Dear Author » captivity narrative

REVIEW: Don’t Tempt Me by Loretta Chase

Janet — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:26:51 +0000

Dear Ms. Chase:

After I read last year’s book, Your Scandalous Ways, I knew my expectations were going to be set incredibly high for anything that came after. And thankfully, Don’t Tempt Me is not a book in the same vein, but instead hearkens back to the Carsington series, especially Miss Wonderful and Mr. Impossible. A hero who has suffered a great loss and who copes by putting on a distracting outward display and a heroine who lives on the margins of polite society’s rules and whose innocence does not equate to naÃ¯veté. And while Don’t Tempt Me possessed a number of charms of its own, somewhere between my high expectations and the echoes of other books, I was not as tempted to love it as I hoped I would be.

From the beginning, little Zoe Octavia Lexham, aka "The Bolter," was a pain in Lucien de Gray’s young neck. Although when Lucien came under the guardianship of Lord Lexham, following a tragic series of illnesses and accidents claiming both his parents and older brother, Zoe was also a "bright, bright spot in his life." He was the only one she seemed to listen to, and she was the only one who could make him laugh. The "catastrophe-waiting-to-happen" was fated to leave Lucien as well, though, stolen from a Cairo market at the age of twelve while everyone assumed that she did as she always had: run away. Regardless, it was one more blow to the young Duke of Marchmont, and it sealed his wary insouciance about, well, everything, it seemed. So when Marchmont shows up at Lord Lexham’s to run off the latest young woman posing as Zoe, he is almost maliciously gleeful at the idea of doing so. Yet all it takes is one look at the young woman in question for him to be caught with "a feeling of being set on fire, then thrown into a deep pool of water," so turned upside down he is at the improbable return of that "dreadful girl" and "bright, bright spot," Zoe the Bolter.

Zoe, besides being extraordinarily beautiful and curvaceous, is also a vexing and irresistible combination of innocence and experience, wisdom and rebelliousness. Having spent the past twelve years in a harem, the prized concubine of a young – and impotent – son of a Pasha, she is physically home but psychologically between cultures. She has no compunction about publicly discussing men’s "instruments of pleasure" or her sexual training, yet she understands that the only way to finish her breakfast is to ignore the pointless arguing at the table between her sisters. She understands what it is to be a slave but cannot abide confinement.

In some ways, Zoe’s return is another wound to Marchmont, although one he cannot identify or process. But the deliberate callousness he has cultivated over the years is no match for the lively beauty and intelligence of Zoe the Woman, because simply being in the same room with her is enough to blow open the doors to the "mental cupboard" in which Marchmont has held every painfully pleasant and unpleasant memory and emotion. And for all the energy Zoe spent running away as a child, for all of the pressure that tempts her to do the same once grown and back home in England, she and Marchmont have an almost electrical energy running between them that holds both of them in place.

The strength of the current is evident even in Marchmont’s reserve, in the casual misogyny he aims at Zoe’s sisters, for example, the "Matrons of Doom," the "Four Harridans of the Apocalypse," two of whom "looked ready to drop brats any minute now – twins or ponies, judging by their circumference." They got to grow up safe and happy in Lexham’s home while Zoe was far, far away, and their very presence seems an affront to Marchmont. We also see the strength of the attraction in the assiduousness with which Marchmont takes the task of guiding Zoe back into English society and the happiness she feels at pleasing him. We see it in the way Marchmont must tame his own "instrument of delight" in Zoe’s completely outlandish company, and in the way she cannot help but express her delight at his most casual touch. And, of course, we see it in the way Zoe’s unrestrained honesty and her emotional independence bring more than Marchmont’s membrum virile to life. The strong connection also serves to focus the novel rather tightly and effectively on Zoe and Marchmont’s relationship.

The plot of Don’t Tempt Me is not complicated. The book is divided into two distinct parts, the first chronicling Zoe’s re-entrance into society and culminating with the Queen’s blessing, and the second playing out the consequences of a more personal culmination between Zoe and Marchmont. In this, the book is quite cleverly constructed, because all of the various challenges around making Zoe society-ready – finding her proper clothes, polishing her curtsy, trying to keep her from talking freely about her skills in the "arts of pleasing a man" – keep Zoe and Marchmont in close proximity where they can argue with and lust for each other, often at the same time, and where the sharp-as-ever comedic elements of the writing can be showcased:

Thwack. "Get off!"

Something was hitting his back.

Thwack. "Now! Do you hear me?" Thwack. "Get off her this instant!" Thwack. "Get off!"

Bloody hell.   Not the idiot maid.   Not now.   Where in the blazes had she come from?
He closed his eyes, took a long breath, and summoned his mind back into his skull.
He would kill the maid and throw her corpse into the Serpentine.

. . . "Have you taken leave of your senses?" Priscilla cried.   "Good God, Marchmont, what is wrong with you?   Rutting with my sister in Hyde Park! Like dogs! What will people say?"

. . . Zoe raised herself up on her elbows and glared at her sister.   "I am going to kill you," she said.   "Are you a crazy woman, to interrupt at such a time?   I do not care how pregnant you are.   There is no excuse -"

"Excuse?" Priscilla cried.   "You cannot – cannot -"   She waved the umbrella.   "You cannot do what you were doing.   You cannot do that -here-’in Hyde Park!"

. . . “The exceedingly round lady is right," Marchmont said.   "We ought not to do this in Hyde Park."

"But what is she doing in Hyde Park, I want to know," Zoe said.   "She should not even be awake at this hour."

At a superficial level, Zoe and Marchmont are a study in opposites, and we all know what happens with opposites in Romance. But at a deeper level, they are similar in character. Like Marchmont, Zoe is extremely aware of what is going on around her, always calculating how others will respond. Both excel at playing a role when necessary, Marchmont as the seemingly careless man who is above everyone and everything, and Zoe as the former harem slave who blanches at English standards of propriety. And these clearly are roles. For all Marchmont’s apparent disconnect from other people’s emotions, he is extremely "possessive" when it comes to Zoe, literally chasing her down in Hyde Park after watching her race horses with, of all people, his mistress. He pretty much loses his mind at one point when she refuses to stand back at the scene of a carriage accident, endangering herself to save a young boy. And despite Zoe’s apparent rashness, the harem taught her how to manage around truly irrational people, whose whims can decide whether you keep your head on any particular day, a skill she needed when she made her brave and risky escape.

However, or perhaps because of the similarities between these two who have been lost from and to family, their physical attraction is the only easy aspect of their relationship. And yet the realities of that attraction, and the sexual freedom Zoe possesses despite her virginity (more on that in a bit), make it imperative that she and Marchmont marry before either is truly ready. So when Zoe discovers that there have been some very bad consequences to Marchmont’s disconnect from some of his more mundane ducal responsibilities, a secondary tension arises in the story around Marchmont’s autocratic habits and his possessiveness toward Zoe, as well as Zoe’s anxieties about being confined by the whim of another man she fears can never truly love and honor her.

Not surprisingly, the aspects of Don’t Tempt Me with which I resonated the most were those related to the theme of confinement. Zoe’s confinements are obvious: she was held captive in the harem as the "wife" of the Pasha’s son and then in polite English society. While the dangers to her physical self were much greater in the harem, the rules of English society could be confining, too, even to a married woman in the upper classes:

"You cannot keep me in the house," she said.

"I can and will. Don’t be childish, Zoe. This is for your own good."

"Childish?" she said. Childish? I risked my life to be free. You don’t know what they would have done to me if they had caught me. I risked my life for this." She waved her hand at the window, where the shadowy figures hurried along the pavement, and riders and carriages passed in the busy street. "I risked everything to be in a world where women can go out of their houses to shop and visit with their friends, where they can even talk to and dance with other men. For twelve years I dreamed of this world, and it came to be my idea of heaven: a place where I could move freely among other people, where I could go to the theater and the ballet and the opera. For twelve years I was an amusing pet in a cage. For twelve years they let me out only for the entertainment of watching me try to run away. . . "

Marchmont is not without understanding for Zoe’s plight, but he is trapped in his own prison, one built from loss and grief and loneliness:

"You’re all I have left, Zoe," he said. "They’re all gone – everyone I ever loved. Gone forever. You, too, I thought. But you weren’t. You came back from the dead – and if I lose you. I don’t know what I’ll do."

For me, the tension and struggle between these two stubborn people who need each other so much, who are twin stars, if you will, is the real strength of the novel. While Marchmont might want Zoe all to himself, can he overcome his own fears and allow her to be an equal and independent partner to him? Can he be faithful to her? Can Zoe find the freedom she seeks in English life, even as the wife of a duke?

One question I did not ask while reading was whether Zoe could overcome the trauma of her captivity, because in so many ways she already seemed to have made that transition. In fact, throughout the book it seemed that the novel’s structure worked to hide the tragedy of Zoe’s harem prison in much the same way that Marchmont’s "mental cupboard" hid the darker aspects of his character. It was an effect that I would expect if, for example, the novels of Dickens were re-written by Wilde. Which might actually have worked for me if the harem was not used so extensively in comparison to Zoe’s life back in England.

It’s not as if the comparison is one of stereotypical savagery opposed to civilization, and I was certainly thankful for that. But consider Zoe’s description of her capture:

All the past rushed at her in an icy wave of panic – the moment they’d taken her away in the bazaar . . . the voices speaking a language she couldn’t understand . . . the darkness . . . the men touching her . . . she, screaming for her father, until they gagged her . . . the drink they’d forced down her throat that brought strange dreams but never complete oblivion . . . the slaves stripping off her clothes -

Her story of escape is equally harrowing, as are the glimpses she gives into harem life – the political instabilities, the hostilities among the women, the daily dangers and unpredictable whims that could spell the difference between keeping your jewelry and losing your head, and where one is merely "a pet in a cage." That Zoe is so well-adjusted, far more adjusted emotionally than Marchmont, was hard for me to accept, especially paired with her master’s impotence and her resultant virginity, which for me created this Disney-like fantasy around Zoe. In contrast, Marchmont’s character seemed more subtly rendered, his emotional struggle more authentically expressed. I couldn’t help but feel that Zoe was yet another example of how the love of a good woman can save the heart of an emotionally damaged man, even though the woman here should have been damaged, too.

Regarding Zoe’s sexuality, I was not per se disappointed in her virginity (even if it strained the bounds of believability); in fact, I found the impotent son of the Pasha a clever (if unbelievable) way of conforming Zoe to the traditional historical Romance standard. Nor did I find Zoe to be a fully traditional heroine; that she was so sexually aware and bold while being technically virginal was a very interesting combination. She was neither the clueless and reckless virgin nor the clueless and prudish virgin, and I found that a very nice twist in her character. I also liked that we see how Zoe adjusted to her life in the Harem, that she did as anyone who spent twelve years somewhere would do: adapted. But again, all of this was offered without the complexity of the circumstances as they were introduced to us, which made it all so obviously a device and the machinations of the text more visible. The ugliness of Zoe’s capture and enslavement were useful in explaining her need for freedom or her sexual openness, but beyond that, their harrowing effects seemed firmly in the past.

As I mentioned in the beginning of my review, Don’t Tempt Me reminded me quite a bit the Carsington books, especially the first three, although I found the disconnect between the humor and the darkness here to be even more pronounced than in, say, Miss Wonderful or Not Quite A Lady (another book that I felt took a very serious thing and soft-pedaled its seriousness). It wasn’t as if Don’t Tempt Me was a mere re-tread, because themes and even plot devices get repeated among books all the time. It was more that on top of the difficulties in tone I had, there seemed to be too many familiar moves in this book, too many things I recognized from other books to make Don’t Tempt Me an unqualified winner for me. Entertaining, yes, but in the way of a well-traveled road. The view may still be lovely, but sometimes one wishes for a surprise or two along the way to keep it fresh. B-

~Janet

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

REVIEW: Midnight Rising by Lara Adrian

Jane — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:00:55 +0000

Midnight Rising by Lara Adian

Dylan Alexander is a talented journalist who is overseas enjoying a vacation with friends of her mothers. During a walk, she wanders away from the group and encounters a cave with strange markings. She has photographed these and a homeless man she observed in the caves before said homeless man frightens her away.

Rio is hiding in the caves having volunteered for the job of sealing in evidence about his kind – a group of vampires created by an alien race. Rio has been engaged in a battle against the Rogue vampires for much of his life. In book one, Kiss of Midnight, Rio’s mate betrayed him, causing the death of one of his blood brothers and causing irreparable physical and emotional damage to Rio. He takes on the duty of sealing the cave because he sees this opportunity to end his miserable life. But instead of discharging his duties, he’s been wrestling with his decision. Something is preventing him from taking that final step. He’s in stasis, growing half mad.

He felt dizzy with anger, his head spinning so badly it buckled his knees. He went down on the hard ground like his body was made of lead. He heard the detonator skid into the dust somewhere, but he didn’t reach for it. His arms were too heavy and his head was weightless, his consciousness floating, detached from reality, like his mind wanted to separate from the wreck of the body that caged it and fly away to escape.

Dylan’s arrival and subsequent photography of the cave drawings and of him spur him into action. He cannot allow his brothers to suffer yet again at his own hands. He tracks Dylan to her hotel room; threatens her and ultimately kidnaps her to be taken back to headquarters.

This is a captivity story and with these stories, it is always going to be a struggle for me to believe that the heroine actually loves the person who kidnaps her, threatens her, terrorizes her family and friends, destroys her life and leaves her with few options, none of her own making. The first physical encounter between Dylan and Rio exemplifies that challenging nature of this dynamic. Rio is an unwashed mass of a man who breaks into Dylan’s hotel room and then physically subdues her. When he is pressed against her, she can feel his erection. Rather than terrified at the idea of being violated by this scarred, unwashed, crazy man, she’s aroused and responsive. Dylan’s quick assimilation of her situation does her credit but her quick tumble into love was hard to swallow.

Where this book shines is the nuances that are brought to the characterizations of the villians and world building. I was talking to Robin about this book she mentioned that the villians have varying degrees of wrongness. For example, Eva, Rio’s dead wife who betrayed him, was not demonized. I thought it took some deft writing to make me feel for Eva because Rio himself is eaten by her betrayal yet I felt quite a bit of sympathy for her. Rio had battled for so long and was constantly exposed to danger, century after century. Eva’s betrayal was done because she believed that her actions might end the war and end the danger to her beloved. It is Eva, in fact, who brings Dylan to Rio to save Rio. The ultimate act of self sacrifice.

There was another villian who was presented to the readers in a sympathetic light. These nuances add alot of depth to the story and made the book strong emotionally in many places, but not with the main characters. I wasn’t really convinced of the organic evolution of the love or whether Dylan loved Rio because he was the hero and she was the heroine. C+

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market at Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

REVIEW: Unlawful Contact by Pamela Clare

Jane — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:00:07 +0000

Dear Ms. Clare:

I admit to having some reservations about starting this book because I had a real hard time with the heroine in Hard Evidence. However, the gritty and realistic feel that emanated from the pages of this book were captivating and made the book hard to put down. I read that you had gone into lockup overnight so as to experience what it was like incarcerated. Even that short time clearly had an impact in the writing of this story.

Marc “Hunt” Hunter and Sophie Alton had a moment in high school and then Hunt disappeared from Sophie’s life, seemingly forever. Fast forward twelve years and Sophie is a journalist celebrating the release of a female inmate whose life Sophie had been following through her writing and Hunt is a felon doing hard time for the murder of a federal agent. Sophie had begun reporting on Megan’s life in prison when she heard about the stillbirth of a different inmate’s baby. When Megan was released, Sophie was to meet her and help Megan adjust to post incarcerated life and to reunite Megan with the baby she birthed in prison. Except, Megan has fled in violation of her parole. Now everyone is out searching for her. Sophie is determined to find her first and get to the root of Megan’s initial incarceration and her troubled statements about prison abuse.

Sophie’s search for Megan leads her to inmate Hunt, Megan’s brother. Sophie doesn’t realize that this man is her old high school sweetheart. Marc knows. He’s torn between his feelings for Sophie that lingered even beyond high school and that have kept him sane while being imprisoned. He hates that he has to use her to gain his freedom but his sister’s life is on the line and he is determined to try to save her when he couldn’t before. When Sophie comes to prison to see if Hunt has any leads on Megan’s whereabouts, Hunt uses this opportunity to take Sophie hostage and flee from prison.

Marc’s desperation is a tangible thing throughout the book. He’s desperate to save his sister. He’s desperate for a normal life which in another parallel universe would include Sophie. He’s desperate for freedom. All of these desires converge upon him, battling internally for dominance.

Sophie’s understandably fearful, outraged, and then becomes sympathetic. It helps, in part, that Sophie is not Marc’s captive for the entirety of the story. Because she is free of him, it does seem that she chooses to believe in him, not out of some Stockholm Syndrome, but because of the facts that she sees piling up in his favor. Her journalistic ears are twitching and the roadblocks that are being thrown in her investigatory path are only making her hungrier for the story.

The real problem I had in this book was the sugary, over the top, full of babies epilogue. I understand that Marc and Sophie had a difficult path to their HEA, but I didn’t need the long epilogue full of past characters and children to make me believe in it. B.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

REVIEW: Satisfaction Guaranteed by Charlene Teglia

Jane — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:00:22 +0000

Dear Ms. Teglia:

Thank you for sharing with me your latest book, Satisfaction Guaranteed. I really liked Wild Wild West which was an anthology collection of three women who experience great sex and find love along the way. Satisfaction Guaranteed is modeled after the first book and contains three semi interconnected stories about women taking action to realize their fantasies and I believed that I would enjoy it just as much as Wild Wild West. Alas, for all the reasons itemized below and some I couldn’t really articulate, SG did not work for me.

The premise of SG is centered around The Capture Agency, a dating service that matched women who wanted to be with captured. The first story was Hard Match and featured Rachel who wanted someone to take charge in the bedroom. Her big fantasy? Handcuffs and whipped cream. I think that was a bit emblematic for my problem with the whole book. It all seemed trite and maybe even a bit too cute. It was bondage lite (hence the handcuffs and whipped cream) and the d/s allusions seemed more like a game than a lifestyle choice. Even the dialogue was weak at times:

"But I have just gotten off as thoroughly as you. Maybe more," she mused. "I came twice."
"I came twice as hard."

The second story, The Perfect Stranger, was more interesting with sexually adventurous Sabrina Daniels signing up with the Capture Agency. Sabrina has decided that her last lover was more boring than socks and enlists the help of the Agency in enlivening her sex, err, dating life by arranging to be a pirate’s captive for a day. (As an aside, I wonder about the legality of an agency like this and whether it isn’t just a Emperor’s Club VIP, only for women and at a much lower cost because women realize that they don’t need to pay $5500 to get sex, even from a pirate).

Kane, Sabrina’s bought for pirate, is actually researching “passion” for his books because apparently his agent says its missing. So Kane signs on with the Captive Agency for “[t]he solution he needed and the experience he craved.” (I presume that Kane, a man, paid more than Sabrina did for the service but it isn’t explicitly stated which proves that two heads are not better than one).

Kane and Sabrina engage in pirate hanky panky until Sabrina finds out she is some research project (which ultimately means that she should have gotten paid for her participation instead of being charged for it). Fireworks occur. Reunions are had and we move on to the last story.

Ex Marks the Spot is the story about the ex that got away. Emma Michaels is the uptight office manager where Rachel and Sabrina worked. I immediately thought of Angela Martin from Dunder Mifflin in this role but figured that she and Dwight probably have sex in ways so perverse that they can’t be written on paper. Back to the novella, Emma has moved out of her home when she finds out her husband is having an affair. She and Gage were high school sweethearts and it used to be that one button undone on her shirt used to drive him crazy. Overtime, though, Gage’s attention to his business grew so obsessive that Emma was neglected. Finding out that he was cheating on her was the last straw.

She decides to go to the Capture Agency and rediscover her sexual self. Gage overhears this and is determined that no one will be spiriting away his wife, but himself. Most of the story is told in a manner that leaves it to the reader to decide when Emma discovers it is Gage who is her captor. I figured she knew pretty early on but there are no overt cues. I think it was clever to right it that way so that the reader could insert her own interpretation at the point where it was most emotionally satisfying.

Because of the brevity of the stories, there is little character development. And thinking back, I can’t recall that there was much in Wild Wild West but for some reason, it bothered me here. Jayne mentioned in her review of Between the Sheets that as a 10 year romance reader, the book didn’t work for her because it was so common. To a great extent, that is the problem that I had in this book. While I enjoy the writing style and the good natured sexual encounters, the individual novellas lacked a significant emotional pull for me. There simply wasn’t enough substance to hold my attention above and beyond the sex. It was just sex and even though the sex was well written, I needed something beyond the handcuffs and whip cream. It was like Wild Wild West 2.0 only, like most sequels, it just wasn’t as good as the original. C

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Virgin Slave, Barbarian King by Louise Allen

Jayne — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:28:09 +0000

Dear Ms Allen,

I had planned on reading this book anyway because 1) I like a previous book of yours I tried and 2) I just had to support the era in which you’d set the story. After all, I can’t remember the last book I read that features Visigoths! When we all got together and decided on a mass blog review of the book, I did have some moments of unease. I mean, look at the cover which features an obviously nekked hero and a heroine, though completely clothed, toting water as a slave. And then there’s the title. Oy. All it needs is a secret baby to complete the image that so many people have of romance books. And where’d the crystal chandelier come from on the cover?

The romance/relationship is pretty standard captive romance fare. “You’re my slave..no I’m not….yes you are….no!…yes, you must work for your keep…I can’t do anything…you’ll learn or not eat…” Julia learns the joys of living with barbarians while Wulfric is so understanding of her. He caters to his ‘slave,’ is hurt when she expects the worst from him, wants to comfort and soothe her fears and keeps his raging needs under control. He’s also a leader among strong men, adored by women, is kind to children and animals. The man’s a saint. I had to agree with young Berig about who’s the slave here and who’s not. Plus the fact that the name Wulfric is far too close to Wulfgar. And his pet wolf appears to need only a little more work in order to earn his CDX.

I kept waiting during the early part of the book so see if Julia’s family would ever try to find her. Honestly, I don’t think her family missed her more than they would a lost handkerchief. But then they’re a standard awful family who have never made Julia feel loved. I know this makes the story easier and shorter to write but it would have been much more interesting if Julia was torn about leaving a family or fiance for whom she gave a flip.

I liked the language you included throughout the book and wonder where you got the translations. Is this a form of early German? I liked the historical tidbits and for the most part thought they were worked into the story very well. Though I did get bored during the slow slog of the Visigoths down the Italian peninsula and while they waited for transport to Africa. The travel time did little more than give Julia time to appreciate how wonderful the Goths are.

I did like that the book is not totally littered with misunderstandings. Yeah, they don’t declare their feelings for each other but at least on everything else, they talked. Julia was willing to admit Wulfric is a good and honorable man doing what he thinks is best, though not necessarily what he wants.

I did find the catfight scene to be improbable. Julia’s a tiny, little thing and her chances of beating a large Visigoth woman would seem to me to be exactly zero. Though I’m sure the men would have wanted to see it. And did Wulfric’s almost fiancee have to be such an obvious Other Woman stereotype? Simpering to him yet turning on Julia in the blink of an eye? It gave her no depth.

Julia does learn some politics and scheming to get away from magistrate with whom Wulfric dumps her and lull her parents before the Great Escape with Wulfric. I was kind of hoping for something more dramatic then but I guess simpler is easiest.

I did like that this is not an overnight romance though the lusting starts fairly early. The book spans some months and lends credence to Julia and Wulfric finally falling for each other despite the reasons each has not to.

I thought Wulfric’s views on love and honor to be Typical Man. I thought Julia’s declaration of love – yelled to Wulfric while he’s fighting for his life in a battle — to be silly. And this kind of typifies my overall feelings for the book. There are parts I like which then got balanced with things that seemed to be taken straight from Romance Central and that I’d read 100 times before. The whole ends up being a C+ though I wish it had been more.

~Jayne

***

Dear Ms. Allen:

Like Jayne, I had purchased this book before the Bindel assertion that Mills &Boon books, such as yours, were perpetrating patriarchal propoganda and before the Teach Me Tonight crew had the brilliant idea for the cross blog spectacular. The one positive thing I can say about this book is that I didn’t find it to be advancing the agenda of the male patriarchy and the suppression of females. I did find it to be promoting a lot of other unfavorable stereotypes, however, but probably my biggest complaint was that this book was totally a yawner for me and had it not been for the commitment I made to review it for this internet spectacular, I would have tossed it after the first three chapters.

I won’t rehash the plot and bore the readers. Instead, I’ll just address why I found it tedious to read at times and also how anachronistic and implausible the story was. It wasn’t implausible because it lacked good historical detail – there was plenty of that. It was implausible because Julia Livia, a daughter of a respected Roman citizen, is kidnapped by the Roman’s greatest enemy, a Visigoth. Instead of showing much of any fright, concern for well being, worry about her family, despair over her condition, she almost immediately falls for her Visigoth captor. Within a day, she is having lustful thoughts about Wulfric and it seems that her fears that he was uncivilized were completely allayed by the fact that Wulfric had chests full of ‘Rhenish glass and the silver platters.’

To a great extent I felt that Julia Livia’s focus on the superficial reflected the superficiality of the overall story. There was no serious introspection at the differences between Roman and Visigoth cultures. Instead, the cultural conflict comes down to Goth=Good and Romans=Rotten. After all, the young Roman men might stay physically fit, but it was only for posing for statues were the Goth’s physicality was necessary for their survival. The Romans were more interested in looking good than being good was the message I was sent and therefore it was okay for Julia Livia to not experience terror and despair at the thought of being forcibly separated from her family.

I also thought how interesting it was that Julia Livia showed no emotion over the sacking of cities that went on during the Visigoth’s determined march south through Italy or the slayings of “criminals”. The lack of nuanced writing in the portrayal of the two cultures was symptomatic of the problems I had with the entirety of the story.

For me, the lack of interest was as a result of the perfunctory storytelling. Without any depth to the characters, I was not emotionally engaged. Further, unlike Jayne, I thought that there were “as you know Bob” moments. Illustrative is the scene involving the hair cutting.

In the early part of the book, Julia Livia is left alone at the camp. She lolls around and refuses to clean up the tent or wash any clothes and Wulfric returns home to a mess. After he cleans himself, Julia Livia studies his long hair and suggests that she cut it. She picks up the scissors and is about to cut his hair when Wulfric and his young page like companion, Berig, go crazy. To cut one’s hair is to besmirch his honor. Julia Livia apparently hasn’t noticed that everyone’s hair is long, not just Wulfric’s (which goes against Wulfric’s statement that Julia Livia is so observant and that is one of the things he admires about her). But I asked myself why Julia Livia would engage in cutting Wulfric’s hair or be concerned that his long hair would adversely affect him in battle if she can’t be bothered with any other aspect of his life.

This read as a contrivance to me as did so many other parts of the book particularly the ridiculous scene in which Julia Livia and her rival for Wulfric’s love engage in a girl fight during the funeral of an important Goth. I had little belief that Julia Livia could beat a fly let alone a young Goth woman. There was still another ridiculous scene in which Julia Livia declares her love for Wulfric. That was probably a wall banging moment for me.

The writing, for all its historical overlay, had a very contemporary voice. At one time, Julia Livia is overwhelmed by Wulfric’s “charisma”. Julia Livia “conjured up” something.

The one part of the book I enjoyed was watching Wulfric council with the elders and his small struggles to determine whether to challenge for the kingship. He did appear to be wise and thoughtful although I failed to get a sense that he truly loved his people or the land. Any actions we saw of Wulfric directing attention toward anyone was to a select few – not enough to convince me that he was doing anything for the greater good. I know that is what I was supposed to believe, but the paucity of details in that regard let me interpret things differently.

This sanitized, superficial story isn’t a good one for Bindel to use to uphold her argument that these types of books perpetuate the idea that women exist for the purpose of man but neither is it a shining example of the genre. C-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market or ebook format.

***

There are many other reviews of this book around the internet which I will add links to in a bit. SB Sarah posted hers today as part of the internet extravaganza coordinated by the Profs at Teach Me Tonight.

REVIEW: Untouched by Anna Campbell

Janet — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:00:21 +0000

Dear Ms. Campbell:

I realized reading your new release Untouched that for me your books are fundamentally a revisiting of older Romance motifs, with both retro and current elements. At your best, your work brings out the best of both past and present Romances, because you are often examining some of the more provocative elements in the genre, making them both larger than life and relatable at the same time. And because of that, perhaps, when something in your book misses, it really misses. Claiming the Courtesan is a book that hit much more often than it missed for me, while Untouched is a book with more misses than hits.

Impoverished in widowhood and banished from her wealthy and titled family, Grace Paget is kidnapped on her way to meet her uncle, mistaken for a common prostitute and nabbed for the pleasure of Matthew Lansdowne, the reclusive Marquess of Sheene. Having lost his parents as a child, and not seen in society since he was fourteen, Matthew is a prisoner of his greedy and conniving uncle, Lord John, who uses a fever Matthew contracted at fourteen to have him certified as a lunatic. Thus the elder Lansdowne needs Matthew alive to keep his guardianship of the future earl’s fortune (if Matthew dies the title will not go to Lord John), so the world thinks the young marquess a madman, even though he has long since regained his wits. Restless and unhappy after eleven years of imprisonment and two failed escape attempts, Matthew has never had the pleasure of a woman, so his uncle decides to bring him an expendable woman to distract him from his captivity.

For a man like Matthew, autonomy means everything and is everywhere absent, except in his botanical work, which consists of grafting roses, conducting various experiments, and writing scientific articles under a pseudonym. Also there is the small issue of his sanity, which Matthew fears will one day leave him, even though he has been free of the feverish fits that we readers understand were the product of physical, not mental illness. Matthew is tormented by the very conditions of his physical containment, but he is equally hard on himself, clinging to what small freedoms he has been able to carve out within the capacities of his own intellectual and emotional resilience.

When Matthew first sees Grace, she is drugged and strapped to the same table on which Matthew spent much time restrained and tormented by quack doctors and his two “handlers” – sadistic pawns of his uncle who can barely stop themselves from raping Grace before they hand her over to Matthew, who initially assumes that Grace is in league with his uncle. Although Matthew is immediately attracted to the beautiful and young Grace, he is disgusted by her presence, as well, because to give in to his physical passions is, in Matthew’s mind, to succumb to his uncle’s will and dominion over him.

Unfortunately for Matthew, however, Grace is even more imperiled once she is brought onto the fortified estate, because her presence is viewed as temporary, as is her life. Monks and Filey, the two wardens, have no qualms about doing her any sort of violence, nor does Lord John, who threatens Grace in a way that makes it essential that she seduce the unwilling marquess. So while Matthew’s need not to become what his uncle wants him to be depends on not bedding Grace. But her life depends on essentially becoming what Lord John intends her to be. Which means that in any scenario each can imagine, one or both of them lose their dignity and potentially their lives. Freedom for one means certain death to the other, and every choice seems to carry intolerable conditions.

I loved the set-up for this book. I’m a sucker for the hero who fights against impossible odds to preserve his honor and then becomes even more honorable when he feels he’s acting dishonorably. And I liked Grace, as well, because she’s a woman who isn’t perfect, and whose passions and pride often get the best of her. When she defied her father to marry a much older political revolutionary I could completely see the intellectual passion that drove her to such rashness. Her youth and idealistic commitment to social freedom led to a false belief that she occupied a moral high ground in her conviction that she could help change the world. And despite numerous disappointments and the degradations of poverty, she still has a good deal of that pride and passion, and she can still be impetuous and sharp in her temper. Like Matthew, she is someone who craves freedom and independence and who has been betrayed by life circumstances.

What I didn’t like so much about Untouched was the time-frame in which Grace’s trauma and Matthew’s resolve wears away – two days, I think – and the rapid pace of the transformation in their relationship from distrust to passionate mutual protection. While the artificial construction of the captivity scenario on Matthew and Grace creates an immediate sense of intimacy that allows for a compressed time frame in the development of their relationship, I felt that it was just too fast to be believable, especially for such strong and stubborn characters. Further, there was a melodramatic quality to their budding passion and desire to protect one another that grated against the complexity of their situation. For example, as Matthew contemplates Grace’s unhappy marriage with a selfish older man, [f]urious grief for her sorrow gripped him in claws of steel (p. 125). And for all of Grace’s independence, she’s still sexually unfulfilled and relatively inexperienced: She’d done her duty by Josiah but the act was always quick, furtive, performed in darkness while they remained clothed (p. 115). Between some of the indigo-tinged prose and almost instantaneous flare of passion, there is the constant threat of sexual violence from any one of the sadistic men surrounding Grace and Matthew, a persistent element that felt manipulative rather than authentic in its creation of tension.

It took me nearly two weeks to get through the first half of the novel, but once I passed that point, the second part flew, and I found myself engrossed in the story. I appreciated that the sexual compatibility between two relatively inexperienced characters was not immediate, and I especially thought that Grace’s initial reaction to sex with Matthew was realistic and true to her character. I also found that the second half of the book, where Matthew and Grace attempt to take control of what seems to be an uncontrollable situation, was much more believable to me, even though the circumstances were still quite extreme. In this section I found that almost every concern I had about plotting complications was answered in a way that seemed logical and smart. I liked that you didn’t drag out the melodrama in the second half, because the way that part of the story built was dramatic enough without the extra tension.

Had there been fifty extra pages in which to develop the early relationship between Grace and Matthew more subtly and fully, I think I would have loved this book. Although less controversial than Claiming the Courtesan, I think Untouched is much more emotionally tense, at least in the concept and plotting. So I really missed not having all those steps taken carefully in the early days of Matthew and Grace’s acquaintance, because the sacrifice Grace makes near the end of the book would have been even more poignant had I felt more authentically the depth of their emotional interdependence. Of course I knew how things would end, but because I missed out on knowing Grace and Matthew better at the beginning of the book, I felt I had to fill in too many blanks at the end regarding a significant amount of time that passes near the end of the novel.

One of the main themes of the novel is freedom, particularly the costs that attend various illusions of freedom for which people struggle. Among other things the story contemplates how one can be physically free but emotionally imprisoned, or physically imprisoned but emotionally and intellectually free. As Grace and Matthew know, freedom does not just exist on one level, and to be whole, one must not simply have the physical freedom to choose, but also the intellectual and emotional capacity to make an authentic choice. There are so many ways in which the novel hints at these various elements, although it doesn’t dig as deeply into them as I wish it had. However, as with Claiming the Courtesan, there is enough ingenuity and provocative contemplation in Untouched to make me anxious to read your next book. I only hope that you give your story and your characters all the freedom you suggest in this book that people need to be truly human and happy. C+

~Janet

This book can be purchased in mass market or ebook format.

REVIEW: Taken by the Viking by Michelle Styles

Jayne — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:00:49 +0000

Dear Mrs. Styles,

I trust that placing “Viking” in the title has got this one selling well in the UK. Isn’t that one of the words that your mother-in-law’s friend always looks for when deciding which new books to buy? Too bad for us US buyers that Taken by the Viking hasn’t been released here but it can be purchased in Canada. Go Amazon.ca! I’ll be frank and admit that when you emailed me that your next offering would be a Viking romance, I kinda cringed. I still have memories of reading “Fires of Winter” by Johanna Lindsey back in the early eighties (and not being bothered much by it then but my, how my tastes have changed). Viking raid, rape, rinse, repeat. Heroine gets treated like crap, hero goes all alpha every 4 pages and I’m supposed to believe in true love when it’s all over. Thanks, but I’ll pass on any more of that. Thank goodness there’s not a bit of the what I dreaded to find in your book.

Since we don’t know which Vikings actually carried out the horrific raid on the Priory at Lindesfarne in 793, I have no problems with you appropriating it for your plot. And I liked that the initial reason the Vikens (I assume this is their name for themselves while the term Viking meant raiding?) came there was to use it as more or less a bank as did the English who stored their money there. The raid only came later when misunderstandings caused a breakdown in communications between the monks and the Vikens. I was also pleasantly surprised when our hero, Haakon, has no desire to haul Annis off as a captive but tries to honor his debt to her for saving his life by leaving her where no one will find her. It’s not his fault when she comes out of hiding to try to save her maid (who’s sort of a silly wench character) and he resents having to deal with her and keep her safe from the other men. Women — what are you going to do with them when they won’t listen to what you tell them to do?

After this one false step, I liked Annis. And after all, she was trying to honor her promise to keep her silly maid safe. Once she is Norway bound, she thinks before she acts and doesn’t stamp her feet and do the opposite of what she’s told just to be a PITA and show how feisty she is. I like that Haakon respects her for her intelligence and later for her strength. She tries to get along, see to the welfare of her fellow captives and hope against hope for the ransom which she doubts her stepfather will shell out. I also thought that she was fairly well treated for being a captive. We do have the old stereotype of a shrill native woman (Guthrun, the stepmother), but the two kitchen wenches sorta balance each other and I guess Haakon’s half-brother Thrand balances his mother. The captive monks, except for Aelfric who was a weasel, were rather two dimensional but other than that I had no problem with them. One thing that thrilled me was that Haakon apologizes for his mistaken belief about Annis and what he did to her. Now how often does that happen?

What bothered me the most was the ending was too rushed with too many threads being tied up at one time. With about 15 pages left, you present us with two events that could have taken 20-40 pages apiece to settle. While I’m glad that the story didn’t get padded out, the way that you bring it all together didn’t quite satisfy me. Would the villain have gone back with Annis so easily? Would the ultimately banished villain voluntarily confess when his villainy was revealed? It just seemed too easy given the way those characters were portrayed earlier. I did like that Annis actually gets to use her healing knowledge to save the day and I did figure out what the poison was that was used. Go me!

Overall, I did enjoy the story and the historic details you included. I liked that twists on what I was expecting and when I had to stop reading for such daily mundane things as going to work to earn a living, I eagerly looked forward to getting home and picking the book up again. Viking romances won’t ever be my favorites but this one gets a B-

~Jayne

REVIEW: Satanta’s Woman by Cynthia Haseloff

Jayne — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:00:34 +0000

Dear Ms Haseloff,

Years ago I read the DIK review at AAR for this book. I was interested and purchased it. I read it and was blown away by it. I contacted you and you were gracious enough to email with me a little about this book and others you’d written. I’ve always meant to go back and write a review for it and now’s the time.

I love books which make me want to know more about the people and times presented in them. I knew you had based this on the real raid carried out by Kiowa and Comanche warriors against settlers on the Elm Creek in Texas that took place in 1864 while most of the soldiers and young men from the area were back east fighting the Civil War. I didn’t realize you had changed the names of the main characters and assume this was to allow for a little artistic license in telling the story. It seems that the basic facts are the same. The raid was launched on the few settlers remaining in the area, some managed to fight the Indians off while others, including most of the Chastain (Carter) family, were either killed or taken captive. Adrianne and her two granddaughters reached the Kiowa camps only to be separated later on. Adrianne was eventually rescued and reunited with the older child, who had already been returned, while the younger child was most likely raised to be a Kiowa and stayed with them for her entire life. What is left to speculation is what happened during those months of captivity and this is where you tell your story. It’s often one of brutal violence and yet….it is also filled with moments of beauty, honor, humor and the confusion of a People watching their way of life disappear forever.

The book is written with beautiful, spare prose. The opening sequences are riveting. I can feel the settlers’ panic as they whip their lathered horses for one more burst of speed to reach safety as 300 screaming Kiowas and Comanches bear down on them. You don’t have to spell out the horror they know awaits them if they don’t make it. Your selective use of descriptions fills us in on what did happen to those who didn’t make it without going into too graphic detail. Though some readers with squeamish stomachs might want to skim parts of the story. Your attention to historical detail is, as always, impeccable. And you manage to convey the facts about daily living on the frontier as well as in a Kiowa camp beautifully. You also have a gift for showing both the white and Indian points of view.

Since the book is more historical fiction than romance, I was prepared for the bittersweet ending the first time I read it. The second and third times, I knew what would happen, who would die, how characters would be changed. Even though I knew all this, I was still drawn back into the story, still didn’t want parts to end, still cried when certain things happened. It’s a wonderful book and well worth sitting down to savor.

~Jayne

This book is out of print:

ISBN-13: 9780843949476
ISBN-10: 0843949473
Publisher: Leisure Books

REVIEW: An Uncommon Enemy by Michelle Black

Jayne — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:00:57 +0000

Dear Ms Black,

One thing that has always bothered me about reading Westerns in which Indians and Whites come into conflict is that usually the white heroine gets captured by the noble Indian hero, falls in love after being humiliated by him numerous times, completely accepts the Indian culture and lifestyle while repudiating her white heritage then has some final showdown with Evil Whites after which she and her noble hero ride off into the sunset. And I just can’t buy it. Because I don’t think someone raised their whole life one way can all of a sudden change. Because usually these books come off as more Stockholm Syndrome than true love. Because generally one side is portrayed as Pure and Wonderful while the other is nothing but Evil and Loathsomeness. And because these authors usually don’t acknowledge that the life of the Plains tribes was on the way out and that the future for most of these couples was probably life on the run or on a Reservation. Thank you for not writing one of those books. Instead we get a realistic portrayal of a captive white woman’s return to white civilization and the mess that was Indian Affairs in mid 19th century America (settlers’ and soldiers’ view that only good Indian was a dead Indian vs Eastern establishment view of Noble Red man.)

You don’t pull any punches during the early scenes when Boy Hero George Armstrong Custer and his troops swoop down upon Chief Black Kettle’s sleeping Cheyenne village and proceed to basically massacre just about everyone in it. Seota would have been among them except for the fact that two soldiers heard her damn them to hell for what they were doing and called over their young captain. Bradley Randall is shocked into inaction when he hears Seota and sees her chestnut colored hair. At least he was until she knees him in the balls and tries to escape. This turns out to be only the beginning of the trouble she’ll cause him on the trip back to Reliance, KS.

Eden Murdoch bitterly regrets giving her real name to Randall. It might allow him to find her beloved Army father but too late she realizes her abusive white husband might also see the newspaper reports of her “rescue” during the raid on the Cheyenne camp. The other captured Cheyenne women have shown her that they no longer trust her while the white soldiers’ taunts and leers prove to be a preview of what’s in store for her from whites. Custer is at first delighted to be provided with a retroactive reason for his men’s brutal actions then pissed at Eden for not falling at his feet in gratitude.

Randall can’t understand Eden at all. To him, her horrific healed scars prove that the Indians didn’t treat her well yet she refuses to denounce them en masse and gets furious at any attempt by the Army to use her as justification for their campaign. Furthermore, he’s feeling more and more unsure of continuing in the Army and beginning to hate the fact that his high ranking future father-in-law got him this post in the first place. And despite his letters to his fiancee Amanda outlining all the hardships and deprivation he’s enduring, all he gets in reply are endless pages of fussing over which napkin rings to use at their wedding reception and how hard she’s had to look in every drapery shop in Washington for just the right lace. As Randall sees the opportunities in a wide open West and watches Eden stand up for herself and face down her enemies, he wonders if he’s made the right decision in a wife and career.

As I mentioned above, I think you’ve given us what is probably a far more realistic version of the “white woman captured by Indians” plot than most romance authors dish up. It’s not pretty but then the reality probably wasn’t either. Thank you for not turning Eden’s treatment at the hands of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers who captured her into a titillating depiction of rape. Though we never actually see it, you convey what happened to her in a manner that tells us the horror she endured and her strength in living through it. It also shows what a remarkable woman Eden is to not condemn a whole culture for the actions of a few. I appreciated the fact that you showed how life among the Cheyennes changed Eden. Before, she was a typical woman of her culture whose only rebellion was to sign up as a nurse during the Civil War and to marry a man of whom her father disapproved. After living among the Indians for four years, Eden was ready to threaten to castrate a soldier with her teeth when he made lewd remarks to her, strip to the waist in public to make her point and hurl a paperweight at a townsperson for trying to attack her. All things she never would have done as a proper Eastern woman in the 1860s. And yet you don’t have her get that way overnight as shown by her remembered moments of despair while with Indians.

Bradley Randall was maybe not quite as interesting as Eden. He had to play the role of the honorable white in the book as a counterweight to the less upstanding members of the US Army. And yet you give us an interesting take on Randall’s marital outcome. I spent the entire book expecting one or two things to happen at end that didn’t. It’s always a nice change when typical “romance” expectations get turned on their heads. I did laugh at the whore charging Brad twice the going rate. And it is through Brad that we get to see the two sidedness of Custer – that seen by his adoring public and the side seen by Indians and his subordinates. His final demand of Eden was despicable but as he was reminded eight years later, “There is no word in the Cheyenne language for forgiveness.” I also liked the character of Hugh Christie the saloon owner who showed the freewheeling possibilities of the West and that not all men viewed Eden with disgust.

I do have some niggles though. What Eden does to Brad is slightly underhanded when she never tells him about what happened when he was feverish. And the end of book sort of descends into a melodrama that doesn’t match the style of the rest of the story. Also, and I don’t blame you for this but it did subtract from the enjoyment of reading the book, there were major problems with the text throughout the book – lots of dropped or partial words and then there was the word fact that the term “Mrs” was somehow replaced with the word “Custer” for the entire book. So we have Eden referred to as “Custer” Murdoch by every white man and at the very end, when Custer’s own wife makes an appearance, “Custer” Custer. I can’t tell you how annoying this was. Considering what I paid Fictionwise for the book, I expect better.

For readers looking for an honest telling of the horrific things done by both sides during Indian Wars, this is a great book. The slow build up to Eden’s revelations about her captivity kept me riveted and I found it interesting to note that she found respect first with Hanging Road, her Cheyenne husband, then love. He takes time with her and she’s the one who finally initiates sexual contact which makes sense when you think of what she went through. I spent a lot of time pondering just who was the “uncommon enemy” and finally decided for myself that it’s probably Eden though she must have viewed Randall that way at times. Thanks for a fascinating “what if” story. B

~Jayne