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.