I will think about trying the Courtesan series, since I did really like the excerpts you posted. I can enjoy great repartee as much as great description.

While the Marriage Bed might have been about religion and come across as distasteful,

No, no. I liked The Marriage Bed very much. The one that didn’t work so well for me was To Burn. I don’t know if you have read that one? The hero is a Saxon and the heroine a Roman? In any case, I found it sort of convenient that the heroine’s religion (Christianty) was given all kinds of emphasis but the hero’s religion, which was pagan, was not — not just in the hero’s POV but also in the POVs of all his compatriots.

I don’t want to beat the point in with a stick, but it’s not religion per se that bothers me. I like many medieval romances that have religious characters, like the aforementioned Bed of Spices, Uncommon Vows, For My Lady’s Heart, and The Marriage Bed. Not to mention some 19th century romances with religious characters as well, including Gaffney’s To Love and to Cherish, Putney’s One Perfect Rose, and Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. I absolutely agree that religion can often give a strong sense of what those times were truly like, and I don’t have any problem with that whatsoever, just with the implication (which I felt was made in To Burn) that Christianity is superior to other religions.

The Courtesan series strength rests on social intercourse and I use the term intercourse deliberately because part of the fun is the loaded double entendres that dominate the exchanges between the men and the women.

I find that this kind of exemplifies the spirit of the Courtesan books:

Sophia’s left eyebrow rose fractionally. “Surely Lord Dutton can tolerate some unpleasantness in his life. He is a man, after all, and men are rather good at tolerating unpleasant things. The same should never be said of women. We may occasionally be required to endure unpleasantness, but we should, at all costs, avoid become adept at it.”

While the Marriage Bed might have been about religion and come across as distasteful, the Courtesan’s series is about a woman’s helplessness in a patriarchal society and what she can do to ameliorate that by working the system, so to speak. Women in the Regency period had but few choices in life. A society woman had only one: be married. I see these books as showing how women in society flirted and schemed to achieve the best result possible which was marriage to a well favored man that they actually loved.

Society is shown to be one constant chase, women chasing after men and men chasing after women and many not chasing after the right ones.

It is, however, dialogue heavy and if you are looking for long, wonderful descriptions, you’ll not likely find it in Dain’s series unless it is someone speaking.

Thanks for reviewing this one Janine. I was wondering if I’d like it. I have the same aversion to the dependence on soulmates these days, so I wouldn’t enjoy it. I don’t mind it as much if it’s part of the attraction, but to leave it at that is just a lazy excuse for a relationship to me.

Re: the Abe Drakon series Debra, I’m with Janine on that and love it.

You mentioned Shana Abe's Drakon series. Do you have a review for this here somewhere? I have been considering starting the series but haven’t seen a review for it. Thanks

Lady Buxted, never one to except defeat, had come to Alverstoke House, on the flimisest of pretexts, accompanied by her eldest daughter, who, failing to soften her uncle’s heart by cajolery, had dissolved into tears. But as she was not one of those few, fortunate females who could cry without rendering themselves hideous he was as imprevious to her tears as to his sister’s account of the straitened circumstances to which she had been reduced.

I really enjoyed the writing in the exerpts you posted. I read and liked several of Dain’s earlier novels. I think my favorite of these may be The Marriage Bed, which has a really interesting twist in it that I didn’t see coming.

The last of her books that I read was To Burn, which exemplified some of the things that don’t work for me so well about her writing. There were an awful lot of sexual innuendos and speculations in the secondary characters’ dialogue when they were talking about the hero and heroine. At some point I began to wonder if these characters had nothing else to talk about.

But the bigger problems for me were the religious overtones of the ending and the way the story seemed to dismiss the hero’s original, pagan religion in favor of Christianity. It was like the non-Christian characters’ own religion had never mattered to them at all. There was also a speech at the end of the book, given by the heroine, I think, in which she seemed to dismiss other religions as inferior to Christianity.

I am very curious about Dain’s recent Courtesan series but I guess what I want to know is whether there is a lot of innuendo and speculation from the larger community of characters in the book and whether there are relgious overtones in these books as well.

I think Dain is a very creative author, her plots were often fresh and original, and I really like the excerpts you posted, too. But I have so many books I want to try and so little time to read them in that I think whether I read the Courtesan books will depend on your answer.

I think that is a good point. I notice that I'm often fond of books with birds or other flying things (like Sharon Shinn's angel series or Shana Abe's drakon series). Something about the idea of human beings being able to take flight captures my imagination. And it makes such a good metaphor for freedom.

Janine, I totally agree on that and there are many spcies of birds, which add to the variety of a potential story. The metaphor of total freedom is also an excellent point, plus the possibility of glides and moves. Of course I meant that apart from wolves and now birds, there are many animals that can be used by authors for their shapeshifters like bears, foxes, large cats, horses, deers and possibly reptiles and sea creatures.

I wonder if you, Janine, and Harry~Day Dream would like Claudia Dain's new series. They are a bit of a complicated read because there are so many people in her books, but the dialogue is fantastic. It is full of the parry and thrust.

I love it! Hopefully some day I would be able to read them. These can be great material for research on how people talked back then, since some of my work is suited in a steam punk Victorian world and dialogue needs to eb just like that. Thank you for the recommendation.

“Lord Iveston, how remarkably splendid you look this evening,” Sophia said with a snap of her ivory fan. “Fully in the flush of full manhood and health. How the ladies must swoon.”

She was flirting with him. But then, Sophia had the nasty habit of flirting with every man. Louisa had even observed her flirting with Dutton on more than one occasion, and, worse, Dutton had appeared to enjoy it very much.

“If they swoon, Lady Dalby,” Iveston answered softly, “I fear it is in response to my father’s title, not my flushed manhood.”

To which Sophia laughed in a manner not entirely modest and to which the Marquis of Iveston blushed. Louisa was entirely sympathetic. Obvious blushing was the curse of those with skin like snow and blushing was the curse of those who parleyed with Sophia Dalby.

“And modest besides,” Sophia said with a grin. “You will never convince me that ladies do not swoon when faced with your… flushed manhood? What a charming turn of phrase you possess, Lord Iveston. You remind me of your brother, Lord Henry. He, too, has a way with words.”

or

“But, of course, it is always the woman who does the choosing in these matters,” Sophia said pleasantly, her dark eyes shining with mirth, cutting him off before he had even begun to lay down the ground rules of their association. “Not that most men realize that, naturally. But you realize that, don’t you, your grace? It is your most enchanting trait, as you must surely know.”

He knew nothing of the sort. He was somewhat dimly aware that Sophia had redrawn the lines of their relationship, insulted him, and complimented him all in the same breath. He found himself in the odd position of wanting to agree with her. And that is exactly what he did.

I enjoyed this one for two reasons: the distinctive bird/avatar's voice and the heroine, who was like, “dude, you live in a CAVE!” and thus she went for Aimery who lived in a CASTLE

Kirsten, that is a good point about the bird’s voice. Two things in this book reminded me a bit of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels. One was the voice of the bird, which I thought was a bit reminsicent of the dragons’ voices in some of those books.

And the other was the scene in the seaside cave in which Gillian hides with the hungry baby falcons and merges with Princess. It reminded me of a scene in McCaffrey’s YA book Dragonsong in which Menolly, the heroine, takes shelter in a seaside cave and feeds the hungry fire lizards that are hatching there, not realizing that a telepathic bond with them is created in that process. Gosh, I loved those McCaffrey books when I was a teenager.

I still wish that the long lost witty, winding, weirdly structured sentences come back.

I miss them sometimes too.

I was ready to dismiss it at the mention of shapeshifters and then the mention of wolves. I am not especially fond of them, but the falcon moment certainly brings something new to the table. More people should experiment with animal shapes.

I think that is a good point. I notice that I’m often fond of books with birds or other flying things (like Sharon Shinn’s angel series or Shana Abe’s drakon series). Something about the idea of human beings being able to take flight captures my imagination. And it makes such a good metaphor for freedom.

Thank you, Janine! Although I've been meaning to delve into many of Emma Holly's books, since by all accounts she's a fabulous writer, the timeframe of CM caught my attention. I also wrote a paranormal that ventures into the England of 1349. It would be interesting to see how another author handled the plague.

You might also want to read Barbara Samuel’s Bed of Spices and Laura Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart, then. Both are set in the same era and the plague plays a part in both stories. They are not paranormals, though.

I was ready to dismiss it at the mention of shapeshifters and then the mention of wolves. I am not especially fond of them, but the falcon moment certainly brings something new to the table. More people should experiment with animal shapes.

Now, off to find more excerpts…

I enjoyed Holly’s prose in Beyond Innocence more than in Catching Midnight, but here is a nice descriptive passage from Catching Midnight for you:

The cave was hidden in the ancient forest, a quiet place with a mouth like a gash in the hard gray stone. No one knew how long it had been a den, not even the pack, and they were centuries old at the least. Ulric, their leader, claimed to remember fighting William the Conquerer’s men at Hastings, but when Gillian pressed him for details he simply said his side had had no horses and were soon defeated. His human life was gone, he said: dust. He could not fathom why she was interested in the past.

The pack did not like to count their years, even by implication. They lived in the moment, in the hunt, in the playful mating of flesh and fur.

Also, while I did feel that Aimery bonded with Princess, I did not feel that that bond was stronger than say, the one between Meriel and her falcon Chanson in Putney’s Uncommon Vows, or the one between Melanthe and her falcon Gryngolet in Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart. That is, in all those relationships there was admiration for the birds on the human beings’ part, and some sense of the other creature’s soul, but that to me is not the same as a relationship between equals.