "cheating" on the woman ("Em") he professed to love (who was married) with another woman. Despite the fact that both the women went into the affair with Grayson eyes wide open and knew of his libertine ways. Despite the fact that Isabel has had many paramours herself between her first husband and Grayson. Why is it that Grayson has to constantly prove himself? Because Day has some perverted notion to reform him? But he was already reformed by the time he returns to Isabel after his hiatus. Isabel believes Grayson wants to sire a child off her and so Grayson assiduously spills his seed elsewhere to allay those concerns (every time). Many times Isabel thinks Grayson with other people and so Grayson must assuage her concerns there. Isabel never surrenders all of herself to Grayson because she believes him exactly like her cheating first husband. If anything, It was Isabel's mistrust and commitment issues that needed reforming. When the issue with children drives our lovers apart, it's again Grayson who needs to prove himself and chase Isabel. I'd love to see Grayson finally discover bliss with someone else after she drives him away. Screw Isabel if she doesn't know she has a good thing when she has it.
More than once, the book talks about how true love is about accepting the other person with their faults. I don't see any faults with Grayson: he's physically perfect, amply-endowed, titled, and wealthy. Arrogance, high-handedness and lascivious debauchery in heroes are actually celebrated in historical romances like they are in THE STRANGER I MARRIED (Rhys is a celebrated rake too). Hence, I don't consider these qualities all that bad since sexual experience in heroes is a prerequisite more than anything else. It's why readers of romance gravitate towards alpha heroes so much. While threatening Isabel's last paramour Hargreaves in the second half, Grayson (Gerard) thinks to himself that Isabel was not a fickle woman to leave Hargreaves for him. Which is bullshit because a muscled body, big cock and a quick recovery time in bed are pretty much all it takes for Isabel to submit to Grayson and ditch Hargreaves. I'd say that's pretty fickle. Sex is great [with Grayson] and she gets multiple orgasms for every one of Grayson's. That's nice, Grayson is your regular cartoon pimp complete with trimmings of a tortured love story from his past.
The plotting is mostly immature and soapy. Everyone in the book seeks a good fuck and lusts for the forbidden affair which appeals so much to women (Isabel, Grayson, Grayson's brother, Isabel's parents outside marriage, etc.). You have a marriage bargain that invites both spouses to sleep with everyone but each other. Neither recognize potential problems that could arise from such an arrangement. Then once Grayson decides he wants his wife for himself, you have these episodic jealousies and outings introduced by other characters. Twice, Isabel chances on Grayson and his former mistress Lady Stanhope (Barbara) in a compromising situation from which Isabel draws all the wrong conclusions and mistrusts Grayson even more. There's even a scorned mistress and an evil mother posing road blocks as they try to confound Grayson and Isabel's lusty relationship with misunderstandings and misconceptions. After all of Isabel's misconceptions and misunderstandings are out of the way, there's the children issue which rears its ugly head. First, it's hard to believe that Isabel would remain childless with so many men considering the time period's inadequate contraceptive methods. Second, if she wants children so much, just pick a guy to screw like she has previously and get a child off him! The book is so inane, it turns its attentions to a second pairing: Isabel's rakehell brother Rhys (aren't they all rakes?) and the virgin spinster Abby. Just so we have at least one pairing where there's a handsome rake deflowering the ordinary-of-appearance virgin.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
The Bargain, by Mary Jo Putney [1]
*/***** (1/5)
I don't think I've read a novel as uninviting, as boring and as unimaginative as Mary Jo Putney's THE BARGAIN in quite some time. In THE BARGAIN, you have the aristocratic and domineering Lady Jocelyn Kendal, a heroine with commitment issues who flees her kind, down-to-earth hero Major David Lancaster after he conveys words of love. Romance novelists savor shattering the arrogance of male aristocrats while lauding and respecting that same quality in their lady heroines. Lady Jocelyn represents the crown of beauty, elegance, compassion and aristocracy to David, but I disliked Jocelyn's superior, snide demeanor, often directed towards David's sister Sally (more than once, the beautiful Jocelyn thinks Sally's bland looks beneath her station). Granted, Sally inflames their belligerent interactions, but it's always Sally apologizing to Jocelyn (twice), it's Sally begging Jocelyn to allow her dying brother to stay in Jocelyn's home (p. 69). David's patience with the commitment-wary Jocelyn knows no bounds as it takes over 320 pages for something to happen in this 371-page papberback. I found the exchanges between David and Jocelyn completely bereft of passion and chemistry. Putney's David Lancaster is very dry; it's possible to write engaging honorable heroes, but you'd never know it from this book. The book belongs to Jocelyn, her tiresome struggle to overcome a family scandal during her childhood and consequently commit to David. The book isn't big on the something-happening department as it relays an interminable succession of the mundane. A cure for insomniacs to be sure. Impossibly, the prose and writing fare worse than the plotting and pacing. For instance, consider: "[Jocelyn] looked tantalizingly huggable." (p. 116) Nevermind that David's thoughts about Jocelyn being "huggable" here seemed better suited to what a girl wants a guy to think, but tantalizingly huggable? Juvenile prose to say the least.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
The basic idea of the novel isn't bad: a soldier dying from his injuries at Waterloo while the daughter of an earl in need of a husband before her 25th birthday to retain her fortune. The book reminded me of Nicola Cornick's awful DECEIVED in which its heroine wishes a husband deeply in debt and safely locked behind bars to acquire her own debts. Regrettably, THE BARGAIN fails to execute this idea in any entertaining fashion. In exchange for securing his sister Sally's long-term future, David agrees to marry Jocelyn and help her secure her fortune. Neither expect the marriage to last as all the doctors anticipate David's death at any minute. When David's sister Sally perseveres to help cure David, Jocelyn is left with an unwanted husband. Jocelyn has her sights set on a notorious rake from the beginning: the Duke of Candover. Since Candover only engages in affairs with married women and widows, Jocelyn hopes her widow status will soon attract the pimp's attentions. David has other plans and methodically courts Jocelyn as her husband after his convalescence from a paralysis. Conveniently, David's elder three brothers perish and he inherits a barony. Jocelyn agrees to help David organize his affairs at Westholme since she has more experience in the administration of an estate. When highway robbers jump the coach, the book showcases Jocelyn's superior gunship as she kills the man threatening David. Not only only is she beautiful, a virgin, an heiress, a charitable philanthropist, and a competent estate and finance manager, but she's also an excellent gunshot. David's stolid courtship continues at Westholme. The book is at its exhausting worst here: David arranges affairs outside the estate while Jocelyn helps tidy up his home from the inside. They go about their business during the day, they share each other's day over dinner, they exchange a comfortable kiss, go to separate beds to sleep, rinse and repeat. Jocelyn finally invites David's amorous desires in bed when the prospect of sleeping with him would help improve her chances with Candover since Candover shuns innocent virgins. After they share a night of passionless sex, David expresses his heartfelt words of love. Jocelyn rejects David after their first night together and travels back to London to kiss Candover. The glutton for punishment that he is, David gives chase and finds Jocelyn kissing Candover. When Jocelyn mildly explains her scarred childhood with her divorced mother and that she was experimenting to ensure she has no feelings for the duke anymore, David happily agrees like the puppy dog he is. The End.
In spite of the slight gender reversals in personality and status, many things in this book conformed to the romance stereotype. It's David who must pursue Jocelyn and make all the moves. It's David who must chase Jocelyn after she rejects him towards the end. The book mentions Jocelyn is no "green-eyed girl" and yet she's a 25 year-old virgin like all the other virginal heroines. David courts Jocelyn so languidly, so sluggishly, so passively, you have to wonder about their chemistry. Because of her childhood scars, Jocelyn responds so disinterestedly, so apathetically that if the roles were reversed, romance readers would scream for the girl to move on and not waste your time! I know I was screaming for David to move on and let Candover have her. All the while, Jocelyn yearns for the notorious rake, the Duke of Candover. Towards the end, Putney sets up a vulnerable Candover for a future book. A rake and libertine shielding a deep vulnerable side, where have we heard that one before? I was hoping to see Jocelyn realize her dream of sleeping with Candover. At least then David would be free of her.
I thought Sally steals the show completely and she deserved much more appreciation and love from her brother David for everything she does for him. Sally survives independently as a governess, visits her dying brother daily, perseveres to cure him despite the odds, nurses her brother, and then aids Dr. Ian Kinlock immeasurably with his finances and practice. She's spirited, giving, resilient and unafraid to make the first move. There isn't a guy in the world that wouldn't fall in love with Sally Lancaster. Compared to Jocelyn's uninspiring paragon of superiority and aristocracy, Sally shines and perseveres.
Anyway, a very boring book to a vaguely interesting idea.
I don't think I've read a novel as uninviting, as boring and as unimaginative as Mary Jo Putney's THE BARGAIN in quite some time. In THE BARGAIN, you have the aristocratic and domineering Lady Jocelyn Kendal, a heroine with commitment issues who flees her kind, down-to-earth hero Major David Lancaster after he conveys words of love. Romance novelists savor shattering the arrogance of male aristocrats while lauding and respecting that same quality in their lady heroines. Lady Jocelyn represents the crown of beauty, elegance, compassion and aristocracy to David, but I disliked Jocelyn's superior, snide demeanor, often directed towards David's sister Sally (more than once, the beautiful Jocelyn thinks Sally's bland looks beneath her station). Granted, Sally inflames their belligerent interactions, but it's always Sally apologizing to Jocelyn (twice), it's Sally begging Jocelyn to allow her dying brother to stay in Jocelyn's home (p. 69). David's patience with the commitment-wary Jocelyn knows no bounds as it takes over 320 pages for something to happen in this 371-page papberback. I found the exchanges between David and Jocelyn completely bereft of passion and chemistry. Putney's David Lancaster is very dry; it's possible to write engaging honorable heroes, but you'd never know it from this book. The book belongs to Jocelyn, her tiresome struggle to overcome a family scandal during her childhood and consequently commit to David. The book isn't big on the something-happening department as it relays an interminable succession of the mundane. A cure for insomniacs to be sure. Impossibly, the prose and writing fare worse than the plotting and pacing. For instance, consider: "[Jocelyn] looked tantalizingly huggable." (p. 116) Nevermind that David's thoughts about Jocelyn being "huggable" here seemed better suited to what a girl wants a guy to think, but tantalizingly huggable? Juvenile prose to say the least.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
The basic idea of the novel isn't bad: a soldier dying from his injuries at Waterloo while the daughter of an earl in need of a husband before her 25th birthday to retain her fortune. The book reminded me of Nicola Cornick's awful DECEIVED in which its heroine wishes a husband deeply in debt and safely locked behind bars to acquire her own debts. Regrettably, THE BARGAIN fails to execute this idea in any entertaining fashion. In exchange for securing his sister Sally's long-term future, David agrees to marry Jocelyn and help her secure her fortune. Neither expect the marriage to last as all the doctors anticipate David's death at any minute. When David's sister Sally perseveres to help cure David, Jocelyn is left with an unwanted husband. Jocelyn has her sights set on a notorious rake from the beginning: the Duke of Candover. Since Candover only engages in affairs with married women and widows, Jocelyn hopes her widow status will soon attract the pimp's attentions. David has other plans and methodically courts Jocelyn as her husband after his convalescence from a paralysis. Conveniently, David's elder three brothers perish and he inherits a barony. Jocelyn agrees to help David organize his affairs at Westholme since she has more experience in the administration of an estate. When highway robbers jump the coach, the book showcases Jocelyn's superior gunship as she kills the man threatening David. Not only only is she beautiful, a virgin, an heiress, a charitable philanthropist, and a competent estate and finance manager, but she's also an excellent gunshot. David's stolid courtship continues at Westholme. The book is at its exhausting worst here: David arranges affairs outside the estate while Jocelyn helps tidy up his home from the inside. They go about their business during the day, they share each other's day over dinner, they exchange a comfortable kiss, go to separate beds to sleep, rinse and repeat. Jocelyn finally invites David's amorous desires in bed when the prospect of sleeping with him would help improve her chances with Candover since Candover shuns innocent virgins. After they share a night of passionless sex, David expresses his heartfelt words of love. Jocelyn rejects David after their first night together and travels back to London to kiss Candover. The glutton for punishment that he is, David gives chase and finds Jocelyn kissing Candover. When Jocelyn mildly explains her scarred childhood with her divorced mother and that she was experimenting to ensure she has no feelings for the duke anymore, David happily agrees like the puppy dog he is. The End.
In spite of the slight gender reversals in personality and status, many things in this book conformed to the romance stereotype. It's David who must pursue Jocelyn and make all the moves. It's David who must chase Jocelyn after she rejects him towards the end. The book mentions Jocelyn is no "green-eyed girl" and yet she's a 25 year-old virgin like all the other virginal heroines. David courts Jocelyn so languidly, so sluggishly, so passively, you have to wonder about their chemistry. Because of her childhood scars, Jocelyn responds so disinterestedly, so apathetically that if the roles were reversed, romance readers would scream for the girl to move on and not waste your time! I know I was screaming for David to move on and let Candover have her. All the while, Jocelyn yearns for the notorious rake, the Duke of Candover. Towards the end, Putney sets up a vulnerable Candover for a future book. A rake and libertine shielding a deep vulnerable side, where have we heard that one before? I was hoping to see Jocelyn realize her dream of sleeping with Candover. At least then David would be free of her.
I thought Sally steals the show completely and she deserved much more appreciation and love from her brother David for everything she does for him. Sally survives independently as a governess, visits her dying brother daily, perseveres to cure him despite the odds, nurses her brother, and then aids Dr. Ian Kinlock immeasurably with his finances and practice. She's spirited, giving, resilient and unafraid to make the first move. There isn't a guy in the world that wouldn't fall in love with Sally Lancaster. Compared to Jocelyn's uninspiring paragon of superiority and aristocracy, Sally shines and perseveres.
Anyway, a very boring book to a vaguely interesting idea.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Deceived, by Nicola Cornick [0]
/***** (0/5)
"I love you," [Marcus] said..."Do you love me, Bella?" [he asked].
"Yes," Isabella whispered. "I told you." { Much earlier and it was a simple 'I love you too' in response to Marcus' prior heartfelt words of love }
"Tell me again. I need to hear it many, many times."
"Only if you tell me, too."
"I love you," he said... "I am no gentleman, but I do love you."
The above epitomizes Nicola Cornick's lopsided 378-page paperback DECEIVED. The heroine Isabella immaturely wants to one-up Marcus at every turn and requires to hear him voice the words of love first and a lot more than the other way around. Calculatingly and deliberately, she makes sure to win everything against Marcus and gives nothing in return to all the love, affection, caring, comfort and tenderness her hero Marcus showers her. He certainly earns her love, but she does and says nothing to earn his and like most romance novels, DECEIVED doesn't feel it's necessary for the heroine to do anything to earn a hero's love other than disparage, humiliate and insult him. Another one-way street? You bet. A few notable exceptions aside (Madeline Hunter, Elizabeth Hoyt, Mary Balogh, Laura Kinsale, Julie Garwood, and KEW of course), historical romance novelists promote the same kind of heroine every novel: haughty, barb-tongued, give/concede nothing first, and demand/take everything. The prose was average, and the plot to locate the villain Warwick was... poor. Marcus knows Warwick involved Isabella's brother Freddie in Warwick's schemes. Yet Marcus fails to take steps to tail Freddie who could lead Marcus to Warwick. Instead, he's ineffectually camping out at Fleet Prison for leads on Warwick. At the end, we have a long conversation between Warwick and Isabella to settle things. Yeah, this entire plot with Warwick was just plain bad. Again we have lead characters in a romance novel never saying how they really feel until the very end, all to prolong the novel and inundate readers with repetitious introspection. The premise of the novel (heroine jilts hero) initially peaked my interest, much to my misfortune. I thought Sylvia Day's hero in ASK FOR IT (also a Marcus) was *much* better and exhibited a more realistic response after he's jilted.
At the onset, DECEIVED belabors on the meandering thoughts and background exposition of its hero and heroine pair. It seems like for every sentence spoken there exists paragraphs of rumination and exposition. I know women want to know what people are thinking, but the musings and thoughts here struck a glibly cloying cord. Part 1-Revenge pits the hero Marcus and the heroine Isabella against each other as each try to gain a leg up on the other. I found this juvenile game adolescently contrived. Marcus here seemed less a guy in love and more like a feminine concoction for the heroine's delight. Of course we know who will win this combative game: it's always the heroine. As "masculine" as the book tries to make Marcus, he's emotionally dithering, stupid and ultimately submissive while Isabella is obstinately resolute, witty and rebellious. Marcus is always the bad guy, always at fault, always wrong while Isabella always the victim mandating apologies and respect and always right. I found the plotting very immature, very one-sided while the characterizations juvenile. Because of the lopsided nature of this "romance", the love scenes never made an impact and seemed little more than a cartoon pimp servicing a virgin-like heroine. Despite being experienced, the book fears allowing the heroine initiate anything sensually or go down on him like he goes down her in the love scenes.
The best pairing in the novel? Not the main one, but rather, Isabella's sister Pen and Marcus's friend Alistair. I was hoping for more of Pen and Alistair actually.
During Part 2-Seduction, we have Marcus do a 180 and play the courtly suitor because he feels bad for treating Isabella poorly. She demands his respect, his apologies (p.222, "...he had not asked for [her] forgiveness..."), his forgiveness, his trust, patience, comfort, tenderness and love (and demands it all from Marcus first) and offers nothing in return. She's always the victim, always right and always immaturely needs to one-up Marcus in their combative game. Despite ruthlessly purchasing Marcus to pass off her debts, blackmailing him (p. 26), debasing him in public at an ambassador's party (she enjoys that), jilting him 12 years ago at the altar and refusing to see him or return any of his letters by way of explanation, the novel contrives to make Isabella morally and justifiably on superior ground compared to Marcus. Isabella callously goads Marcus about the jilt by saying she thought he was made of sterner stuff than become broken-hearted about her (p. 114). When Marcus says some cruel things in response, of course it's Marcus who needs a dressing down and it's Marcus who apologizes often and to the very end (p. 372). Despite Marcus apologizing first and often, going down on her in the love scenes, servicing her, paying off her debts, complimenting her after a Salterton party (p. 276), protecting her, respecting her, comforting her about about her lost child and last lover , etc., etc., I see very little, if any, outright reciprocation from Isabella other than in her meandering thoughts. Although no one wants a biddable, subservient wife, Isabella says little and shows less in terms of affection and caring for Marcus. She dismisses him after they share a heated public discussion at a ball early on, she throws him out after he shows up at her London home late at night, she announces their marriage in the Times in a way that purposefully disparages him (twice), and she intentionally demeans him at an ambassador's party. Not only debasing him in public, but taking pleasure in it. In the beginning, she wishes never to see Marcus out of prison and makes no attempt to free him despite supposedly "loving" him. Please. And Marcus accepts everything and the book makes him constantly think he needs to grovel and demean himself before her.
The whole time, I felt Isabella flaunts her superiority, and says and does nothing to earn his love. No apology for breaking his heart years before (and I understand her dire circumstances compelling her to marry someone else, but she still coldly brushes off his feelings after the jilt). No apology for humiliating and debasing him time and time again. No apology for purchasing him or blackmailing him. No comforting him, no taking a chance and telling him she loves him first, and no sorry's for retreating behind her cold shell of indifference again and again. Isabella has too much pride to say the words of love first or offer any concessions or apologies and yet expects Marcus to give and initiate everything whether it's acts of love or words of love.
When Isabella divulges she had taken a lover during her discontented marriage, I couldn't understand Marcus' jealous and possessive reactions, even considering the time period. He already assumed from the start she'd had many lovers before, and when she reveals she only had one, he should be happy, not wishy-washy and dithering.
Marcus never seemed like a real male character, just something to crumble and mold according to a woman's delights while the woman concedes and reciprocates nothing outright. Marcus serves as a vessel to assert the Isabella's superiority in every way and to bestow his tender obeisances in the love scenes. I found Marcus' wishy-washy, indecisive introspective musings very trying to read. I'm probably more critical of romance novelist heroes than most, but nevertheless much of Marcus' behavior, speech and thoughts elicit annoyance because it seems so forced, so nonsensical and/or so dumb. For instance, although Marcus desires revenge against Isabella for jilting him at the altar 12 years ago, the book tempers Marcus' suitably spiteful designs with wishy-washy lust, possession, rage (over anyone saying anything bad about her), sympathy, affection and jealousy (jealousy at the prospect of Isabella turning to another man for marriage at Fleet Prison). The dressing down he receives from Isabella at an ambassador's soiree because the important people knew her better than knew him was more juvenile nonsense. She relishes in dressing him down and making him look bad there. Talk about childish. Earlier, he gives her his family jewels which she rejects and then she proceeds to debase him publicly at the soiree. What does he do in response? Well he kisses her in public. Of course, something she craves anyway at all times. A man's pride doesn't work that way, which is why it's palpable that Marcus represents a feminine concoction, nothing more.
Then we have this game Marcus and Isabella play to gain the upper hand on each other. After Isabella agrees to retract a rather unfavorable admission of their marriage in the Times, Marcus naively accepts her honorable intentions at retraction. Then, he finds out later that she simply retracted her unfavorable account of Marcus in their marriage by depicting worse circumstances which denigrate Marcus' name. Even though he knew that she fight him every step of the way, he stupidly did not request to read the retraction before she sent the retraction to the Times. Some of the things he says and thinks to his best friend Alistair after reading Isabella's supposed retraction in the Times confirms a nonsensical and weak characterization concocted for the heroine's benefit. For example: "Devil take it, I'm starting to think that she married me just to plague me." Both of their adolescent plotting is supposed to be funny and his consequent frustration with her rejection of his terms intends to ascribe a humorous appeal. I found myself reacting with aggravation and disgust at this adolescently dumb cartoon pimp of a hero. After his friend scolds him that he started the revenge, the book forces Marcus to think he provoked her by his own high-handed behavior and he had only himself to blame. What high-handed behavior? It's not like she signed on to any of his terms. When he shows up at her home one night because he wants her, she later throws him out. Again, the book makes him think that he deserved it. When Isabella purposefully garbs herself in a provocative cherry-red silk for a ton event to annoy Marcus, he obviously lusts for her and thinks, "Damn it, she would drive him insane at this rate." The book yet again makes Marcus think he's the bad guy here forcing his thoughts at self-reproach, that he had done very little to earn Isabella's respect (p. 171). On the one hand, Isabella craves Marcus' rugged masculinity, and yet he thinks, says and does some of the most ridiculously emasculate things.
The premise? Isabella seeks a Fleet Prison man for a husband whose debts make her own twenty thousand debt look like nothing. She wants him to take on her debts, marry him, then annul the marriage after she comes into her inheritance. She would pay a prisoner to take on her debt. I thought this premise was good, and I liked Isabella's ruthlessness. Hence, I was disappointed that the book tried to temper Isabella's plans by highlighting her generosity and compassion. She wants to give some coin to the prison's low-class occupants in the stews. We're reminded again and again that she feels dirty and bad for doing all this. We get it, she's not a bad person, no reason to drum it out mercilessly.
The worst of it? When Isabella learns that Marcus wishes to safeguard his true identity and his location at Fleet Prison, she uses that information to blackmail him into marriage and later wishes the man she supposedly loves stays in prison. Marcus' nonchalant reaction to her blackmailing sickened me. Any guy would be angry, particularly enraged at Isabella's callous blackmailing. She jilts him at the altar 12 years ago, blackmails him into a marriage of convenience to pass off her debts to him 12 years later, and then doesn't feel any compunction to free the man from prison, a man she supposedly loves. Forget about freeing him from prison, she expresses displeasure at the very thought of seeing him out of prison. Marcus knows all this and yet he pines for her regardless. We see him in emotional turmoil and really more excited than anything else at the prospect of seeing her out of prison. He rages over his friend demeaning Isabella (and yet Isabella has no qualms demeaning Marcus in public with the newspaper and at an ambassador's party). He dislikes the idea of people talking about her soiled reputation at a ball. He wants to protect her. How does this even remotely compute? Assuming we dismiss the jilt years ago and discount way she wants to marry and drop someone in Fleet Prison, I thought Marcus should be most upset at how she tries to blackmail him for her ends. What if divulging his true identity and location at Fleet Prison would hurt others? It won't but she doesn't know that!
I thought Marcus' clandestine stay at Fleet Prison served nothing. He learned nothing new about the villain Warwick and he accomplished nothing. Seemed like a very poor ruse to have Isabella chance on him in prison so it will feel like a different kind of historical romance even though all the introspective musings are exactly the same.
"I love you," [Marcus] said..."Do you love me, Bella?" [he asked].
"Yes," Isabella whispered. "I told you." { Much earlier and it was a simple 'I love you too' in response to Marcus' prior heartfelt words of love }
"Tell me again. I need to hear it many, many times."
"Only if you tell me, too."
"I love you," he said... "I am no gentleman, but I do love you."
The above epitomizes Nicola Cornick's lopsided 378-page paperback DECEIVED. The heroine Isabella immaturely wants to one-up Marcus at every turn and requires to hear him voice the words of love first and a lot more than the other way around. Calculatingly and deliberately, she makes sure to win everything against Marcus and gives nothing in return to all the love, affection, caring, comfort and tenderness her hero Marcus showers her. He certainly earns her love, but she does and says nothing to earn his and like most romance novels, DECEIVED doesn't feel it's necessary for the heroine to do anything to earn a hero's love other than disparage, humiliate and insult him. Another one-way street? You bet. A few notable exceptions aside (Madeline Hunter, Elizabeth Hoyt, Mary Balogh, Laura Kinsale, Julie Garwood, and KEW of course), historical romance novelists promote the same kind of heroine every novel: haughty, barb-tongued, give/concede nothing first, and demand/take everything. The prose was average, and the plot to locate the villain Warwick was... poor. Marcus knows Warwick involved Isabella's brother Freddie in Warwick's schemes. Yet Marcus fails to take steps to tail Freddie who could lead Marcus to Warwick. Instead, he's ineffectually camping out at Fleet Prison for leads on Warwick. At the end, we have a long conversation between Warwick and Isabella to settle things. Yeah, this entire plot with Warwick was just plain bad. Again we have lead characters in a romance novel never saying how they really feel until the very end, all to prolong the novel and inundate readers with repetitious introspection. The premise of the novel (heroine jilts hero) initially peaked my interest, much to my misfortune. I thought Sylvia Day's hero in ASK FOR IT (also a Marcus) was *much* better and exhibited a more realistic response after he's jilted.
At the onset, DECEIVED belabors on the meandering thoughts and background exposition of its hero and heroine pair. It seems like for every sentence spoken there exists paragraphs of rumination and exposition. I know women want to know what people are thinking, but the musings and thoughts here struck a glibly cloying cord. Part 1-Revenge pits the hero Marcus and the heroine Isabella against each other as each try to gain a leg up on the other. I found this juvenile game adolescently contrived. Marcus here seemed less a guy in love and more like a feminine concoction for the heroine's delight. Of course we know who will win this combative game: it's always the heroine. As "masculine" as the book tries to make Marcus, he's emotionally dithering, stupid and ultimately submissive while Isabella is obstinately resolute, witty and rebellious. Marcus is always the bad guy, always at fault, always wrong while Isabella always the victim mandating apologies and respect and always right. I found the plotting very immature, very one-sided while the characterizations juvenile. Because of the lopsided nature of this "romance", the love scenes never made an impact and seemed little more than a cartoon pimp servicing a virgin-like heroine. Despite being experienced, the book fears allowing the heroine initiate anything sensually or go down on him like he goes down her in the love scenes.
The best pairing in the novel? Not the main one, but rather, Isabella's sister Pen and Marcus's friend Alistair. I was hoping for more of Pen and Alistair actually.
During Part 2-Seduction, we have Marcus do a 180 and play the courtly suitor because he feels bad for treating Isabella poorly. She demands his respect, his apologies (p.222, "...he had not asked for [her] forgiveness..."), his forgiveness, his trust, patience, comfort, tenderness and love (and demands it all from Marcus first) and offers nothing in return. She's always the victim, always right and always immaturely needs to one-up Marcus in their combative game. Despite ruthlessly purchasing Marcus to pass off her debts, blackmailing him (p. 26), debasing him in public at an ambassador's party (she enjoys that), jilting him 12 years ago at the altar and refusing to see him or return any of his letters by way of explanation, the novel contrives to make Isabella morally and justifiably on superior ground compared to Marcus. Isabella callously goads Marcus about the jilt by saying she thought he was made of sterner stuff than become broken-hearted about her (p. 114). When Marcus says some cruel things in response, of course it's Marcus who needs a dressing down and it's Marcus who apologizes often and to the very end (p. 372). Despite Marcus apologizing first and often, going down on her in the love scenes, servicing her, paying off her debts, complimenting her after a Salterton party (p. 276), protecting her, respecting her, comforting her about about her lost child and last lover , etc., etc., I see very little, if any, outright reciprocation from Isabella other than in her meandering thoughts. Although no one wants a biddable, subservient wife, Isabella says little and shows less in terms of affection and caring for Marcus. She dismisses him after they share a heated public discussion at a ball early on, she throws him out after he shows up at her London home late at night, she announces their marriage in the Times in a way that purposefully disparages him (twice), and she intentionally demeans him at an ambassador's party. Not only debasing him in public, but taking pleasure in it. In the beginning, she wishes never to see Marcus out of prison and makes no attempt to free him despite supposedly "loving" him. Please. And Marcus accepts everything and the book makes him constantly think he needs to grovel and demean himself before her.
The whole time, I felt Isabella flaunts her superiority, and says and does nothing to earn his love. No apology for breaking his heart years before (and I understand her dire circumstances compelling her to marry someone else, but she still coldly brushes off his feelings after the jilt). No apology for humiliating and debasing him time and time again. No apology for purchasing him or blackmailing him. No comforting him, no taking a chance and telling him she loves him first, and no sorry's for retreating behind her cold shell of indifference again and again. Isabella has too much pride to say the words of love first or offer any concessions or apologies and yet expects Marcus to give and initiate everything whether it's acts of love or words of love.
When Isabella divulges she had taken a lover during her discontented marriage, I couldn't understand Marcus' jealous and possessive reactions, even considering the time period. He already assumed from the start she'd had many lovers before, and when she reveals she only had one, he should be happy, not wishy-washy and dithering.
Marcus never seemed like a real male character, just something to crumble and mold according to a woman's delights while the woman concedes and reciprocates nothing outright. Marcus serves as a vessel to assert the Isabella's superiority in every way and to bestow his tender obeisances in the love scenes. I found Marcus' wishy-washy, indecisive introspective musings very trying to read. I'm probably more critical of romance novelist heroes than most, but nevertheless much of Marcus' behavior, speech and thoughts elicit annoyance because it seems so forced, so nonsensical and/or so dumb. For instance, although Marcus desires revenge against Isabella for jilting him at the altar 12 years ago, the book tempers Marcus' suitably spiteful designs with wishy-washy lust, possession, rage (over anyone saying anything bad about her), sympathy, affection and jealousy (jealousy at the prospect of Isabella turning to another man for marriage at Fleet Prison). The dressing down he receives from Isabella at an ambassador's soiree because the important people knew her better than knew him was more juvenile nonsense. She relishes in dressing him down and making him look bad there. Talk about childish. Earlier, he gives her his family jewels which she rejects and then she proceeds to debase him publicly at the soiree. What does he do in response? Well he kisses her in public. Of course, something she craves anyway at all times. A man's pride doesn't work that way, which is why it's palpable that Marcus represents a feminine concoction, nothing more.
Then we have this game Marcus and Isabella play to gain the upper hand on each other. After Isabella agrees to retract a rather unfavorable admission of their marriage in the Times, Marcus naively accepts her honorable intentions at retraction. Then, he finds out later that she simply retracted her unfavorable account of Marcus in their marriage by depicting worse circumstances which denigrate Marcus' name. Even though he knew that she fight him every step of the way, he stupidly did not request to read the retraction before she sent the retraction to the Times. Some of the things he says and thinks to his best friend Alistair after reading Isabella's supposed retraction in the Times confirms a nonsensical and weak characterization concocted for the heroine's benefit. For example: "Devil take it, I'm starting to think that she married me just to plague me." Both of their adolescent plotting is supposed to be funny and his consequent frustration with her rejection of his terms intends to ascribe a humorous appeal. I found myself reacting with aggravation and disgust at this adolescently dumb cartoon pimp of a hero. After his friend scolds him that he started the revenge, the book forces Marcus to think he provoked her by his own high-handed behavior and he had only himself to blame. What high-handed behavior? It's not like she signed on to any of his terms. When he shows up at her home one night because he wants her, she later throws him out. Again, the book makes him think that he deserved it. When Isabella purposefully garbs herself in a provocative cherry-red silk for a ton event to annoy Marcus, he obviously lusts for her and thinks, "Damn it, she would drive him insane at this rate." The book yet again makes Marcus think he's the bad guy here forcing his thoughts at self-reproach, that he had done very little to earn Isabella's respect (p. 171). On the one hand, Isabella craves Marcus' rugged masculinity, and yet he thinks, says and does some of the most ridiculously emasculate things.
The premise? Isabella seeks a Fleet Prison man for a husband whose debts make her own twenty thousand debt look like nothing. She wants him to take on her debts, marry him, then annul the marriage after she comes into her inheritance. She would pay a prisoner to take on her debt. I thought this premise was good, and I liked Isabella's ruthlessness. Hence, I was disappointed that the book tried to temper Isabella's plans by highlighting her generosity and compassion. She wants to give some coin to the prison's low-class occupants in the stews. We're reminded again and again that she feels dirty and bad for doing all this. We get it, she's not a bad person, no reason to drum it out mercilessly.
The worst of it? When Isabella learns that Marcus wishes to safeguard his true identity and his location at Fleet Prison, she uses that information to blackmail him into marriage and later wishes the man she supposedly loves stays in prison. Marcus' nonchalant reaction to her blackmailing sickened me. Any guy would be angry, particularly enraged at Isabella's callous blackmailing. She jilts him at the altar 12 years ago, blackmails him into a marriage of convenience to pass off her debts to him 12 years later, and then doesn't feel any compunction to free the man from prison, a man she supposedly loves. Forget about freeing him from prison, she expresses displeasure at the very thought of seeing him out of prison. Marcus knows all this and yet he pines for her regardless. We see him in emotional turmoil and really more excited than anything else at the prospect of seeing her out of prison. He rages over his friend demeaning Isabella (and yet Isabella has no qualms demeaning Marcus in public with the newspaper and at an ambassador's party). He dislikes the idea of people talking about her soiled reputation at a ball. He wants to protect her. How does this even remotely compute? Assuming we dismiss the jilt years ago and discount way she wants to marry and drop someone in Fleet Prison, I thought Marcus should be most upset at how she tries to blackmail him for her ends. What if divulging his true identity and location at Fleet Prison would hurt others? It won't but she doesn't know that!
I thought Marcus' clandestine stay at Fleet Prison served nothing. He learned nothing new about the villain Warwick and he accomplished nothing. Seemed like a very poor ruse to have Isabella chance on him in prison so it will feel like a different kind of historical romance even though all the introspective musings are exactly the same.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Lessons of Desire, by Madeline Hunter [1]
*/***** (1/5)
Carnal pleasure is as much a woman's need as a man's. Do not deny your desires, but beware whom you choose as a partner. Most men are conquerors at heart. Seek out the enlightened few who have risen above this primitive curse. If you choose to take your pleasure with a conqueror, make sure you cede only your body and only temporarily. And never, ever succumb to the delusion that you can change such a man. --Artemis Blair speaking to her daughter Phaedra of lessons about desire.
This advise would apply in Madeline Hunter's LESSONS OF DESIRE if Elliot Rothwell actually did anything. Instead, he harbors a lot of emotional angst and he acquiesces to everything according to Phaedra's terms and conditions. I have to admire Madeline Hunter for writing a heroine so different from the historical-romance norm such as Phaedra Blair, but I can't say I liked Phaedra and Elliot together. The book belongs to Phaedra Blair, her eccentric individuality, her dogged pursuit to print her late father's explosive memoirs, and her investigation to discover her late mother's last lover. On his deathbed, Phaedra's father claimed this last lover of her mother's eventually caused her mother's morose decline. Elliot Rothwell accompanies Phaedra on this journey to discover her mother's last lover. Elliot tries to dissuade her from printing portions of the memoirs which vilify his family, but he mostly cheers her on from the sidelines. Throughout the second half, Elliot inappropriately grovels at Phaedra's feet quite a bit too. Even following the very last page of this 386-page paperback, it didn't seem like Phaedra really wanted to marry him. Although she finally agrees and thinks she wants marriage with Elliot, she unfairly tests Elliot quite a bit. She makes him beg and voice copious words of love and affection before nonchalantly agreeing to marriage. Phaedra really doesn't deserve Elliot, and I was a little sickened by Elliot's constant debased groveling at Phaedra's feet.
I found the plotting, prose and settings below-average in this novel, but my dislike of the characters may have something to do with that feeling. For many romance books with relatively weak plotting, it's usually a hit-or-miss deal resting on whether the characters work for you or not. Madeline Hunter is better in this respect than most because she usually intersperses some intriguing plotting aside from a gritty romance itself. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, I felt the incongruous h/h interaction took away from the plotting dealing with Phaedra's memoirs. STEALING HEAVEN (*****) also featured a confident, strong heroine at odds with her hero. There however, the hero turned heaven and earth upside down for his heroine, and it was very compelling. The combative tension there was mutually acknowledged and anticipated by both. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, Elliot doesn't really do anything, and his excessive groveling at the end seemed very inappropriate for a woman who clearly doesn't want marriage. Her last-second turnaround towards marriage wasn't very convincing either.
The best part of this book? The preview to SECRETS OF SURRENDER featuring Roselyn Longworth slated for a June 2008 release. Who is Kyle Bradwell? No wealth and title? Interesting... And good to see Alexia again in SECRETS OF SURRENDER.
In many ways, LESSONS OF DESIRE represents the antithesis of RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and its heroine. RULES OF SEDUCTION's Alexia was practical, sensible and amenable to marriage, while LESSONS OF DESIRE's Phaedra is the polar opposite. Phaedra doesn't believe in the very institution of marriage. In other ways, the two novels are similar. There are three things you can count on from a romance novel: words of love, acts of love and marriage (not necessarily in that order). In both RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and LESSONS OF DESIRE, we find the words of love in the concluding pages of the novel.
Phaedra Blair believes in a philosophy espoused by her late mother, "free love" (a forward concept for the time period). Later in the novel, Elliot recognizes the philosophy for what it is: "free pleasure." Phaedra also scorns a marital relationship which in her view chains a woman to a man. Poor Elliot, more than once, Phaedra fervently rebels against marriage with Elliot. When Elliot disconsolately provides Phaedra with the names of lawyers who help women in divorce cases, Phaedra hypocritically feels a "twist of disappointment" that Elliot would not contest her wishes for undoing their marriage. When Elliot writes to her expressing concern for her safety at her home, Phaedra almost blames Elliot for not asking her to come live with him. All this after Elliot practically begs her to continue with the marriage only to have her reject the marriage, and by extension, him! And over what? A feminist philosophy which repudiates the notion of marriage and how it always has to be: the woman chained to the man. If anything, it was Elliot enslaved by Phaedra, not the other way around.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Elliot chances on too many opportunities to protect Phaedra from herself but he never seizes them. The book makes Elliot too much of a romantic goody boy: in Italy, he arranges to liberate Phaedra from an imprisonment of her own making twice, he protects her, he submits to her conditions for intimacy, he accepts Phaedra's lifestyle of "free love" and defends Phaedra's mother and her way of life when Phaedra expresses hatred towards her mother, he honors Phaedra's oath to print her father's controversial memoirs, he never coerces the witness Merriweather to retract statements which impugn Elliot's family, he never asks Phaedra to omit the portions of the memoirs which malign his family's name, he doesn't even abscond with the manuscript when Pheadra didn't want to print them herself. He further stays away from Phaedra when she rejects marriage to him. A continued liaison would obstruct her stubborn need to undo the marriage. All of her strife and pain is self-inflicted, and she causes poor Elliot much emotional angst. Elliot seemed too accommodating. Elliot is lucky that Phaedra comes around, and that seemed cheap too because she was pregnant by then.
It was all too much, a little ruthlessness from Elliot to save her from herself was definitely in order. He's already loving Phaedra under her terms (as a "friend" in free love), in various good-boy ways he's already protecting her promise to her late father about the inflammatory memoirs, and he won't even request that she remove the portions which maligns his family. Lord, enough already... Even if the portions of the memoirs detailing Elliot's father prove true, what is the point of it all except to drudge up the past and give the ton more gossip? If she's worried about the press she inherited, she could have recovered losses incurred by not printing the memoirs a thousand fold by accepting Easterbrook's compensation. If the popularity of the memoirs keeps the press afloat, it won't really be her doing, she didn't write the memoirs, and she didn't build the business. What's her stake in any of this except a promise to her late father condemning others from his grave?
I thought it was incongruous to have Elliot to use the words "love" first when it was always Phaedra who rejected and rebelled from him. After everything Elliot does under her terms both with their passion and the memoirs, it should have been Phaedra who first comes forward with her love to Elliot. In one of the love scenes, Elliot thoroughly services Phaedra going down on her and all he asks of her in return was to vocalize she's his for tonight. She refuses. Elliot grovels quite a bit at the end which didn't seem to fit considering Phaedra's philosophies and persistence to continue with the publication of the memoirs. Similar to THE SAINT's hero and heroine, you have Elliot wanting more from Phaedra (marriage) than just the "free pleasure," while Phaedra resistant to the last page. Unlike STEALING HEAVEN, the philosophies and plight of this book's aggressive heroine Phaedra simply aren't justified. Her philosophy is just naive, and her plight to publish the memoirs just plain stubborn (the memoirs will provide mere gossip and slander peoples' names, nothing else). It seemed like Phaedra was running roughshod all over Elliot, so he'll be debased, so he'll grovel, and so he'll voice words of love first. Even in the last 4 pages of the novel, she forces him to grovel after he's already voiced words of love and affection a month earlier. Elliot asks, "What must I say or do to convince you that we belong together?" She coldly answers, "I came here to listen." So he continues to grovel at her feet: "I want this marriage, Phaedra. I need it to know you are mine. I love you even more than I desire you. I want you with me always. I want to return to a home where you live. Do you never dream of such things too?" Until she hears this groveling (something he's done before at least twice), she still lets him suffer and imagine the worst: that she still doesn't want marriage. She has this superiority complex to be on top the entire book and her realization she "loves" Elliot doesn't change that, even at the denouement. The way Phaedra approaches Elliot after she publishes the memoirs clearly reinforces her need to chain her hero, to make him debased. She waits for Elliot to reiterate his words of love and desire to marry her before casually accepting the marriage.
On page 384 of 386, the thought of marriage with Elliot now prompts a giggle of happiness all the while she tests Elliot with his love and desire to marry her. It was another incongruous turnaround for a woman who loves Elliot but obstinately refused to marry him because of her philosophies. The book slowly builds Phaedra's love for Elliot and that was good, but her sudden acceptance to marriage was too contrived. Especially after she publishes the memoirs. Any hero would be forced to forsake a nonsensical course such as Phaedra's to condemn families' names. But Elliot of course encourages her and grovels at her feet at the end to take him.
Towards the end, Elliot thanks Phaedra for her decision to leave out the ignominious references to Elliot's family. He says, "I thank you with all my heart, Phaedra. You showed more generosity than I deserve. Your decision spared innocents the glare of scandal and my parents' names the worst whispers." What about the innocents from other families? She really published the posthumous memoirs of a man clearly with nothing to lose in his grave while his written words destroy peoples' lives? And for what? So her bequeathed printing press would prove successful from the memoirs' sales? So she'll preserve her promise to her possibly-bitter late father on his deathbed?
Some of the transitions from a grave, quarrelsome tension to a sensual undercurrent seemed unsuitable at best, very jarring at worst. They're arguing over the gravity of how these memoirs could sully families' names and all of a sudden there's all this sexual chemistry. Other times, Elliot's thoughts over his mother's cheating and his father's cold imprisonment segues into his desire for Phaedra (p. 69). It didn't work for me, but maybe it did for others.
I didn't like this book weighing the greater evil between their father the jailer and their mother the adulteress. Elliot's mother loves another and in response, his father incarcerates her. Of the two evils, LESSONS OF DESIRE taints Elliot's father the late Marquess of Easterbrook's actions as the greater evil. I'm not so sure. He tragically loved someone who loved another. The father responded unfairly, but I don't believe their mother's betrayal in wedlock was somehow "less wrong."
Carnal pleasure is as much a woman's need as a man's. Do not deny your desires, but beware whom you choose as a partner. Most men are conquerors at heart. Seek out the enlightened few who have risen above this primitive curse. If you choose to take your pleasure with a conqueror, make sure you cede only your body and only temporarily. And never, ever succumb to the delusion that you can change such a man. --Artemis Blair speaking to her daughter Phaedra of lessons about desire.
This advise would apply in Madeline Hunter's LESSONS OF DESIRE if Elliot Rothwell actually did anything. Instead, he harbors a lot of emotional angst and he acquiesces to everything according to Phaedra's terms and conditions. I have to admire Madeline Hunter for writing a heroine so different from the historical-romance norm such as Phaedra Blair, but I can't say I liked Phaedra and Elliot together. The book belongs to Phaedra Blair, her eccentric individuality, her dogged pursuit to print her late father's explosive memoirs, and her investigation to discover her late mother's last lover. On his deathbed, Phaedra's father claimed this last lover of her mother's eventually caused her mother's morose decline. Elliot Rothwell accompanies Phaedra on this journey to discover her mother's last lover. Elliot tries to dissuade her from printing portions of the memoirs which vilify his family, but he mostly cheers her on from the sidelines. Throughout the second half, Elliot inappropriately grovels at Phaedra's feet quite a bit too. Even following the very last page of this 386-page paperback, it didn't seem like Phaedra really wanted to marry him. Although she finally agrees and thinks she wants marriage with Elliot, she unfairly tests Elliot quite a bit. She makes him beg and voice copious words of love and affection before nonchalantly agreeing to marriage. Phaedra really doesn't deserve Elliot, and I was a little sickened by Elliot's constant debased groveling at Phaedra's feet.
I found the plotting, prose and settings below-average in this novel, but my dislike of the characters may have something to do with that feeling. For many romance books with relatively weak plotting, it's usually a hit-or-miss deal resting on whether the characters work for you or not. Madeline Hunter is better in this respect than most because she usually intersperses some intriguing plotting aside from a gritty romance itself. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, I felt the incongruous h/h interaction took away from the plotting dealing with Phaedra's memoirs. STEALING HEAVEN (*****) also featured a confident, strong heroine at odds with her hero. There however, the hero turned heaven and earth upside down for his heroine, and it was very compelling. The combative tension there was mutually acknowledged and anticipated by both. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, Elliot doesn't really do anything, and his excessive groveling at the end seemed very inappropriate for a woman who clearly doesn't want marriage. Her last-second turnaround towards marriage wasn't very convincing either.
The best part of this book? The preview to SECRETS OF SURRENDER featuring Roselyn Longworth slated for a June 2008 release. Who is Kyle Bradwell? No wealth and title? Interesting... And good to see Alexia again in SECRETS OF SURRENDER.
In many ways, LESSONS OF DESIRE represents the antithesis of RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and its heroine. RULES OF SEDUCTION's Alexia was practical, sensible and amenable to marriage, while LESSONS OF DESIRE's Phaedra is the polar opposite. Phaedra doesn't believe in the very institution of marriage. In other ways, the two novels are similar. There are three things you can count on from a romance novel: words of love, acts of love and marriage (not necessarily in that order). In both RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and LESSONS OF DESIRE, we find the words of love in the concluding pages of the novel.
Phaedra Blair believes in a philosophy espoused by her late mother, "free love" (a forward concept for the time period). Later in the novel, Elliot recognizes the philosophy for what it is: "free pleasure." Phaedra also scorns a marital relationship which in her view chains a woman to a man. Poor Elliot, more than once, Phaedra fervently rebels against marriage with Elliot. When Elliot disconsolately provides Phaedra with the names of lawyers who help women in divorce cases, Phaedra hypocritically feels a "twist of disappointment" that Elliot would not contest her wishes for undoing their marriage. When Elliot writes to her expressing concern for her safety at her home, Phaedra almost blames Elliot for not asking her to come live with him. All this after Elliot practically begs her to continue with the marriage only to have her reject the marriage, and by extension, him! And over what? A feminist philosophy which repudiates the notion of marriage and how it always has to be: the woman chained to the man. If anything, it was Elliot enslaved by Phaedra, not the other way around.
Possible SPOILERS ahead.
Elliot chances on too many opportunities to protect Phaedra from herself but he never seizes them. The book makes Elliot too much of a romantic goody boy: in Italy, he arranges to liberate Phaedra from an imprisonment of her own making twice, he protects her, he submits to her conditions for intimacy, he accepts Phaedra's lifestyle of "free love" and defends Phaedra's mother and her way of life when Phaedra expresses hatred towards her mother, he honors Phaedra's oath to print her father's controversial memoirs, he never coerces the witness Merriweather to retract statements which impugn Elliot's family, he never asks Phaedra to omit the portions of the memoirs which malign his family's name, he doesn't even abscond with the manuscript when Pheadra didn't want to print them herself. He further stays away from Phaedra when she rejects marriage to him. A continued liaison would obstruct her stubborn need to undo the marriage. All of her strife and pain is self-inflicted, and she causes poor Elliot much emotional angst. Elliot seemed too accommodating. Elliot is lucky that Phaedra comes around, and that seemed cheap too because she was pregnant by then.
It was all too much, a little ruthlessness from Elliot to save her from herself was definitely in order. He's already loving Phaedra under her terms (as a "friend" in free love), in various good-boy ways he's already protecting her promise to her late father about the inflammatory memoirs, and he won't even request that she remove the portions which maligns his family. Lord, enough already... Even if the portions of the memoirs detailing Elliot's father prove true, what is the point of it all except to drudge up the past and give the ton more gossip? If she's worried about the press she inherited, she could have recovered losses incurred by not printing the memoirs a thousand fold by accepting Easterbrook's compensation. If the popularity of the memoirs keeps the press afloat, it won't really be her doing, she didn't write the memoirs, and she didn't build the business. What's her stake in any of this except a promise to her late father condemning others from his grave?
I thought it was incongruous to have Elliot to use the words "love" first when it was always Phaedra who rejected and rebelled from him. After everything Elliot does under her terms both with their passion and the memoirs, it should have been Phaedra who first comes forward with her love to Elliot. In one of the love scenes, Elliot thoroughly services Phaedra going down on her and all he asks of her in return was to vocalize she's his for tonight. She refuses. Elliot grovels quite a bit at the end which didn't seem to fit considering Phaedra's philosophies and persistence to continue with the publication of the memoirs. Similar to THE SAINT's hero and heroine, you have Elliot wanting more from Phaedra (marriage) than just the "free pleasure," while Phaedra resistant to the last page. Unlike STEALING HEAVEN, the philosophies and plight of this book's aggressive heroine Phaedra simply aren't justified. Her philosophy is just naive, and her plight to publish the memoirs just plain stubborn (the memoirs will provide mere gossip and slander peoples' names, nothing else). It seemed like Phaedra was running roughshod all over Elliot, so he'll be debased, so he'll grovel, and so he'll voice words of love first. Even in the last 4 pages of the novel, she forces him to grovel after he's already voiced words of love and affection a month earlier. Elliot asks, "What must I say or do to convince you that we belong together?" She coldly answers, "I came here to listen." So he continues to grovel at her feet: "I want this marriage, Phaedra. I need it to know you are mine. I love you even more than I desire you. I want you with me always. I want to return to a home where you live. Do you never dream of such things too?" Until she hears this groveling (something he's done before at least twice), she still lets him suffer and imagine the worst: that she still doesn't want marriage. She has this superiority complex to be on top the entire book and her realization she "loves" Elliot doesn't change that, even at the denouement. The way Phaedra approaches Elliot after she publishes the memoirs clearly reinforces her need to chain her hero, to make him debased. She waits for Elliot to reiterate his words of love and desire to marry her before casually accepting the marriage.
On page 384 of 386, the thought of marriage with Elliot now prompts a giggle of happiness all the while she tests Elliot with his love and desire to marry her. It was another incongruous turnaround for a woman who loves Elliot but obstinately refused to marry him because of her philosophies. The book slowly builds Phaedra's love for Elliot and that was good, but her sudden acceptance to marriage was too contrived. Especially after she publishes the memoirs. Any hero would be forced to forsake a nonsensical course such as Phaedra's to condemn families' names. But Elliot of course encourages her and grovels at her feet at the end to take him.
Towards the end, Elliot thanks Phaedra for her decision to leave out the ignominious references to Elliot's family. He says, "I thank you with all my heart, Phaedra. You showed more generosity than I deserve. Your decision spared innocents the glare of scandal and my parents' names the worst whispers." What about the innocents from other families? She really published the posthumous memoirs of a man clearly with nothing to lose in his grave while his written words destroy peoples' lives? And for what? So her bequeathed printing press would prove successful from the memoirs' sales? So she'll preserve her promise to her possibly-bitter late father on his deathbed?
Some of the transitions from a grave, quarrelsome tension to a sensual undercurrent seemed unsuitable at best, very jarring at worst. They're arguing over the gravity of how these memoirs could sully families' names and all of a sudden there's all this sexual chemistry. Other times, Elliot's thoughts over his mother's cheating and his father's cold imprisonment segues into his desire for Phaedra (p. 69). It didn't work for me, but maybe it did for others.
I didn't like this book weighing the greater evil between their father the jailer and their mother the adulteress. Elliot's mother loves another and in response, his father incarcerates her. Of the two evils, LESSONS OF DESIRE taints Elliot's father the late Marquess of Easterbrook's actions as the greater evil. I'm not so sure. He tragically loved someone who loved another. The father responded unfairly, but I don't believe their mother's betrayal in wedlock was somehow "less wrong."
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Suddenly You, by Lisa Kleypas [0]
/***** (0/5)
I found Lisa Kleypas' SUDDENLY YOU completely unreadable; this qualifies as yet another iteration of the perfect-notorious-rake-initiating-the-imperfect-virgin-to-passion storyline (the words "notorious rake" are used to describe Jack later in the novel). This book revels in the handsome, muscular frame of an experienced rake igniting the virgin passions of a plump, ordinary-of-appearance spinster under slightly different circumstances. Is it me, or are all romance rakes' names Jack? Written mostly from the heroine Amanda's perspective, SUDDENLY YOU is interested in one thing and one thing alone: celebrating notorious rake Jack's chiseled perfection and opulent riches (I counted so many descriptions of the hero's handsome, muscular bearing, I lost count) while he initiates a plump spinster virgin to passion and pleasure. We have the forward, scoundrel comments which Amanda scorns outwardly yet secretly relishes. We have the tender, scientific ministrations of a libertine igniting tingles and ripples through Amanda's core. SUDDENLY YOU never misses a chance to remind us the hero is, in fact, muscular and handsome. We have yet another romance novel's artifice to contrive the attraction of a perfect hero for a mediocre-looking virgin. We have the virgin heroine's insecurities over her plump, ordinary appearance (insecurities which last to the end). We have the hero regaling her with praise about her appearance and tender words of affection. We have the hero encouraging her in business and profession and treating her an equal. In the early love making, we have Amanda wanting more though she knows not what -- yet the hero knows (you know you've read this in some form thousands of times). We have the experienced hero easily aroused and honorably putting a stop to the escalating sensuality ("Amanda I don't trust myself with you any longer. I have to leave while I'm still able"). We even have the virgin heroine yearning to discover the mysterious hero's tortured past and truly know him like no other woman before. The hero Jack is infatuated with her (there's no other word for it) while the heroine Amanda tries to cut things off, predictably prompting Jack to come to a decision about the married life he never wanted. You've read all of this before, the characters are the exact same and the juvenile plotting is the same.
Jack is just like every other handsome cartoon pimp from any romance novel lauding Amanda's brains while Amanda is like every other "witty," ordinary-looking virgin fawning over Jack's muscles. An adolescently insipid storyline characterizes the plotting and pacing, and the servicing from the hero is evident. Essentially, a tall, dark, rich, handsome and muscular hero (Jack Devlin) thrives as a publisher, and meets a successful author who is also a 30 year-old, plump, ordinary-looking virgin (Amanda Briars). Eventually, Amanda agrees to write a series for Jack's publishing conglomerate. This context serves as background noise to our pimp Jack servicing and initiating Amanda to passion and pleasure. There's even a break-up, Amanda finding "comfort" in another gentleman, a pregnancy, etc., etc. What a horribly forgettable 375 pages.
I think romance novelists assume if you give perfectly handsome heroes enough of a lascivious past with a myriad of nameless, faceless and meaningless pretty women, he'll grow tired of beauty. That a plump, ordinary-looking heroine will instantly inflame his attraction based on her "boldness, imagination and wit." Jack notes from his perspective, "her features were pleasant, if not...beautiful." So you gravitate to "pleasant features" when you're obviously a perfect Adonis? Is there no such thing as a beautiful, smart, quick-witted virgin in these superficial historical romances anymore? It annoys and aggravates me to no end how romance novelists will describe their heroines as average looking, plump and "pleasant" from the perspective of a hero who's instantly attracted. The guy admires wit, cunning, eyes, hair and soft skin -- very deep guy here. If a guy finds a girl attractive, no guy will hesitate thinking of her as beautiful except in romance novels. In romance novels, she's "not precisely beautiful." Then again, I'll never understand the perfect-guy-instantly-attracted-to-the-average-looking-heroine ruse anyway when I know ladies' men prefer women who they find beautiful no matter how many women they've had. Our hero Jack pines for her from the get-go: "he wanted to kiss her... he wanted to charm her..." Best of all from the girl's point-of-view, he wanted to know her. At another point in the novel, Jack appreciates how much Amanda eats in public. Apparently, this makes her more "real" and "authentic," and all the pretty ladies he's known are summarily condemned as shallow.
The heroine of course fosters no such deep motives for her attraction. Tall, handsome, muscular, thick black hair, blue eyes... in a word, perfectly attractive to anyone with eyes. On the other hand, you need to look long and hard to notice our plump spinster Amanda's attractive features, something only apparently possible by mature, experienced heroes. I had to laugh when Jack thinks to himself at one point, "He liked being able to fluster her, something he guessed that few men were able to do." Uhm no, one muscular cartoon pimp is as good as any other judging by the origins of Amanda's attraction! We again have a case of the pot calling the kettle black. A fat, rich man (Kerwin Stephenson) disgusts our plump Amanda after Amanda and Jack break up. Portliness is viewed as attractive in the women of romance novels yet abhorrent in men. If this is sounding like the worst case of a tritely hokey potboiler, well, then it is. When Amanda draws an average-looking widower's attentions who loves children, she accustoms herself -- or settles -- for a "pleasant and ordinary life." She muses, "Hartley would never sweep her off her feet, but help her to keep them planted firmly on the ground." So let me get this straight. Average, modest men who love children are too dull while fat men too repulsive. Talk about a nauseating indulgence on female-biased appearances. Chick-lit? You bet, 10/10 on the chick-lit meter, and that's not a good thing. This book is completely devoid of any inkling of substance or fresh appeal.
I found Lisa Kleypas' SUDDENLY YOU completely unreadable; this qualifies as yet another iteration of the perfect-notorious-rake-initiating-the-imperfect-virgin-to-passion storyline (the words "notorious rake" are used to describe Jack later in the novel). This book revels in the handsome, muscular frame of an experienced rake igniting the virgin passions of a plump, ordinary-of-appearance spinster under slightly different circumstances. Is it me, or are all romance rakes' names Jack? Written mostly from the heroine Amanda's perspective, SUDDENLY YOU is interested in one thing and one thing alone: celebrating notorious rake Jack's chiseled perfection and opulent riches (I counted so many descriptions of the hero's handsome, muscular bearing, I lost count) while he initiates a plump spinster virgin to passion and pleasure. We have the forward, scoundrel comments which Amanda scorns outwardly yet secretly relishes. We have the tender, scientific ministrations of a libertine igniting tingles and ripples through Amanda's core. SUDDENLY YOU never misses a chance to remind us the hero is, in fact, muscular and handsome. We have yet another romance novel's artifice to contrive the attraction of a perfect hero for a mediocre-looking virgin. We have the virgin heroine's insecurities over her plump, ordinary appearance (insecurities which last to the end). We have the hero regaling her with praise about her appearance and tender words of affection. We have the hero encouraging her in business and profession and treating her an equal. In the early love making, we have Amanda wanting more though she knows not what -- yet the hero knows (you know you've read this in some form thousands of times). We have the experienced hero easily aroused and honorably putting a stop to the escalating sensuality ("Amanda I don't trust myself with you any longer. I have to leave while I'm still able"). We even have the virgin heroine yearning to discover the mysterious hero's tortured past and truly know him like no other woman before. The hero Jack is infatuated with her (there's no other word for it) while the heroine Amanda tries to cut things off, predictably prompting Jack to come to a decision about the married life he never wanted. You've read all of this before, the characters are the exact same and the juvenile plotting is the same.
Jack is just like every other handsome cartoon pimp from any romance novel lauding Amanda's brains while Amanda is like every other "witty," ordinary-looking virgin fawning over Jack's muscles. An adolescently insipid storyline characterizes the plotting and pacing, and the servicing from the hero is evident. Essentially, a tall, dark, rich, handsome and muscular hero (Jack Devlin) thrives as a publisher, and meets a successful author who is also a 30 year-old, plump, ordinary-looking virgin (Amanda Briars). Eventually, Amanda agrees to write a series for Jack's publishing conglomerate. This context serves as background noise to our pimp Jack servicing and initiating Amanda to passion and pleasure. There's even a break-up, Amanda finding "comfort" in another gentleman, a pregnancy, etc., etc. What a horribly forgettable 375 pages.
I think romance novelists assume if you give perfectly handsome heroes enough of a lascivious past with a myriad of nameless, faceless and meaningless pretty women, he'll grow tired of beauty. That a plump, ordinary-looking heroine will instantly inflame his attraction based on her "boldness, imagination and wit." Jack notes from his perspective, "her features were pleasant, if not...beautiful." So you gravitate to "pleasant features" when you're obviously a perfect Adonis? Is there no such thing as a beautiful, smart, quick-witted virgin in these superficial historical romances anymore? It annoys and aggravates me to no end how romance novelists will describe their heroines as average looking, plump and "pleasant" from the perspective of a hero who's instantly attracted. The guy admires wit, cunning, eyes, hair and soft skin -- very deep guy here. If a guy finds a girl attractive, no guy will hesitate thinking of her as beautiful except in romance novels. In romance novels, she's "not precisely beautiful." Then again, I'll never understand the perfect-guy-instantly-attracted-to-the-average-looking-heroine ruse anyway when I know ladies' men prefer women who they find beautiful no matter how many women they've had. Our hero Jack pines for her from the get-go: "he wanted to kiss her... he wanted to charm her..." Best of all from the girl's point-of-view, he wanted to know her. At another point in the novel, Jack appreciates how much Amanda eats in public. Apparently, this makes her more "real" and "authentic," and all the pretty ladies he's known are summarily condemned as shallow.
The heroine of course fosters no such deep motives for her attraction. Tall, handsome, muscular, thick black hair, blue eyes... in a word, perfectly attractive to anyone with eyes. On the other hand, you need to look long and hard to notice our plump spinster Amanda's attractive features, something only apparently possible by mature, experienced heroes. I had to laugh when Jack thinks to himself at one point, "He liked being able to fluster her, something he guessed that few men were able to do." Uhm no, one muscular cartoon pimp is as good as any other judging by the origins of Amanda's attraction! We again have a case of the pot calling the kettle black. A fat, rich man (Kerwin Stephenson) disgusts our plump Amanda after Amanda and Jack break up. Portliness is viewed as attractive in the women of romance novels yet abhorrent in men. If this is sounding like the worst case of a tritely hokey potboiler, well, then it is. When Amanda draws an average-looking widower's attentions who loves children, she accustoms herself -- or settles -- for a "pleasant and ordinary life." She muses, "Hartley would never sweep her off her feet, but help her to keep them planted firmly on the ground." So let me get this straight. Average, modest men who love children are too dull while fat men too repulsive. Talk about a nauseating indulgence on female-biased appearances. Chick-lit? You bet, 10/10 on the chick-lit meter, and that's not a good thing. This book is completely devoid of any inkling of substance or fresh appeal.
Monday, October 8, 2007
The Saint, by Madeline Hunter [1]
*/***** (1/5)
This series on the Dueling Society marks some of the more monotonously leaden writing I've read from Madeline Hunter. I thought THE SAINT couldn't possible be any worse than the novel that started this series (THE SEDUCER **) but it manages to anyway. Like its predecessor, THE SAINT grasps at setting the stage for subsequent books rather than focusing on telling its story. Worst, I found THE SAINT bereft of an engaging storyline. After the opening chapter, the plotting floundered for over 250 pages while the deadpan hero-and-heroine interaction further paralyzed this plot's pacing. THE SAINT reveals the crux of the mysterious plot in conversations spanning 10 discontinuous pages or so towards the end. Rather than inviting interest, I found the contrary dynamic between our hero Vergil Duclairc Viscount Laclere and his heroine American Bianca Kenwood very blase.
Based on THE SEDUCER and now THE SAINT, this series on the Dueling Society seems to explore how love muddles the best laid plans (or enriches, depending on you look at it). In THE SEDUCER (**), love with Diane obfuscates Daniel's single-minded plot for revenge whereas here, "Saint" Viscount Laclere's love complicates a gifted heiress' dream to sing in the opera, something considered taboo for the time period. Although I found THE SEDUCER's plot drab and its hero Daniel's contrivances to call out a superior shot stupid, THE SAINT's plot is worse as it conveys the salient points of the mystery in prosaically conversationalist diction. Nothing happens for the first 250 pages in this one other than Countess Glasbury's (Vergil's sister) vocational party lasting a few days. More than ever, I wanted this MH book to "show, don't tell." For example, Bianca and Vergil discuss the background behind Vergil's older brother's death from discovered letters, while Adrian Burchard and Vergil reveal other elements in two separate discussions. I also found THE SAINT more predictable than most, as I guessed Vergil's deceased brother's blackmailer from the mysterious blackmailer's first reference in the novel. The finale feebly concludes the novel with a duel to decide everything including the fate of the love story. I thought a very stagnant plotting and pacing supported its lackluster love story.
I can't say either the hero or the heroine really stood out, though both had potential. A contradicting dichotomy of innocence and desirous promiscuity characterizes our virgin heroine Bianca. Despite the book's efforts to make this contrasting dichotomy seem like a novelty in virgin heroines, it was nothing new. Good romance novelists usually present their virgin heroines with a hint of aggressive reciprocation. With the exception of the opening chapter, I found the verbal exchanges and love scenes between Vergil and Bianca in this novel incongruously uninteresting and completely forgettable. The last two or three pages seemed to rush a resolution to the strained love story which didn't fit. I thought Bianca should have went on to perform in Italy for a few years if Vergil was going to conveniently throw propriety out the door at the end anyway. With his sister Penelope, a dubious reputation mars Vergil's family already, so what's the point in preserving some pretense with Bianca and her dreams? I mean you have all this tension in the love story due to society's rules and norms and at the end, you throw them all out the window like it was much ado about nothing. Weak!
I thought Bianca "won" her way most of the time in this novel in spite of Vergil's so-called guardianship restricting her, while Vergil's love seemed to overshadow Bianca's (I discount Bianca's protestations of love in the throws of virgin passion, and no, her reassurance of that love later didn't balance the scales). THE SAINT reverses gender roles a bit: the guy here wants marriage and a life together while the girl wants to just have sex. I thought Vergil made all the concessions and he's the only one who considered both of their individual dreams and combined futures. Vergil has to be careful not to spill his seed inside her so she can continue her dreams to sing. It's Vergil who reiterates again and again that he doesn't want to coerce Bianca into marriage with a pregnancy or a soiled reputation. It's Vergil who refuses a strictly sexual relationship with Bianca to protect her from a notorious reputation. Later, Vergil concedes Bianca's platonic sexual liaison when she persists in refusing marriage. At the end, it's Vergil who first concedes defeat by agreeing to disperse Bianca's money so she may travel to Italy for her singing career and promises to visit as often as possible. Vergil does all of the servicing in the love making; for a virgin heroine with advertised hints of a mistress' aggression, she's pretty self-absorbed in all the love scenes. The love scenes are primarily described from Bianca's egocentric perspective. Losing yourself to passion is one thing, losing yourself again and again without the least bit of any desire to reciprocate is quite another.
This book gave me flashes of Emma Holly's BEYOND INNOCENCE (**) where its hero attempts to pass off the heroine to his brother (for different reasons), though falls in love with her himself. Here, our hero Vergil wishes to marry Bianca off to his rakehell younger brother Dante, a vapidly standard romance-hero characterization whose story in THE SINNER I have no desire to read. I could have done without so much Dante and this book's attempts to make him seem deeper for a future novel wasn't very convincing. Between returning THE SEDUCER's hero and heroine Daniel and Diane St. John, trying to paint characterizations for this book's story and setting up characters for future novels, I thought THE SAINT had its hands full. As a result, THE SAINT failed to tell a compelling tale of its own. I'm trying to remember if Cornell Witherby appeared in THE SEDUCER. I don't remember Witherby dueling in THE SEDUCER. Both Adrian Burchard and Julian Hampton continue to intrigue and I'll have to read their stories in THE CHARMER and THE ROMANTIC, respectively.
The Premise.
American Miss Bianca Kenwood's grandfather Adam left her a fortune and named the Viscount Laclare her guardian until she turns 21 or marries, whichever comes first. A talented singer, Bianca dreams of singing with others for a big audience in a grand setting. Vergil Duclairc the Viscount Leclare gets in the way. Titles, money and English propriety mean little to American-born Bianca, and she forges her own path towards disreputable singing career. After a very engaging opening chapter, the book sags considerably for over 250 pages under the guise of a gathering amongst Penelope's "inner circle" of friends and acquaintances at Laclere House in Sussex. There's two apparent attempts on Bianca's life while other characters arrive for the social gathering. Bianca's cousin Nigel Kenwood, Dueling Society members St. John, Witherby and Dante all join the party at Laclere House. Penelope's friend Mrs. Gaston, an eccentric sponsor of the arts, also joins the party. The ill-reputed Duclairc family is in full form: Vergil, Dante, Penelope and Charlotte all appear. While Bianca plots to realize her dream as an opera singer in Italy, Vergil investigates his older brother's suicide.
The action moves to London for a bit before returning to the country in Manchester where Bianca owns a percentage in a mill. It returns to London as Penelope prepares Charlotte for her first coming-out. The book concludes on the coasts of luscious Normandy in France where a duel lasts about 2 pages found in the last 7-8 pages of the novel. The pacing lolls for days and vacuously zips along for weeks and months. It all seemed disjoint and incongruous. Besides the opening chapter, nothing in the novel invited interest or attention.
I'm thinking THE CHARMER and THE ROMANTIC are better.
This series on the Dueling Society marks some of the more monotonously leaden writing I've read from Madeline Hunter. I thought THE SAINT couldn't possible be any worse than the novel that started this series (THE SEDUCER **) but it manages to anyway. Like its predecessor, THE SAINT grasps at setting the stage for subsequent books rather than focusing on telling its story. Worst, I found THE SAINT bereft of an engaging storyline. After the opening chapter, the plotting floundered for over 250 pages while the deadpan hero-and-heroine interaction further paralyzed this plot's pacing. THE SAINT reveals the crux of the mysterious plot in conversations spanning 10 discontinuous pages or so towards the end. Rather than inviting interest, I found the contrary dynamic between our hero Vergil Duclairc Viscount Laclere and his heroine American Bianca Kenwood very blase.
Based on THE SEDUCER and now THE SAINT, this series on the Dueling Society seems to explore how love muddles the best laid plans (or enriches, depending on you look at it). In THE SEDUCER (**), love with Diane obfuscates Daniel's single-minded plot for revenge whereas here, "Saint" Viscount Laclere's love complicates a gifted heiress' dream to sing in the opera, something considered taboo for the time period. Although I found THE SEDUCER's plot drab and its hero Daniel's contrivances to call out a superior shot stupid, THE SAINT's plot is worse as it conveys the salient points of the mystery in prosaically conversationalist diction. Nothing happens for the first 250 pages in this one other than Countess Glasbury's (Vergil's sister) vocational party lasting a few days. More than ever, I wanted this MH book to "show, don't tell." For example, Bianca and Vergil discuss the background behind Vergil's older brother's death from discovered letters, while Adrian Burchard and Vergil reveal other elements in two separate discussions. I also found THE SAINT more predictable than most, as I guessed Vergil's deceased brother's blackmailer from the mysterious blackmailer's first reference in the novel. The finale feebly concludes the novel with a duel to decide everything including the fate of the love story. I thought a very stagnant plotting and pacing supported its lackluster love story.
I can't say either the hero or the heroine really stood out, though both had potential. A contradicting dichotomy of innocence and desirous promiscuity characterizes our virgin heroine Bianca. Despite the book's efforts to make this contrasting dichotomy seem like a novelty in virgin heroines, it was nothing new. Good romance novelists usually present their virgin heroines with a hint of aggressive reciprocation. With the exception of the opening chapter, I found the verbal exchanges and love scenes between Vergil and Bianca in this novel incongruously uninteresting and completely forgettable. The last two or three pages seemed to rush a resolution to the strained love story which didn't fit. I thought Bianca should have went on to perform in Italy for a few years if Vergil was going to conveniently throw propriety out the door at the end anyway. With his sister Penelope, a dubious reputation mars Vergil's family already, so what's the point in preserving some pretense with Bianca and her dreams? I mean you have all this tension in the love story due to society's rules and norms and at the end, you throw them all out the window like it was much ado about nothing. Weak!
I thought Bianca "won" her way most of the time in this novel in spite of Vergil's so-called guardianship restricting her, while Vergil's love seemed to overshadow Bianca's (I discount Bianca's protestations of love in the throws of virgin passion, and no, her reassurance of that love later didn't balance the scales). THE SAINT reverses gender roles a bit: the guy here wants marriage and a life together while the girl wants to just have sex. I thought Vergil made all the concessions and he's the only one who considered both of their individual dreams and combined futures. Vergil has to be careful not to spill his seed inside her so she can continue her dreams to sing. It's Vergil who reiterates again and again that he doesn't want to coerce Bianca into marriage with a pregnancy or a soiled reputation. It's Vergil who refuses a strictly sexual relationship with Bianca to protect her from a notorious reputation. Later, Vergil concedes Bianca's platonic sexual liaison when she persists in refusing marriage. At the end, it's Vergil who first concedes defeat by agreeing to disperse Bianca's money so she may travel to Italy for her singing career and promises to visit as often as possible. Vergil does all of the servicing in the love making; for a virgin heroine with advertised hints of a mistress' aggression, she's pretty self-absorbed in all the love scenes. The love scenes are primarily described from Bianca's egocentric perspective. Losing yourself to passion is one thing, losing yourself again and again without the least bit of any desire to reciprocate is quite another.
This book gave me flashes of Emma Holly's BEYOND INNOCENCE (**) where its hero attempts to pass off the heroine to his brother (for different reasons), though falls in love with her himself. Here, our hero Vergil wishes to marry Bianca off to his rakehell younger brother Dante, a vapidly standard romance-hero characterization whose story in THE SINNER I have no desire to read. I could have done without so much Dante and this book's attempts to make him seem deeper for a future novel wasn't very convincing. Between returning THE SEDUCER's hero and heroine Daniel and Diane St. John, trying to paint characterizations for this book's story and setting up characters for future novels, I thought THE SAINT had its hands full. As a result, THE SAINT failed to tell a compelling tale of its own. I'm trying to remember if Cornell Witherby appeared in THE SEDUCER. I don't remember Witherby dueling in THE SEDUCER. Both Adrian Burchard and Julian Hampton continue to intrigue and I'll have to read their stories in THE CHARMER and THE ROMANTIC, respectively.
The Premise.
American Miss Bianca Kenwood's grandfather Adam left her a fortune and named the Viscount Laclare her guardian until she turns 21 or marries, whichever comes first. A talented singer, Bianca dreams of singing with others for a big audience in a grand setting. Vergil Duclairc the Viscount Leclare gets in the way. Titles, money and English propriety mean little to American-born Bianca, and she forges her own path towards disreputable singing career. After a very engaging opening chapter, the book sags considerably for over 250 pages under the guise of a gathering amongst Penelope's "inner circle" of friends and acquaintances at Laclere House in Sussex. There's two apparent attempts on Bianca's life while other characters arrive for the social gathering. Bianca's cousin Nigel Kenwood, Dueling Society members St. John, Witherby and Dante all join the party at Laclere House. Penelope's friend Mrs. Gaston, an eccentric sponsor of the arts, also joins the party. The ill-reputed Duclairc family is in full form: Vergil, Dante, Penelope and Charlotte all appear. While Bianca plots to realize her dream as an opera singer in Italy, Vergil investigates his older brother's suicide.
The action moves to London for a bit before returning to the country in Manchester where Bianca owns a percentage in a mill. It returns to London as Penelope prepares Charlotte for her first coming-out. The book concludes on the coasts of luscious Normandy in France where a duel lasts about 2 pages found in the last 7-8 pages of the novel. The pacing lolls for days and vacuously zips along for weeks and months. It all seemed disjoint and incongruous. Besides the opening chapter, nothing in the novel invited interest or attention.
I'm thinking THE CHARMER and THE ROMANTIC are better.
Friday, October 5, 2007
The Secret Pearl, by Mary Balogh [3]
***/***** (3/5)
"If I loved you, Fleur," [Adam] said, "and knew that you loved me, I would turn heaven and earth upside down [for you]"
I found Mary Balogh's THE SECRET PEARL a chronically addictive reading experience containing the right touches of an impossible, challenging road to love and featuring tortured characters that never really leave you. Unfortunately, I thought THE SECRET PEARL needed to balance the memorable characters and heart-rending love story with better pacing, prose and settings. A majority of this 399-page paperback amounts to meandering introspection. Granted, one of the advantages of literature includes sharing the thoughts of characters but some novels (often of a romantic nature) makes the introspection and thoughts very interminably exasperating. THE SECRET PEARL contains a lot of introspection and if it weren't for the uniquely endearing characters and their plight, I probably would have found the book pretty bad. Not your typical rosy romance fare, the characters and premise alone offer a worthwhile reading experience. Although the ending wasn't bad, again I thought it resorted to amateurish introspection instead of gripping plotting or possibly a chapter or two of marital bliss. The love here is mutually giving, and it isn't just the hero giving everything.
Rarely are romance heroes as interesting or honorable as THE SECRET PEARL's Duke of Ridgeway Adam Kent, and I thought the novel belongs to him. Adam's time with the English infantry at Waterloo scarred him terribly along his face and body, so he isn't handsome by the time our heroine Isabella Fleur Bradshaw meets him. Adam is vulnerable, and harbors insecurities of his own, though it isn't belabored. After a shocking opening scene in which Adam hurts Fleur -- knowingly, for reasons that are clear from the context -- Adam's vulnerabilities and his efforts at atonement afterwards really melt your heart. Also very much unlike the last romance I read (Joyce's VOICES OF THE NIGHT), the hero Adam here astutely infers the heroine's situation, figures out her pursuers, consequently takes steps to discover her complete history, and in turn, really helps her. THE SECRET PEARL's Adam Kent is a man of action, from beginning to end. I think I'm a sucker for a romance novel in which the heroine really detests the hero all the while he's doing everything in his power to help and protect the heroine. I'm not sure why or how, but I'm ineffably drawn to a heroine's intense, unwarranted hatred for her hero (not superficially insulting, imprecating). In this respect, THE SECRET PEARL resembles Hunter's superior THE RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and its heroine Alexia's unwarranted enmity for her hero. Even though the title of this book refers to the heroine, I thought the hero Adam was a hidden treasure in his own right. If only this novel offered something more in terms of prose, pacing, settings, and love scenes.
It was the first time he had seen her smile almost directly at him. And it had been a total smile, lighting up her face, making of its beauty a dazzling thing. He could have sworn that all the rays of the sun had been directed at her face when she had lifted it to the sky, even though the clouds had still been low and heavy.
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
Our horribly-scarred Duke of Ridgeway Adam Kent picks up a prostitute from the street after the theater. It's been a long, torturous time for Adam since his last time with a woman and so he doesn't mind a reticent, uninviting prostitute. When taking off his clothes, Adam is ashamed by his unseemly, scarred appearance in front of a whore, which in turn drives him to anger and vengeance at Fleur's expense. Adam takes her, knows he's taking a virgin from the first thrust and yet doesn't relent. The prostitute turns out to be a deceased baron's daughter, Isabella Fleur Bradshaw. Fleur is running from a murder charge and a second cousin's obsessive pursuit who assumes the baron's title after Fleur's father passes away. Later, she learns of a theft charge mixed in as well. Scared, alone, fleeing the noose and hiding amidst London's poverty-stricken streets, a hungry, grimy Fleur turns to the last thing she has to sell: her body.
We learn more about Adam which makes this story's road to love, so challenging and heart-wrenching: Adam has a five year-old daughter and an estranged wife who cheats on him with his own younger half-brother. With the exception of that one time with Fleur, Adam has been faithful to his wife for five years despite his wife cheating on him with other men. Adam is all too aware of his wife's cheating.
Following Adam's violent coupling with Fleur, Adam feeds her and pays her thrice as much as the norm before parting ways. Nightmares of a cruel, scarred monster haunt Fleur while Adam takes steps to locate Fleur and employ her. Eventually, Adam's secretary hires Fleur as a governess at his estate in Willoughby. Fleur is unaware of the identity of the child's father when she accepts the governess position. She's thrilled to escape a life of prostitution.
The bulk of the novel takes place back at Adam's beloved home at Willoughby. Adam travels back to Willoughby for damage control when he hears of his wife's plans to invite a few notorious guests for a few weeks. Fleur is already there tutoring Adam's daughter Pamela, and soon, Adam's half brother Thomas arrives with Fleur's obsessed second cousin Matthew. The more we learn of Adam, the more your heart will melt for him. There's plenty of introspective musings both on Adam's part and Fleur's part during the time Adam's wife entertains many guests at the Willoughby palatial estate.
Again, THE SECRET PEARL's road to its happily-ever-after is challenging, and it isn't rosy. If you buckle up for a substantive love story, I found the love story and its lead characters very rewarding. I just wish better plotting, pacing, settings and prose equaled the heart-rending love story and the unique hero-and-heroine characterizations.
"If I loved you, Fleur," [Adam] said, "and knew that you loved me, I would turn heaven and earth upside down [for you]"
I found Mary Balogh's THE SECRET PEARL a chronically addictive reading experience containing the right touches of an impossible, challenging road to love and featuring tortured characters that never really leave you. Unfortunately, I thought THE SECRET PEARL needed to balance the memorable characters and heart-rending love story with better pacing, prose and settings. A majority of this 399-page paperback amounts to meandering introspection. Granted, one of the advantages of literature includes sharing the thoughts of characters but some novels (often of a romantic nature) makes the introspection and thoughts very interminably exasperating. THE SECRET PEARL contains a lot of introspection and if it weren't for the uniquely endearing characters and their plight, I probably would have found the book pretty bad. Not your typical rosy romance fare, the characters and premise alone offer a worthwhile reading experience. Although the ending wasn't bad, again I thought it resorted to amateurish introspection instead of gripping plotting or possibly a chapter or two of marital bliss. The love here is mutually giving, and it isn't just the hero giving everything.
Rarely are romance heroes as interesting or honorable as THE SECRET PEARL's Duke of Ridgeway Adam Kent, and I thought the novel belongs to him. Adam's time with the English infantry at Waterloo scarred him terribly along his face and body, so he isn't handsome by the time our heroine Isabella Fleur Bradshaw meets him. Adam is vulnerable, and harbors insecurities of his own, though it isn't belabored. After a shocking opening scene in which Adam hurts Fleur -- knowingly, for reasons that are clear from the context -- Adam's vulnerabilities and his efforts at atonement afterwards really melt your heart. Also very much unlike the last romance I read (Joyce's VOICES OF THE NIGHT), the hero Adam here astutely infers the heroine's situation, figures out her pursuers, consequently takes steps to discover her complete history, and in turn, really helps her. THE SECRET PEARL's Adam Kent is a man of action, from beginning to end. I think I'm a sucker for a romance novel in which the heroine really detests the hero all the while he's doing everything in his power to help and protect the heroine. I'm not sure why or how, but I'm ineffably drawn to a heroine's intense, unwarranted hatred for her hero (not superficially insulting, imprecating). In this respect, THE SECRET PEARL resembles Hunter's superior THE RULES OF SEDUCTION (*****) and its heroine Alexia's unwarranted enmity for her hero. Even though the title of this book refers to the heroine, I thought the hero Adam was a hidden treasure in his own right. If only this novel offered something more in terms of prose, pacing, settings, and love scenes.
It was the first time he had seen her smile almost directly at him. And it had been a total smile, lighting up her face, making of its beauty a dazzling thing. He could have sworn that all the rays of the sun had been directed at her face when she had lifted it to the sky, even though the clouds had still been low and heavy.
The Story, possible SPOILERS.
Our horribly-scarred Duke of Ridgeway Adam Kent picks up a prostitute from the street after the theater. It's been a long, torturous time for Adam since his last time with a woman and so he doesn't mind a reticent, uninviting prostitute. When taking off his clothes, Adam is ashamed by his unseemly, scarred appearance in front of a whore, which in turn drives him to anger and vengeance at Fleur's expense. Adam takes her, knows he's taking a virgin from the first thrust and yet doesn't relent. The prostitute turns out to be a deceased baron's daughter, Isabella Fleur Bradshaw. Fleur is running from a murder charge and a second cousin's obsessive pursuit who assumes the baron's title after Fleur's father passes away. Later, she learns of a theft charge mixed in as well. Scared, alone, fleeing the noose and hiding amidst London's poverty-stricken streets, a hungry, grimy Fleur turns to the last thing she has to sell: her body.
We learn more about Adam which makes this story's road to love, so challenging and heart-wrenching: Adam has a five year-old daughter and an estranged wife who cheats on him with his own younger half-brother. With the exception of that one time with Fleur, Adam has been faithful to his wife for five years despite his wife cheating on him with other men. Adam is all too aware of his wife's cheating.
Following Adam's violent coupling with Fleur, Adam feeds her and pays her thrice as much as the norm before parting ways. Nightmares of a cruel, scarred monster haunt Fleur while Adam takes steps to locate Fleur and employ her. Eventually, Adam's secretary hires Fleur as a governess at his estate in Willoughby. Fleur is unaware of the identity of the child's father when she accepts the governess position. She's thrilled to escape a life of prostitution.
The bulk of the novel takes place back at Adam's beloved home at Willoughby. Adam travels back to Willoughby for damage control when he hears of his wife's plans to invite a few notorious guests for a few weeks. Fleur is already there tutoring Adam's daughter Pamela, and soon, Adam's half brother Thomas arrives with Fleur's obsessed second cousin Matthew. The more we learn of Adam, the more your heart will melt for him. There's plenty of introspective musings both on Adam's part and Fleur's part during the time Adam's wife entertains many guests at the Willoughby palatial estate.
Again, THE SECRET PEARL's road to its happily-ever-after is challenging, and it isn't rosy. If you buckle up for a substantive love story, I found the love story and its lead characters very rewarding. I just wish better plotting, pacing, settings and prose equaled the heart-rending love story and the unique hero-and-heroine characterizations.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Voices of the Night, by Lydia Joyce [1]
*/***** (1/5)
"Perhaps you are being the one taken advantage of," Maggie said with no small amount of asperity. "Perhaps I am using my body to try to tie you to me, to squeeze more money out of you. I have no regrets" --yet-- "so why should you?"
Wow, for a book with above average settings and prose, I was thoroughly disappointed by Lydia Joyce's VOICES OF THE NIGHT. Although I found our heroine Maggie King's spirit, pride and determination methodically admirable, there's nothing attractive about her from a physical standpoint to justify our hero Charles' instant and incessant lust for her. I absolutely hated our hero Charles, he's lusting after Maggie for no reason I could ascertain; he hasn't met a single woman who's fiery, spirited and determined before Maggie? Worse, Charles' behavior at the end of the novel takes stupidity and ineptitude to new lows. He can't figure out anything by himself and he doesn't think and observe. These historical-romance heroes like Charles are good for little more than looking pretty and flaunting the power and wealth they were born into, an attractive combination for a spirited, yet ordinary-looking heroine's happily-ever-after. I'd prefer romance novelists write strictly from the heroine's point-of-view than torture and annoy me with Charles' ludicrous thoughts and lack of brains. Or maybe have him appear sparingly to service the heroine from a carnal standpoint in the middle, and then drop by at the end so the heroine can marry into the wealth and title the hero was born into. As the villain continues to terrorize, our dumbfounded Charles cannot figure out his identity and worse, doesn't even make an attempt to think about it before the climactic conclusion which has him scrambling.
This book obviously belongs to its heroine Maggie King down to every word. A prostitute's daughter growing up amidst London's poverty first as a pickpocket and then a dancing hall singer, Maggie perseveres, finds love and exhibits a far more cunning persona than our dumb hero Charles could ever hope to match. The book is all about Maggie and her problems with the local mob boss Danny. I may have enjoyed maybe one, or at the most, two moments in VOICES OF THE NIGHT. I liked how Maggie was aggressive sensually, street-smart, compassionate and cunning, but Charles is an impotent Ken doll by comparison. There's nothing to Charles except have him there at the end so Maggie can marry into the title and wealth Charles was born into.
I was reminded of a prior book and a movie reading this one. The essential premise reminded me of MY FAIR LADY though this book's central plot and hero are nothing like the movie's misogynistic male lead Henry Wiggins and its focus. I was also reminded of Jo Goodman's A SEASON TO BE SINFUL (**) also featuring a feisty, aggressive pickpocket of a heroine living in poverty whisked off by an weak hero born into his wealth, beauty and title. I thought Goodman's book had better prose and settings than this one though, and there were some genuinely witty exchanges in Goodman's A SEASON TO BE SINFUL whereas this one just resorted to having the hero lust after an unattractive child for the entire novel. Charles fails to think and act on his own to proactively protect the heroine from the villain hounding her.
The Story, possible SPOILERS ahead.
Tall, rich, and handsome Lord Edgington, Charles Crossham, makes a bet with his sister to pass off a street urchin as a lady of the peerage at the next Edgington social gathering. Charles wants his sister Millie to retract some harmful words slandering a girl Charles helped introduce into Society (unknown to his sister). If Charles is successful passing of a guttersnipe into society without anyone taking notice, Millie agrees to not only retract her harmful words, but to convince their mother to introduce the victimized girl herself next Season.
Meanwhile short, scrawny and plain-faced Maggie King and her "retinue" of poor friends ("chavies") survive day to day in poverty. Maggie is a dance hall singer and manages to make enough to pay for a small, congested flat for 8 or 9 of them total. The dance hall she worked at fired her and she can't seem to convince any other dancing hall to take her. She needs money to pay the rent and quickly all the while she ignores requests for a meeting with the mob boss Danny O'Sullivan.
At an audition, opera connoisseur Charles takes notice of Maggie and whisks her away for the wager he intends to win. He installs her in a row house, gives her an allowance of two pounds a week, arranges for new gowns, sets up all of her chavies with jobs and at schools, has tutors train Maggie in Society etiquette, speech and deportment, arranges for singing lessons to help Maggie after the wager runs its course. Charles gives everything he is to Maggie including going down on her. The main plotting with villain Danny and wager between Charles and his sister, both come to head at the party where Maggie must fool Charles' peers into believing she was gently bred.
As a warning, what follows details an account of my gripes with the plotting and especially our hero Charles.
Towards the end, Charles watches a blatantly distressed Maggie abruptly leave a room full of guests in the middle of a game, and yet he fails to notice the villain (whose identity is a secret to Charles) trail after her. He can't put 2 and 2 together at all? Instead of trying to figure something out and T-H-I-N-K on his own, he spends the rest of the time trying to convince Maggie to tell him who, amongst the guests, she suspects. My gawd I was dying a thousands deaths at this doofus of a hero rack his nonexistent brain to try to figure things out. To the very end, he's completely incapable of putting two and two together on his own and needs Maggie to drop small hints before finally convincing her to spell it out for him. She refuses. Her hints? Maggie asks subtle questions behind the origins of the wager which Charles should have been thinking about and piecing together on his own way before!! Charles = biggest inept dolt in the world. Charles notices nothing and thinks for himself even less. While dressing Maggie, we have: "...the shape of the revolver seemed to shout itself through the cloth of the pocket, but Charles did not seem to notice." Have I mentioned what an oblivious dumb ass Charles is yet?
If Maggie can rise and overcome in Charles' upper-class world by fooling them, I don't understand why Charles can't even make an effort to help Maggie in her world by neutralizing her nemesis Danny. The mob boss Danny O'Sullivan torments Maggie, Charles knows about it, and yet he doesn't even make attempt to dig deeper behind the connection between Maggie and Danny, let alone try to extricate Danny. He pusillanimously accepts Maggie's decision to escape Danny by leaving the country after the end of the wager. He doesn't have to try to strongarm Danny or anything, but maybe he could think of something from a patrician's point-of-view to help remove Danny? Or try to find out more about Maggie's history with him? Or barring all of that, at least investigate what role Danny played in Charles' wager with his sister since Danny apparently set up Maggie's audition which started it all? Instead of proactively doing any of this however, Charles meekly waits around for Danny to strike...
I didn't quite appreciate the way Charles comes to condescend High Society after spending time with Maggie. After Maggie, Charles views those of his class beneath him and their concerns petty (which they probably are), but he cultivates a healthy aversion to the thoughts and concerns of all people from his class, and seriously hates his mother and sister. "Yet his sister's manner of speech was not so different from that of most of the women of his acquaintance. The sophisticated ones were arch and their words barbed, and the ingenues simply burbled..." He's too good for his peers all of a sudden? What does he want them to talk about instead, was he too naive to understand the different concerns between the poor and rich from the beginning? It's reality, get over it, start helping the poor if you feel guilty for being rich, or start living amongst the poor if you feel you're too good for the rich now. I really could have done without Charles' supercilious, condescending attitude towards the upper classes. The contrasting concerns between the poor and rich seemed like a revelation to Charles, is he really that naive? More nonsense from Charles in the same vein: "Part of [Charles] wondered if [Maggie] could possibly ever be taken for a lady, not because she was too coarse but because she had an edge, a certainty and strength and definitiveness that he had never seen emerge from protected parlors of the gently bred." First what does "edge, a certainty and strength and definitiveness" exactly mean? It's too vague. And now not only is he too naive to understand the starkly contrasting problems the poor and rich deal with, but again he wants to generalize all of the "gently bred" as insipid and thoroughly lacking in character. Late in the novel, Maggie receives another note from Danny and after she shares the note with Charles, like a wide-eyed dolt, Charles asks, "What should we do?" Maggie confidently answers she wants to kill him. Charles is in awe of Maggie's determination from living amidst less-than-favorable conditions. Is he really that clueless? I had a tough time abiding this naivety and condescension in Charles' characterization.
I don't know, I really don't believe guys are as deep as so many romance novelists would have us believe. Charles' instant, lascivious desires for child-like, plain Maggie so early in the novel jarred me out of my reading every time. There's really nothing about Maggie for Charles to go ga-ga over: no lips, ordinary hair, plain eyes, no legs, no buttocks, no breasts. When VOICES OF THE NIGHT's heroine Maggie steps onto the stage, our hero Charles finds himself attracted to how proudly Maggie carries herself: chin up and shoulders squared. Now Maggie's proud bearing engenders admiration definitely, but lust? Maggie's miniature, thin, child-like frame and grubby appearance doesn't cool Charles' desire for her one bit. I was a bit repelled by Charles' attraction to Maggie. The book mires Charles' introspection and thoughts with references to Maggie's sharp mind, proud demeanor, "definitiveness," etc., etc. How, then, is he physically attracted to her? It doesn't seem like Maggie possesses any visibly desirable characteristics, and I found Charles' attraction to child-like Maggie 40 pages into the novel on the first day they meet a bit disconcerting to say the least. He wants her based on her proud constitution and, at times, snide remarks? Joyce never fails to remind us how small, frail and scrawny Maggie is and every time she's in Charles' arms, I have this creepy mental picture of a pedophile with a small child. I wish the book stuck to writing from Maggie's perspective because Charles' amorous thoughts towards a small, scrawny Maggie seemed forced, and prompted me to stop, shake my head and remind myself: ah yes, this is a female author writing this guy after all, I have to make some allowances for these unbelievable desires towards a grubby, child-like heroine. These jarring moments occurred every time we're privy to Charles' thoughts.
Conspicuously, not even once does Charles use the word "pretty" or "beautiful" to describe Maggie (even though he's attracted to her). Not even when Maggie dresses up and bathes much later in the novel. Why is Maggie allowed to see Charles as handsome (fairly consistently) but Charles not allowed to see Maggie as beautiful if the attraction is mutual? Maggie notices Charles' broad, tall frame at every turn and how he's "very handsome." Later, the novel has Maggie view him as, " so handsome, unmistakably rich, so smooth and golden, like an idol..." At the dinner table of the party where Maggie acts like a lady, Maggie again sneaks a peak at Charles and is struck by how much he looks like a "handsome Adonis." So why isn't Charles allowed to think of Maggie as "pretty" or "beautiful" even once? Instead, he has deep thoughts admiring Maggie's mind which cause him to have a hard-on. Wow, VOICES OF THE NIGHT harbors a deep, inflated picture of the male psyche and its sexual desires, while simplifying Maggie's attraction for Charles based on his tall, broad-shouldered and handsome countenance. I didn't like any of it.
Much of Charles' salacious reactions to Maggie seems more like a girl's response. For example, "...reaction shot through his body from groin to gut..." Why does this sound like a girl's warm, tingling reaction rippling through her center? A guy's lust isn't this deep! Or better yet, why this reaction at all? What's the foundation? Maggie's intelligence and pride? And this triggers lust? Seriously? So point me to a romance novel where a woman is attracted to a poor, untitled Plain-Joe of medium height for his cunning mind (except Hoyt's THE LEOPARD PRINCE ;)).
Many of Charles' thoughts and musings on Maggie seemed like what a romance novelist pressures on her romance hero, not really a guy's plausible reaction. For instance, "Maggie's face rose in his mind, cunning, wary, her expression alive with intelligence and precocious knowledge of the evils of the world..." And this subsequently drives him to lust: "...the memory came of her, in his arms, her small body drawn...he shifted uncomfortably, willing his erection away..." ?! Again, I have to shake my head and continue as dissonant as all this sounds to me given Maggie's very unattractive appearance.
Lydia Joyce sure doesn't miss a chance to convey Charles' amorous desires for Maggie (yet jarring) in every passage from Charles' perspective. Even when the neighborhood villain brutalizes Maggie's friend Nan, and Maggie's hand visibly tightened on a boy's arm, Joyce makes Charles think again about his desire for Maggie again. So a woman is brutally beaten and raped, Maggie hand simply "tightens" around another boy's arm as a reaction and you have Charles wishing it were his arm? Are you kidding me? It is this type of baseless, lustful introspection from the hero's perspective which make this novel very difficult to digest, I mean a woman was just beaten and raped and Joyce is more interested in making Charles feel more lust for a small, thin, unattractive girl like Maggie.
No, guys really aren't that deep... considering what Charles has to go on, his desire for Maggie seemed way too forced. Later in the novel, at the actual party, Joyce describes her heroine Maggie like so: "...her painful slenderness was transformed into ethereal sublimity, the translucency of her skin glowing like alabaster in the pale light of the gas jets." It isn't clear if this is Charles viewing Maggie as such, but if it is, it's another contrivance. What does "ethereal sublimity" look like anyway? Is that supposed to be pretty? Am I too shallow to ask? In my opinion, it's another example of romance's persistent contrivances at matching up tall, rich, "very handsome" men with ordinary, Plain-Janes.
Other times I had to laugh and ask myself if any guy would truly believe the utter bullshit Charles spews half the time in his thoughts and words. For example, when he's sermonizing, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Oh... my... lord. Does he even know how he sounds? This is so damn stupid, I don't have the proper words to express my reaction to Joyce's laughably ludicrous characterization of her hero Charles. Is he trying to be deep? Brooding? Tortured? All of the above? Well, it's coming across as foolish and preposterously idiotic.
It's a good thing I was reading Hiaasen's SKIN TIGHT at the same time where the men are hunks and the women are pretty to substantiate the guys' initial lust.
"Perhaps you are being the one taken advantage of," Maggie said with no small amount of asperity. "Perhaps I am using my body to try to tie you to me, to squeeze more money out of you. I have no regrets" --yet-- "so why should you?"
Wow, for a book with above average settings and prose, I was thoroughly disappointed by Lydia Joyce's VOICES OF THE NIGHT. Although I found our heroine Maggie King's spirit, pride and determination methodically admirable, there's nothing attractive about her from a physical standpoint to justify our hero Charles' instant and incessant lust for her. I absolutely hated our hero Charles, he's lusting after Maggie for no reason I could ascertain; he hasn't met a single woman who's fiery, spirited and determined before Maggie? Worse, Charles' behavior at the end of the novel takes stupidity and ineptitude to new lows. He can't figure out anything by himself and he doesn't think and observe. These historical-romance heroes like Charles are good for little more than looking pretty and flaunting the power and wealth they were born into, an attractive combination for a spirited, yet ordinary-looking heroine's happily-ever-after. I'd prefer romance novelists write strictly from the heroine's point-of-view than torture and annoy me with Charles' ludicrous thoughts and lack of brains. Or maybe have him appear sparingly to service the heroine from a carnal standpoint in the middle, and then drop by at the end so the heroine can marry into the wealth and title the hero was born into. As the villain continues to terrorize, our dumbfounded Charles cannot figure out his identity and worse, doesn't even make an attempt to think about it before the climactic conclusion which has him scrambling.
This book obviously belongs to its heroine Maggie King down to every word. A prostitute's daughter growing up amidst London's poverty first as a pickpocket and then a dancing hall singer, Maggie perseveres, finds love and exhibits a far more cunning persona than our dumb hero Charles could ever hope to match. The book is all about Maggie and her problems with the local mob boss Danny. I may have enjoyed maybe one, or at the most, two moments in VOICES OF THE NIGHT. I liked how Maggie was aggressive sensually, street-smart, compassionate and cunning, but Charles is an impotent Ken doll by comparison. There's nothing to Charles except have him there at the end so Maggie can marry into the title and wealth Charles was born into.
I was reminded of a prior book and a movie reading this one. The essential premise reminded me of MY FAIR LADY though this book's central plot and hero are nothing like the movie's misogynistic male lead Henry Wiggins and its focus. I was also reminded of Jo Goodman's A SEASON TO BE SINFUL (**) also featuring a feisty, aggressive pickpocket of a heroine living in poverty whisked off by an weak hero born into his wealth, beauty and title. I thought Goodman's book had better prose and settings than this one though, and there were some genuinely witty exchanges in Goodman's A SEASON TO BE SINFUL whereas this one just resorted to having the hero lust after an unattractive child for the entire novel. Charles fails to think and act on his own to proactively protect the heroine from the villain hounding her.
The Story, possible SPOILERS ahead.
Tall, rich, and handsome Lord Edgington, Charles Crossham, makes a bet with his sister to pass off a street urchin as a lady of the peerage at the next Edgington social gathering. Charles wants his sister Millie to retract some harmful words slandering a girl Charles helped introduce into Society (unknown to his sister). If Charles is successful passing of a guttersnipe into society without anyone taking notice, Millie agrees to not only retract her harmful words, but to convince their mother to introduce the victimized girl herself next Season.
Meanwhile short, scrawny and plain-faced Maggie King and her "retinue" of poor friends ("chavies") survive day to day in poverty. Maggie is a dance hall singer and manages to make enough to pay for a small, congested flat for 8 or 9 of them total. The dance hall she worked at fired her and she can't seem to convince any other dancing hall to take her. She needs money to pay the rent and quickly all the while she ignores requests for a meeting with the mob boss Danny O'Sullivan.
At an audition, opera connoisseur Charles takes notice of Maggie and whisks her away for the wager he intends to win. He installs her in a row house, gives her an allowance of two pounds a week, arranges for new gowns, sets up all of her chavies with jobs and at schools, has tutors train Maggie in Society etiquette, speech and deportment, arranges for singing lessons to help Maggie after the wager runs its course. Charles gives everything he is to Maggie including going down on her. The main plotting with villain Danny and wager between Charles and his sister, both come to head at the party where Maggie must fool Charles' peers into believing she was gently bred.
As a warning, what follows details an account of my gripes with the plotting and especially our hero Charles.
Towards the end, Charles watches a blatantly distressed Maggie abruptly leave a room full of guests in the middle of a game, and yet he fails to notice the villain (whose identity is a secret to Charles) trail after her. He can't put 2 and 2 together at all? Instead of trying to figure something out and T-H-I-N-K on his own, he spends the rest of the time trying to convince Maggie to tell him who, amongst the guests, she suspects. My gawd I was dying a thousands deaths at this doofus of a hero rack his nonexistent brain to try to figure things out. To the very end, he's completely incapable of putting two and two together on his own and needs Maggie to drop small hints before finally convincing her to spell it out for him. She refuses. Her hints? Maggie asks subtle questions behind the origins of the wager which Charles should have been thinking about and piecing together on his own way before!! Charles = biggest inept dolt in the world. Charles notices nothing and thinks for himself even less. While dressing Maggie, we have: "...the shape of the revolver seemed to shout itself through the cloth of the pocket, but Charles did not seem to notice." Have I mentioned what an oblivious dumb ass Charles is yet?
If Maggie can rise and overcome in Charles' upper-class world by fooling them, I don't understand why Charles can't even make an effort to help Maggie in her world by neutralizing her nemesis Danny. The mob boss Danny O'Sullivan torments Maggie, Charles knows about it, and yet he doesn't even make attempt to dig deeper behind the connection between Maggie and Danny, let alone try to extricate Danny. He pusillanimously accepts Maggie's decision to escape Danny by leaving the country after the end of the wager. He doesn't have to try to strongarm Danny or anything, but maybe he could think of something from a patrician's point-of-view to help remove Danny? Or try to find out more about Maggie's history with him? Or barring all of that, at least investigate what role Danny played in Charles' wager with his sister since Danny apparently set up Maggie's audition which started it all? Instead of proactively doing any of this however, Charles meekly waits around for Danny to strike...
I didn't quite appreciate the way Charles comes to condescend High Society after spending time with Maggie. After Maggie, Charles views those of his class beneath him and their concerns petty (which they probably are), but he cultivates a healthy aversion to the thoughts and concerns of all people from his class, and seriously hates his mother and sister. "Yet his sister's manner of speech was not so different from that of most of the women of his acquaintance. The sophisticated ones were arch and their words barbed, and the ingenues simply burbled..." He's too good for his peers all of a sudden? What does he want them to talk about instead, was he too naive to understand the different concerns between the poor and rich from the beginning? It's reality, get over it, start helping the poor if you feel guilty for being rich, or start living amongst the poor if you feel you're too good for the rich now. I really could have done without Charles' supercilious, condescending attitude towards the upper classes. The contrasting concerns between the poor and rich seemed like a revelation to Charles, is he really that naive? More nonsense from Charles in the same vein: "Part of [Charles] wondered if [Maggie] could possibly ever be taken for a lady, not because she was too coarse but because she had an edge, a certainty and strength and definitiveness that he had never seen emerge from protected parlors of the gently bred." First what does "edge, a certainty and strength and definitiveness" exactly mean? It's too vague. And now not only is he too naive to understand the starkly contrasting problems the poor and rich deal with, but again he wants to generalize all of the "gently bred" as insipid and thoroughly lacking in character. Late in the novel, Maggie receives another note from Danny and after she shares the note with Charles, like a wide-eyed dolt, Charles asks, "What should we do?" Maggie confidently answers she wants to kill him. Charles is in awe of Maggie's determination from living amidst less-than-favorable conditions. Is he really that clueless? I had a tough time abiding this naivety and condescension in Charles' characterization.
I don't know, I really don't believe guys are as deep as so many romance novelists would have us believe. Charles' instant, lascivious desires for child-like, plain Maggie so early in the novel jarred me out of my reading every time. There's really nothing about Maggie for Charles to go ga-ga over: no lips, ordinary hair, plain eyes, no legs, no buttocks, no breasts. When VOICES OF THE NIGHT's heroine Maggie steps onto the stage, our hero Charles finds himself attracted to how proudly Maggie carries herself: chin up and shoulders squared. Now Maggie's proud bearing engenders admiration definitely, but lust? Maggie's miniature, thin, child-like frame and grubby appearance doesn't cool Charles' desire for her one bit. I was a bit repelled by Charles' attraction to Maggie. The book mires Charles' introspection and thoughts with references to Maggie's sharp mind, proud demeanor, "definitiveness," etc., etc. How, then, is he physically attracted to her? It doesn't seem like Maggie possesses any visibly desirable characteristics, and I found Charles' attraction to child-like Maggie 40 pages into the novel on the first day they meet a bit disconcerting to say the least. He wants her based on her proud constitution and, at times, snide remarks? Joyce never fails to remind us how small, frail and scrawny Maggie is and every time she's in Charles' arms, I have this creepy mental picture of a pedophile with a small child. I wish the book stuck to writing from Maggie's perspective because Charles' amorous thoughts towards a small, scrawny Maggie seemed forced, and prompted me to stop, shake my head and remind myself: ah yes, this is a female author writing this guy after all, I have to make some allowances for these unbelievable desires towards a grubby, child-like heroine. These jarring moments occurred every time we're privy to Charles' thoughts.
Conspicuously, not even once does Charles use the word "pretty" or "beautiful" to describe Maggie (even though he's attracted to her). Not even when Maggie dresses up and bathes much later in the novel. Why is Maggie allowed to see Charles as handsome (fairly consistently) but Charles not allowed to see Maggie as beautiful if the attraction is mutual? Maggie notices Charles' broad, tall frame at every turn and how he's "very handsome." Later, the novel has Maggie view him as, " so handsome, unmistakably rich, so smooth and golden, like an idol..." At the dinner table of the party where Maggie acts like a lady, Maggie again sneaks a peak at Charles and is struck by how much he looks like a "handsome Adonis." So why isn't Charles allowed to think of Maggie as "pretty" or "beautiful" even once? Instead, he has deep thoughts admiring Maggie's mind which cause him to have a hard-on. Wow, VOICES OF THE NIGHT harbors a deep, inflated picture of the male psyche and its sexual desires, while simplifying Maggie's attraction for Charles based on his tall, broad-shouldered and handsome countenance. I didn't like any of it.
Much of Charles' salacious reactions to Maggie seems more like a girl's response. For example, "...reaction shot through his body from groin to gut..." Why does this sound like a girl's warm, tingling reaction rippling through her center? A guy's lust isn't this deep! Or better yet, why this reaction at all? What's the foundation? Maggie's intelligence and pride? And this triggers lust? Seriously? So point me to a romance novel where a woman is attracted to a poor, untitled Plain-Joe of medium height for his cunning mind (except Hoyt's THE LEOPARD PRINCE ;)).
Many of Charles' thoughts and musings on Maggie seemed like what a romance novelist pressures on her romance hero, not really a guy's plausible reaction. For instance, "Maggie's face rose in his mind, cunning, wary, her expression alive with intelligence and precocious knowledge of the evils of the world..." And this subsequently drives him to lust: "...the memory came of her, in his arms, her small body drawn...he shifted uncomfortably, willing his erection away..." ?! Again, I have to shake my head and continue as dissonant as all this sounds to me given Maggie's very unattractive appearance.
Lydia Joyce sure doesn't miss a chance to convey Charles' amorous desires for Maggie (yet jarring) in every passage from Charles' perspective. Even when the neighborhood villain brutalizes Maggie's friend Nan, and Maggie's hand visibly tightened on a boy's arm, Joyce makes Charles think again about his desire for Maggie again. So a woman is brutally beaten and raped, Maggie hand simply "tightens" around another boy's arm as a reaction and you have Charles wishing it were his arm? Are you kidding me? It is this type of baseless, lustful introspection from the hero's perspective which make this novel very difficult to digest, I mean a woman was just beaten and raped and Joyce is more interested in making Charles feel more lust for a small, thin, unattractive girl like Maggie.
No, guys really aren't that deep... considering what Charles has to go on, his desire for Maggie seemed way too forced. Later in the novel, at the actual party, Joyce describes her heroine Maggie like so: "...her painful slenderness was transformed into ethereal sublimity, the translucency of her skin glowing like alabaster in the pale light of the gas jets." It isn't clear if this is Charles viewing Maggie as such, but if it is, it's another contrivance. What does "ethereal sublimity" look like anyway? Is that supposed to be pretty? Am I too shallow to ask? In my opinion, it's another example of romance's persistent contrivances at matching up tall, rich, "very handsome" men with ordinary, Plain-Janes.
Other times I had to laugh and ask myself if any guy would truly believe the utter bullshit Charles spews half the time in his thoughts and words. For example, when he's sermonizing, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Oh... my... lord. Does he even know how he sounds? This is so damn stupid, I don't have the proper words to express my reaction to Joyce's laughably ludicrous characterization of her hero Charles. Is he trying to be deep? Brooding? Tortured? All of the above? Well, it's coming across as foolish and preposterously idiotic.
It's a good thing I was reading Hiaasen's SKIN TIGHT at the same time where the men are hunks and the women are pretty to substantiate the guys' initial lust.
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