Thursday, May 29, 2008

Lord of Desire

Title: Lord of Desire (2005)
Author: Paula Quinn (Warner)
Period: Medieval-Norman Conquest (1065 England)
Grade: C

Lord of Desire is a romance rarity, an erotic bubblegum Medieval. Quinn has crafted two likeable enough leads but they are out of place in the setting. This isn't a wallpaper romance because it isn't that the setting is ignored. Instead, it is just misused to an almost comical level. The role of the match-making Fairy Godmother is played by William the Conqueror. For serious? The dialogue and idioms are so completely modern that it is laughable.

Brynna Dumont's (why does a Saxon girl have a Norman/French last name?) father was defeated in battle by a Norman, Brand Risande. King Edward and Duke William of Normandy orchestrate a marriage between the two that Brynna agrees to if only to ensure peace for her home and people. Brand, a close friend of William's, is much more reluctant to agree to the match. His former fiancé betrayed him with another and he refuses to ever love again. Brynna has the modern and cheerful attitude that she can not imagine a loveless marriage. She is certain she can make her husband love her. They are in lust from the start and she is almost instantly in love. The two build a good rapport and their chemistry is the highpoint of the book. Paula Quinn's books are billed as highly erotic romance novels, but here the sex scenes (while rampant) weren't that hot or risque by my standards.

The entire novel seems one where love and lust are easily confused. Brand is a funny and charming hero, but his entire being revolves around loving (or more likely lusting) after his former fiancé. I think it is always a bad sign when the hero's friends, such as William, despise his former love while he remain ignorant of her character flaws. It paints the hero as a fool. It bugs and overshadows his good quality. That it continues for so long and to Brynna's determent makes it intolerable.

Brynna, for her part, is an imperfect heroine. She does a lot of jumping to conclusions, storming away, and attempting to make Brand jealous. Luckily, she has the assistance of her friend William to patch up her marriage. Good thing he wasn't too busy with scheming to invade a nation and build an empire to fix the love life of a random Saxon girl. If the history and setting were not so completely abused, I'd rank this romance considerably higher because of Quinn's felicity with relationship development.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

My Only Love

Title: My Only Love (1993)
Author: Katherine Sutcliffe (Jove)
Period: European Historical-Victorian (1863 England)
Grade: C+

I enjoyed Sutcliffe's A Fire in the Heart and the supporting role of Miles, the bastard brother, so that I immediately bought his book, My Only Love. It is an okay book. Slightly better than average, but lacks the depth of setting and plot of A Fire in the Heart.

The big problem is My Only Love is A Big Secret romance. If the author going to make that Big Secret the basis for the primary conflict between the hero and heroine it shouldn't be so transparent that the reader can decipher it on page one. Literally! On the first page of novel Sutcliffe provides the clue that reveals the truth. Thus, the reader knows the Big Secret and is preconditioned to perceive the hero as a moron who couldn't find his own ass with two hands and a road map.

I dig Miles so that kinda sucks. He is the (older) illegitimate brother of a Duke. He resents the social system that excludes him and denies him a title he believes should be his birthright. Perversely, he craves do be a respected member of the society that spurns him. He's profligate and a poor businessman. He's jealous and sensitive and cruel and charming. He is a fascinating hero with real flaws and human emotions. No cookie cutter alpha male here.

The Earl of Devonshire solves Miles financial woes by offering his unconventional eldest daughter, Olivia, in marriage. Olivia is the mother to an illegitimate son and the Earl hopes to remove the stain of scandal from his household to improve the marriage chances of his beloved younger daughter. Olivia has secretly loved Miles for years even after his affair with her sister. Miles reluctantly accepts the offer despite his dream of a marrying a respectable woman who will help him gain the Ton's favor. Olivia, meanwhile, goes to tremendous lengths to protect a selfish and manipulative sister, an ignorant father, and her husband from The Big Secret. Olivia and her son eventually worm their way into Miles' icy heart for the HEA, but I was hoping for something less rote from Sutcliffe after A Fire in the Heart.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Filigree

Title: Filigree (1994)
Author: Debra Hamilton (Zebra)
Period: American-Colonial/Revolution (1774 Massachusetts)
Grade: F

Lord. There is so much wrong with this book I don't know where to start. First, and most importantly, Hamilton can't write. That some of this putrid sentence structure made it past an editor, even a Zebra editor, and into print is a wonder. The text is mostly narrative and prose with little dialogue to advance the plot or strengthen the romance. It is descriptive novel with some odd mystical/ethereal elements that seem to occur when your worse romance novelists write about Native American people (see Edwards, Cassie for further evidence). So the text it self is awkward and unreadable.

Courtland Day is an officer in the King's army during the occupation of Boston. He is sent by his superiors to spy on his hated step-father, a Sons of Liberty supporting colonist in the Massachusetts countryside. On the way, he is injured and cared for by Chaynoa, a girl of native and Puritan ancestry. Chaynoa, and her slow brother, live in the woods and forage off the land because they have been driven from town by scandal. They live a feral existence. But why? They don't return to live with her father's people, they don't move to a large city to find work, they don't move on to another village where they won't be ostracized. They instead prefer to remain half starved, half frozen in the woods nearest a town that shuns them. What the hell?

Chaynoa has also been a victim of sexual assault. Courtland, unlike most romance heroes, correctly interprets her skittish nature around men as a sign of her trauma. However, this doesn't stop him from attempting to pressure her into intimacy after they are married despite her fear. He's an insensitive lug. Additionally, Hamilton can't decide what the hero's background is shifting from a man raised in mean circumstance on a struggling English farm to a man of elite heritage who has never before seen a woman wield an ax. Courtland is a lousy spy and dickhead of a husband but Chaynoa, and the reader, are supposed to see him as a noble romantic hero?

A colonial romance which flips the traditional American interpretation and offer an English hero and colonial villains is the nugget of an interesting plot. Unfortunately, Filigree is a piss-poor execution of everything else that makes for an interesting romance novel. The worst book I've read in ages.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Where Dreams Begin

Title: Where Dreams Begin (2000)
Author: Lisa Kleypas (Avon)
Period: European Historical-Victorian (1830 England)
Grade: C

I'm not fair to Lisa Kleypas. I expect so much from her, what would be a good book by another author is only average by Kleypas standards. These are determents of being the Jane Austen of your generation. Sorry!

In Where Dreams Begin she returns to her wheelhouse with a respectable (often noble) heroine and wealthy lower-class upstart hero. The widowed Lady Holly is ending her three years of morning for her beloved husband when she encounters Zachary Bronson. After a clandestined kiss, Zachary is smitten. He concocts a plan to hire Lady Holly to teach himself, and his marriageable sister, the minutiae of the ton. If you’ve read better Kleypas their romance feels predictable from start to finish.

He is a likeable enough hero, but Holly is an enigma. Kleypas suggests that she accepts Zachary's offer because she has a hidden wild streak and secretly hopes to challenge convention, but the reader never sees that in action. If an author has to repeatedly tell you the character is brave or smart or unconventional, it is usually because she hasn't shown you the character to be so in the context of the plot. Rose, Holly's daughter, like all romance novel children is delightful and perfect in every way. Also, the subplot romance between the sister and Holly's cousin wasn't given enough room to grow. Where Dreams Begin wasn't a bad book, but certainly isn't one of Kleypas' better works.

Monday, May 19, 2008

A Fire in the Heart

Title: A Fire in the Heart (1990)
Author: Katherine Sutcliffe (Avon)
Period: European Historical-Victorian (1861 England)
Grade: B

Another day, another positive English Victorian review. A Fire in the Heart isn't quite epic, but it is certainly grander in scope than most historical romance. Sutcliffe, who when I previously read I was not a fan, has crafted a dark novel that embodies the poverty and hardship of the period. It isn't a perfect novel. The hero is Alpha to the extreme, there are some weird age of consent issues, and some of the research/wording is lax but that will only bother a rabid history buff (i.e. me). In some respects it reminds me of Samantha James' Gabriel's Bride when a heroine from dire circumstances joins a noble family. It has many similar plot point but A Fire in the Heart has more texture of both character and setting.


Bonnie is an orphan fleeing horrid workhouse conditions. She finds refuge at Middleham Castle where she is sheltered and nursed back to health. Damien, the Earl of Warwick (also his last name, boo!), plans to return her to the workhouse once her health returns. The two bicker constantly as a front for their growing attraction. Bonnie loathes the upper class and isn't suitable grateful to the Earl. Her anger and distrust aren't artificial plot contrivances, but the result of her traumatic life experience. Damien, meanwhile, is conflict about embracing the family heritage or returning to America. He was burned in love before and refuses to acknowledge his feeling for Bonnie until it is too late. Also, he believes her to be younger than her age. After they make love he is stunned to learn she is eighteen because he had assumed she was fourteen. I know age of consent was different in the past, but gross!

She tells an enormous lie to preserve her safety that furthers his animosity. He is an Alphas-Alpha with much demanding and ordering and seducing abound. The novel then takes a Pygmalion twist when Damien becomes her guardian and attempts to marry her off. Misadventure turns tragic and the two are separated. There is also the mystery of Bonnie's past and her father's murder that neither predictable, nor an encumbrance to the plot.

Sutcliffe has done considerable research on the political entanglement of prosperous Englishmen and the American Confederacy. Damien isn't only a mill owner, but also a Mississippi plantation owner. Yet he isn’t a slave owner, Damien is morally opposed to the institution and only employs free blacks on his plantation. Southern history and African-American history are particular interests of mine so perhaps I'm the only one to notice how ridiculous this plot point. Mississippi has fewer free blacks than any Southern state, a mere 775 in the 1860 census. As the largest cotton plantations employed hundreds of slaves, that would mean almost every free black in the Magnolia State was in his employ! I know romance authors are terrified of making their characters slave owners because they fear it makes them unsympathetic, but abandoning historical accuracy to allow (the always white) hero and heroine to appear progressive just belittles the overall slave experience, IMO.

Tangents on slavery in romance novels aside, it was a good historical and I've now moved on to her sequel, My Only Love.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Rose of Blacksword

Title: The Rose of Blacksword (1992)
Author: Rexanne Becnel (Dell)
Period: Medieval (1156 England)
Grade: C-

I read this book two days ago. And if it wasn't sitting in front of me I couldn't remember the heros name to save my life.

Rexanne Becnel's medievals are usually excellent. Maiden Bride is on my top 20 all-time favorite list. Her books can be dark and smart and are loaded with sweeping melodrama. The Rose of Blacksword is just boring. It isn't actively bad. It just is.

Lady Rosalynde is waylaid by bandit on her way home. After a series of misadventures to find aid for herself and an injured servant boy, Rose handfasts herself to an about-to-hang convict who refuses to divulge anything about his background. Rose hopes that once the handfast period of a year and a day expires she can forget about Blacksword and go on with her life. However, when Blacksword a landless bastard knight learns he has been handfasted to the only heir to a wealthy and titled castle he refuses to go quietly. She treats him shabbily. He claims to love her but most of his emotions are located in his pants.

She refuses to reveal the handfasting to her father. He forces Blacksword to become a servant as a mistaken punishment for saving her life. There is also the matter of why he was framed for hanging and a tournament to win her hand in marriage. The two mystery plots intersect with the villain being one and the same in both stories. A convenience that is usually only contrived by lazy authors. Becnel usually is not one.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Family Man

Title: Family Man (1992)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz (Pocket)
Period: Contemporary (Washington State)
Grade: D

The very nice woman who owns two of the local used bookstores always recommends contemporaries to me. She even gave me a free copy of Family Man in an effort to convert me to the genre. She is such a nice woman and has such great stores, I hoped that I'd love the book, my life long loathing of contemporaries would evaporate, and I wouldn't have to lie to the nice bookstore lady. No dice.


Why are contemporaries more old-fashioned than historicals? Few "contemporary romances" feel modern or realistic. It is like they're all set in some weird Pleasantville type 1950s netherworld that I can't identify. The woman all have a virginal naiveté that is out-dated, bizarre, and culturally inappropriate. Contemporary heroines are too often like Amy Adams in Enchanted. Our heroine, Katy, is supposed to come of as charming, but instead she seems like she's trapped in a time warp. She has been raising her brother since she was 19 but she doesn't know how to talk to him. She seems to think making homemade dinners equals good parenting. And if Krentz believes real teenagers talk like Katy's 17 year old brother she must be getting her "research" from episodes of Donna Reed. Of course, she's never had an orgasm until the hero comes along. She must be handless.

Those that are not of the Christian/baby variety only seem to have two settings, law enforcement (cops, private eyes, FBI agents) or high-powered corporations. The later is always the more entertaining option because romance novelists seem to have zero clue about what occurs in big business. The campy dialogue often reads like the business dealings on Falcon Crest. The company is always something "chick-friendly" like a fashion house, a vineyard, or a magazine.

Family Man, no exception, is set in a restaurant empire. Katy, our heroine, is the personal assistant of the family matriarch, but appears more like a family-fixer. The company is struggling, but she is so sweet and chipper she's sure it is no one's fault. The lesson: women just aren't cut out for the big bad world of business. Delicate flowers that we are.

The whole gender dynamic of strong man protects stupid, defenseless woman occurs repeatedly as Luke knocks heads and fixes disasters on Katy's behalf. Business, family, sex. Luke and his Y-chromosome is here to save the day. It is creepy. Why a successful man would be attracted to a woman who can't tie her own shoes is a mystery. I can suspend disbelief with historicals because social mores existed that prevent women from asserting themselves. That demanded they limit their sphere to home and family. And yet many historicals, including Krentz’s own, have smart, funny, and career minded women. I know feminist romance is an oxymoron, but contemporaries too often reflect Phyllis Scafly's view of womanhood and the world.

Now I have to lie to the nice bookstore lady.




Monday, May 12, 2008

A Stranger's Wife

Title: A Stranger's Wife (1999)
Author: Maggie Osborne (Warner)
Period: American-Western (1875-6 AZ/Colorado Territories)
Grade: D+

That's it? Some of the review for A Stranger's Wife implied it was the best thing this side of Flowers from the Storm. It kinda sucked.

Say you are running to become the first Governor of Colorado? And say your wife has "disappeared" after a house fire killed her child? What do you do? 'Cause I don't think even Karl Rove would have suggested searching women's prisons to find your wife's doppelganger and then blackmailing said doppelganger into masquerading as your missing wife until after the election. At which time you'll send her off to Europe and create a cover story your wife "died". Scratch that. Machiavelli would have though that was over the top.

If you can ignore the ridiculous premise (which I can't), Osborne offers an interesting and complex heroine. Lily is no virgin and no shrinking violet. She ran away from home with one man, took up with an outlaw, has an illegitimate daughter, and did time for murder. If she wasn't involved in a stupid, nonsensical plot with a vapid hero I could dig her. Quinn is a spineless and bland hero who allows himself to be cajoled by his political advisor into supporting policy (mining deregulation) and committing acts (see doppelganger convict wife) he knows to be immoral. He isn't present as a complex politician trying to make necessary compromises, he is a pawn.

The how and why of Lily and Quinn's romance is pretty pointless. They are in lust from the start and strike a bargain to become lovers. After some pretty watered-down sex scenes they fall in love. That's it. I'd expect that sort of hash from a naive heroine, but Lily has been around the block. She spends the remainder of the novel selflessly hiding her love so as not to complicate their agreed upon parting and hamper his governor bid. That she falls for such a twit makes her less likeable.

The subplot with the missing wife is so hackneyed it defies description and turns into a mini-gothic when Lily suspects that her lover is trying to kill her. Also, when Quinn sends for Lily's daughter he announces he was planned pass her off as his wife's niece. Even though his wife's life-long melancholy is, in-part, because of the childhood deaths of her siblings.


A Stranger's Wife is one WTF? moment after another.

Monday, May 5, 2008

A Dangerous Man

Title: A Dangerous Man (1996)
Author: Connie Brockway (Dell)
Period: European Historical-Victorian (1878 England)
Grade: B+

I'm a sucker for a great cover. And by great I mean old-school bodice rippers cover. The trend of flowers and rainbow covers imply that we should be ashamed of reading romance novels. I wasn't wild about Connie Brockway the first time I read her but I couldn't resist this cover. Happily, I was not disappointed the second time around.


American Mercy Coltrane has come to England to find her missing younger brother. She hopes to enlist the help of an English gunslinger who once worked for her father's ranch & shot her. However, Hart Moreland was living a double-life in Texas because he is an earl attempting to hide from his unsavory past. Mercy appears at a house party where Hart is trying to arrange the marriage of his youngest sister to a duke. Desperate, Mercy blackmails him into assisting her locate her brother.

A Victorian, A Dangerous Man, highlights the seamy underside of London most Regencies ignore. The brother's opium addiction is painted in descriptive and grim detail. Most importantly, Mercy and Hart aren't perfect people. They make mistakes. They hurt each other. They say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But they don't behave like children. They are two adults who (slowly) fall in love with someone who is the exact opposite of who they imagined they'd love. It is a gradual feeling out process, but the tension never seem forced nor the characters stupid.

Good show, Connie! I'm now on the lookout for earlier Brockways.