more animals
I recently finished reading Linda Howard’s Death Angel. This will not be a review, as I have no idea how to go about reviewing this book. If I were to judge on the usual criteria – plot, characterization, prose – it’d be maybe a B or a B-. But the story made an impression on me that surpassed what any mere letter grade could convey. I spent most of the book on a rollercoaster between kind of pissed off and really pissed off. After reading it, I fell into one of my periodic “why is the romance world so hostile to women’s sexuality?” funks.
Warning: I can’t say more without revealing big spoilers for Death Angel. Please do not continue reading this if you plan to read the book and don’t want to be spoiled.
Drea Rosseau is a gangster’s girlfriend and Simon is an assassin. They meet cute when Simon asks the gangster, Salinas, if he can have sex with Drea in lieu of payment for services rendered. Drea, after initially being horrified at the idea, fallz in the luv with Simon from the orgasms and all, which Salinas, being a boor (as well as a gangster, drug dealer and killer) has thus far failed to provide. She begs Simon to take her away, and he refuses, telling her, “once was enough.” (Did I mention that this is the hero? And that he kills people for a living?)
So, Drea gets mad and runs away from Salinas, but not before stealing a bunch of money from him. Salinas sends Simon after her; not to retrieve the money, but to kill Drea. Simon tracks Drea with laughable ease (he’s your typical romance novel assassin/spy/Navy SEAL/what have you in that his abilities seem just a hair short of supernatural; he always knows just what the heroine is going to do and how to deal with it. Must be nice).
Drea gets into what turns out to be a fatal car accident while Simon is chasing her on a deserted road. She is understandably afraid that Simon intends to kill her, while Simon still isn’t sure what he plans to do, even as he tracks her to another state. But anyway, Drea crashes her car and dies. And goes to…some sort of heavenly waiting room? I’m not real clear on that part. Anyway, she is told (not unkindly) by the angels there that she doesn’t belong. Then one angel comes forward and says that he brought her there to give her a second chance – it turns out that he’s the son she gave birth to at 15 who died shortly after birth. He thinks Drea deserves a second chance, because as she lay bleeding and in labor, she prayed that her son would live instead of her. Drea had demonstrated the “purest” form of love, which apparently is mother-love (that would not have been my guess, but whatever). So the heavenly waiting room welcoming committee takes a vote, and Drea gets sent back to Earth, admonished to go and sin no more, lest she end up in The Other Place.
Okay, this is where this book seriously went off the rails for me. Drea has not shown herself to be a particularly admirable character, but Hell? She was really going to go to Hell? For being kind of lost and misguided and skanky?
Drea is a potentially interesting character. That she has had a hard life is implied but never really explained in detail. We know that she got pregnant at 15 and lost the baby at five months, having to get herself to the hospital because there was no one to take her. The implication certainly seems to be that she was at best neglected, and as a result, she has developed a tough exterior and has learned to do what she needs to get what she wants. While this is not admirable, I found it understandable, given what little we know of her background.
Drea thinks of herself thusly (after her accident and return from death):
But they had held her cheaply because she’d held herself cheaply. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever held herself to a higher standard. Not once as an adult had she ever made a decision based on what was right, what she should do; instead, she had gone for whatever paid her the most, benefited her the most. That had been her only criterion. Maybe most people also used that as the basis of their decisions most of the time, but they also went out of their way to help friends, they sacrificed their own material needs to provide for their children, or their aged parents, or they gave to charity or something. She’d done none of that. She had looked out for Drea – first, last and always.
I can tell I’m not simpatico with an author when I feel more sympathetic to the character she’s created than the author herself seems to feel. Maybe it’s that Drea doesn’t seem that hard-bitten, and we’re not given enough information to really understand why she does what she does. I came to wonder if that was a deliberate choice on Howard’s part; it was like she didn’t want to make Drea too sympathetic. But my mind filled in the blanks from what little we are given about her upbringing, and I couldn’t help but feel that circumstances had made Drea the person she was. Which doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t have reformed; but it does mean, for me at least, that if she had died unreformed, she wouldn’t deserve an eternity of torment being poked with pitchforks, etc.
Another hole in the portrait that Howard has created of Drea: she doesn’t seem to have been hugely ambitious, pre-embezzlement and death, which made me wonder what she was doing with such a dangerous character as Salinas, a man whom she has to play dumb around (she feels it’s safest that he not know she has a brain; that way he won’t ever feel threatened by her or worry about what she might overhear). Couldn’t she have just married a doctor, or something?
I will say that unlike Simon, Drea didn’t appear to be a complete sociopath, incapable of empathy, which puts her one up, in my books.
So, Simon. He kills people for a living; but it’s okay because as both Simon and Drea think several times, the people he killed deserved it. Glad they cleared that up. Simon is a sociopath, at least by the self-description afforded by his own thoughts. We are given even less motivation for why he lives life as he does, but we are told that he has never really cared about people:
He was what he was because no life, his own or anyone else’s, had ever meant anything special to him.
Alrighty, then. That’s not creepy at all.
I understand that the focus of this book was on Drea and her growth, but the respective characterizations of Drea and Simon, and the fact that Simon kills again at the end of the book (in cold blood, though to protect Drea) after both of them have supposedly repented, left me with the uncomfortable feeling that in Howard’s world, being a cold-blooded assassin wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as being the kept woman of a drug dealer. I was just really uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of these two characters, and how I felt we were supposed to view them.
Again, both Drea and Simon indulge in justification and rationalizations over Simon’s career choice. These justifications boil down to: the people Simon killed deserved killing. By whose criteria, I wonder? Anyway, in my opinion, the assassin who only kills people who deserve to be killed is sort of like the defense lawyer who only represents innocent clients: a myth found in books and movies, never in real life.
Which I suppose is what some will argue about this book: it’s not realistic, nor is it meant to be. Which, fine, but when you place these two characters on somewhat parallel journeys, it tends to highlight their similarities and differences. To summarize, for me as a reader:
- Simon was by far the worse person before they each reformed, and even though Simon “reforms” he still kills when he decides it’s necessary (making me wonder what his future body-count might look like).
- Simon is given less of a background that might mitigate his behavior.
- Simon manifests serious signs of sociopathy. Drea manifested simple garden-variety selfishness, which I found a lot more palatable (and believably reformable);
- Yet it’s Drea who gets told she’s ending up in Hell if she doesn’t change her ways. Simon’s reformation seems to be far less of an issue, and his decision to stop being an assassin (after he kills just one more person!) feels like it has less of a sense of moral urgency than Drea’s reformation.
- Both characters excuse Simon’s behavior but not Drea’s.
- Drea feels compelled to give the money she steals from Salinas to charity. There is no mention of what Simon plans to do with his blood money, but I have the feeling the United Way shouldn’t be expecting a big check any time soon. Simon earned that money! Killing people. It was totally hard work. What?
I think it’s a sign that the book wasn’t working for me that the one character who I felt had some depth of characterization, and who I could even kind of feel for a little, was Salinas. He is shown to be callous and cruel, but when Drea deceives him for a brief time into believing that she loves him (as part of her plot to run away) and is devastated by his turning her over to Simon, he actually reacts in a recognizable human way – he seems to feel remorse for how he’s treated Drea, and has a desire to examine their relationship. Of course, when he realizes she’s duped him, he wants to kill her, but – nobody’s perfect. A couple of times in the book Simon thinks about how much contempt he has for Salinas, and I just couldn’t help but wonder - why? Why were we supposed to root for Simon and disdain Salinas? I just didn’t get it, and it made me kind of resentful, actually.
Lessons learned: prostituting yourself, stealing, driving over the speed limit, not returning library books in a timely manner and killing people for a living are all bad things, but only one if them is worthy of getting sent to hell. Wanna guess which one? If you said not returning library books, you’re totally wrong. Silly, it’s being a whore, of course!
Oh, Lord, I hated this book. I did vent on the other thread, but just to recap: HATE.
I stopped reading shortly after Drea got her second chance (thanks to the purity of her ‘mother’s love’ - my expression: stony), and had it not been an ebook, I might have hurled it.
You’re absolutely right about Salinas; I was actually more sympathetic towards him than the leading couple. At least he made sense.
As I stopped reading half way, I did not get the opportunity to witness Drea or Simon’s ‘redemption.’ The complete inconsistency of Drea’s reactions up to her death were problematic enough. The double standards Howard imposed on her heroine left me fuming (and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the book ends the way it does).
Our only point of divergence is this:
Actually, I thought it was poorly written; Howard seems to think reams of inane and repetitive internal monologue and description can pass for an entertaining read. It doesn’t.
I don’t like the god this author wants us to believe in, in this book.
I just read a story where an orphan girl was sent to hell for killing her rapist. Apparently it’s okay to kill in war, but not to kill someone hurting you unbearably - at least, if you’re female.
This is my problem with paranormal books, and shows like Supernatural. They want you to accept a cosmology that was deeply at odds with my personal beliefs even when I was a Christian. I could never believe in a god that stupid.
Okay, I actually haven’t read the book, only the reviews, but having been raised Catholic, I have to raise this point: Was Drea repentful of the lifestyle she’d led? If not, well, bingo, there’s your Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Go card. And I’m not saying she wasn’t, this is a legit question since I haven’t read it.
Well, color me unsurprised. Having a penis and the ability to give the heroine an orgasm allow any hero to get an instant get out of jail card ever since a certain romance author created a brute named Steve Morgan. On the other hand, any heroine who makes one move out of step with the Good Conduct Codex gets the pillory unless she spends 300 pages in self-loathing.
My great amusement comes from reading reader reviews on Amazon of Elizabeth Vaughn’s Dagger-Star. I know the Xena-style heroine will irritate many folks, especially when Red Gloves is very different from Xylara, but I don’t know what to think when some folks slam Red-Gloves as “without redeeming features”. Let’s see, she can take care of herself, she is loyal to those she care about, she saves people… oh, is she irredeemable because she is NOT A VIRGIN and is therefore automatically a HOOR?
Some romance readers, heh. And some romance authors who either share the belief or trot the line because they believe that these readers are the biggest buyers of romance books.
Judging by that and the rest of the post, you don’t appear to have particularly liked the book. So why, then, would you say
Gah, just gah. Like Ann I have to say that I want to take a pass on that particular deity. In fact, if said deity is going to condemn someone to hell for just doing what they hve to (and not all that bad at that) to survive a hella hard life then I wouldn’t WANT to go to heaven and spend eternity at the god’s side.
It’s such a shocking mix of priorities. Murder? Not so bad. Having sex? EVILLL! *sigh*
Wow, I guess I must just be a rabid Linda Howard fangirl or something. I actually liked this book. I haven’t been impressed with her books lately, but I read them anyway, and I was encouraged by this book that Howard has some interesting stories left in her. I actually didn’t get the “murder–not so bad/sex–eevil” connection. I thought that Simon was a person with no morality and that Linda Howard didn’t really excuse that. Drea was a person who was also lacking a moral compass (it wasn’t the sex for me, it was the fact that she was living off a man who was making money off the misery of others, and that she thought that was okay as long as “she” personally wasn’t “involved” in the drug trade herself). Did I think the supernatural part was a bit gay? Yeah, I admit it. But I thought it was a nice departure from Howard that she put two people together who were not good people, and the HEA was sort of ambiguous (at least it felt that way to me, two people living on the run).
Now, don’t get me started on Howard’s Blair Mallory books. I HATED those. I felt like this was kind of Anne Stuart-lite. And then again, despite the number of people who HATE the book, Howard’s Dream Man is still one of my top five romances of all time.
Excuse me? What?
Um, yeah, Ann. Right there with you. Hey, if there’s hot gay boys and beautiful leather dykes running around in heaven, sign me up, but somehow I don’t think that’s what Meredith meant.
I don’t believe in heaven, but I would really pray for this to be so :)
I’m really hoping you’re wrong because this is the last place I expect to see ‘gay’ used pejoratively. I mean, everyone’s so smart here.
The double standard is alive and well. It’s really extremely disappointing that an author who has written some of my favorite books (before turning to suspense) would produce such garbage.
Ann, I expect to hear that from my students–and when they do say it, I call them out on it. But not here. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that here–which is just fabulous–and it just slapped me in the face when I *did* see it. Sigh.
I have not read the book, but I just read the whole review. I’m guessing I would have bawled the whole way through the heaven part–one, ’cause I just cry at those things, and the other, because I nearly died after having my last child prematurely (he survived–he’s 3 now). As to mother-love being the purest…nah, that would be selfless love, or, as Christ said, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (I’m sure He was talking about Himself, but well,that kind of sacrifical love, for friends, or anyone in danger….
But I seriously don’t get the current fascination with assassins and hit men. Maybe in a paranormal, where they’re taking out demons and stuff, but in “real life”? Why is this cool, or hot, or good in any way? I think you would have to be a very cold, nasty person to take lives for a living, or even for a few grand, like the thugs on Dateline. I don’t see them as worthy of a heroine’s affections, or, seriously, an HEA (in a romance, unless there’s some serious redemption–not “I’ll just kill if they need killin’”). We glamorize this stuff so much–romantic outlaws, the Godfather movies, some rap songs and gangsta movies, Bonnie and Clyde. And there’s that “bad boy” appeal, but I don’t think we seriously understand how ugly that stuff is.
Ok, gotta get the boys up. Have a good one, everybody.
Linda Howard is consistently a satisfying author to me — her books are usually at least in the B range for me and sometimes higher. Nonetheless, I often become aware when I read them that her worldview is different from mine. Many of her characters believe in vigilante justice (sometimes it is the only way to get justice in her books), like the FBI agent in Death Angel who endangers Drea to set up Simon to kill Salinas, and then congratulates himself on his actions. That makes me uneasy, because there seems to be a philosophy there that I don’t agree with. I’ve reached a point with her books where I expect that, and just enjoy them for the characters and the unusual plots.
Re. Death Angel specifically, to quote from Meredith’s post:
That was what I saw as the majority of Drea’s sin, too, but sex was also in the mix there somewhere too IMO, as can be seen from lines like the first one you quote (”But they had held her cheaply because she’d held herself cheaply”). I agree that there’s a double standard operating here but because I know going into Howard’s books that I’ll get a worldview that is different from mine, I was able to enjoy the book despite it.
I’m not Jennie but I took Jennie’s words here to mean that if it hadn’t been for the issues she brings up in the rest of her post (which don’t have anything to do with the originality of the plot, the believability or dimension of the characterization, or the quality of the prose), the book would have been a B or B-, but taking those into consideration, her assessment is different.
Hopefully Jennie will correct me if I’m wrong.
Drea was a person who was also lacking a moral compass (it wasn’t the sex for me, it was the fact that she was living off a man who was making money off the misery of others, and that she thought that was okay as long as “she” personally wasn’t “involved” in the drug trade herself)
I’ve not read the novel, but presumably Simon’s also accepted money from people like Salinas for his work. Or did he always accept sex with their girlfriends in lieu of payment? The payment in this case is presumably considered OK because instead of it involving “the misery of” a woman who’s basically in the position of being trafficked for sex, she gets an orgasm, and that’s taken to imply that she’s not exploited or being made to suffer? I still see a massive double-standard there. It begins to look as though the argument is:
Being a woman who exchanges her body for money is bad, and it’s doubly bad if the man doing the keeping has immoral earnings.
Being an assassin is not so very bad, and it’s OK if a man accepts a woman’s body (both bought via immoral earnings and brought to him in a way which humiliates the woman and makes it clear that she’s being treated as an object which can be bartered) in payment instead of money derived from immoral earnings.
Because apparently, parts of books can be attracted to each other.
It’s kind of disappointing, Meredith, because there were some really valid points in that post, but everything was immediately invalidated by you entering that one word.
While the world(s)view described in this book definitely does not conform with my own, the opportunity to read a book full unfamiliar ideas–well, that’s one of the main reasons I read books. I think it’s possible that (warning: prepare for sweeping, unfounded generalization) because people who consume lots of fiction tend to be more open-minded generally, they also tend to resent books that promote a, um, retro–shall we say?–morality. (I’m also thinking of the Stephanie Meyer books, and a few others.) But really, hating on a book because it’s too conservative puts us in a place similar to people who hate on Harry Potter for promoting devil worship and lack of respect for authority. I mean, it’s FICTION. You shouldn’t HAVE to agree with it. And believe me, I know some of it is WAAY out there–I read that “Left Behind” series for giggles one summer.
That said, I think it’s the author’s job to make their wacko reality palatable–or at least comprehensible, or interesting, or whatever–to their readership. And it’s not like we’re talking JK Rowling reaching out to the evangelicals, here. This is a romance author writing for a romance audience. That’s the way in which, for me, this book was a borderline failure. Idea: interesting. Execution: not interesting.
But surely you are not suggesting that the ideas in this book shouldn’t be discussed seriously because it is a romance?
IMHO, I didn’t perceive this rant to be a slap against morality. It was more a slap against a double standard; one that is prevalent in the genre.
Not at all. I’m saying the author knew who she was writing for, could maybe have predicted a romance audience would not be especially enthusiastic about the whore=hell thing, and should have labored a little more to make that interesting for us.
@antonella: I guess I would consider the double standard to be a reflection of an underlying morality.
FYI: was a bit gay, is an expression (street slang) that younger people now use. That’s so gay. Whatever its origins, on the streets, it’s evolved into something that has NOTHING to do with sexuality.
On the review (which I thought was insightful and well done)– how can a book with this many problems be rated a B catagory? Character is story, and who could really like these characters? As described, I see a major flaw in the emotional structure of the novel. It failed, period.
I read the book, and I enjoyed it. I’m not a Christian, I don’t believe in hell, I do believe in some sort of afterlife but not that depicted by Howard. I’d not want to have anything to do with Drea or Simon in real life, but I was caught up in their story and had no problems empathizing with them. That’s not to say I don’t empathize with those readers who were put off by this book. I’ve had such reactions to other books, too. But for me it was a good story and I put the book down feeling satisfied that LH can still hit the spot for me. One readers “garbage” is another readers “treasure” and I don’t think a mediocre writer could engender such a response.
Meredith, we know that. Trust us. I teach college students, my husband teaches high school students, and we recently had three teenagers in our house. I’m perfectly aware of what it means on the street/in teenagerdom. But the fact is that it has EVERYTHING to do with sexuality. The only reason “That’s so gay” can mean “That’s dumb/stupid/ridiculous” is because of the meaning of gay that has everything to do with sexuality. It’s the homophobic version of saying “That’s so black” to mean that something is bad or evil, which isn’t a phrase because we all know how wrong it would be.
So, using the phrase “That’s so gay” is a ridiculous shorthand that insults anyone with an alternate sexuality and means that you don’t think through the meaning of your words. Some of us think it’s close to the equivalent of using the N-word or Bitch in a derogatory matter while saying “but everyone uses it that way. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
Actually, it has everything to do with sexuality, and it’s not just younger people who use it. That slur — directly related to the negative image of homosexuality and the constant marginalization of homosexuality — has been in use for over thirty years; I’ve been hearing it my whole life. Dismissing it as merely a part of the modern idiom that’s lost its original sting is extremely privileged and insulting, as is somehow validating its use by making it seem like a ‘cool’ colloquialism.
The word has not evolved; it maintains its original purpose, to denigrate something by associating it with the state of being homosexual. The fact that it is in common use is not justification for perpetuating it, instead it’s a symptom of a massive system of discrimination and oppression that causes suffering to people every day. The use of ‘gay’ as a pejorative is unacceptable.
…I also cannot believe that was my first comment ever on this blog. My apologies to the OP, whose review was entertaining and insightful and just plain good reading, even though I haven’t read the book.
Anah said it much better than I did, with much bigger words. Thank you!
I know, really, I do, that my opinions are not sophisticated or well-formed by my education and/or knowledge of ‘writing’ in all it’s different forms and scopes. I read to escape and to explore places and people I will never (and often hope never) to see and meet… not to learn how to navigate this life…. Or to see what should or shouldn’t be done in the real world.
I do not understand looking for real life lessons in a fiction book… it’s an imaginary tale…and if a romance author has a job it’s to write something with a different perspective or ‘take’ and I think Linda Howard did that.
I liked this book, I liked the pacing and I liked the surprises and I even liked that they Show ▼
because, for me, that’s punishment enough for them… it is, after all, only fiction…. and at that it doesn’t claim to be Crime and Punishment.
So for me it was a B…. but for different reasons.
“FYI: was a bit gay, is an expression (street slang) that younger people now use. That’s so gay. Whatever its origins, on the streets, it’s evolved into something that has NOTHING to do with sexuality.”
Utterly disingenuous bullshit.
At any rate, I’ve noticed that quite a few romance authors as well as readers are quite misogynistic. While reading romance I often have to remind myself that the book was written by a woman. It’s really disheartening. Romance is touted as by women for women but it’s rare that the female protag is allowed the full range of human emotions that the male lead is afforded. I found this quite shocking when I first started visiting romance forums. The comments are frequently virulently anti-woman and regressive. I guess in fiction as well as real life there are always women willing to socially police and restrict other women.
Well, while I agree that using this slang sentence is dismissive and negative towards people with a homosexual orientation even if the original poster didn’t mean it that way, I have to disagree with the assertion that ‘gay’ as homosexual is the original meaning of the word.
From MW online:
Main Entry:
1 gay
Pronunciation:
\ˈgā\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French gai, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gāhi quick, sudden
Date:
14th century
1 a: happily excited : merry b: keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits ]
2 a: bright , lively b: brilliant in color
3: given to social pleasures ; also : licentious
4 a: homosexual b: of, relating to, or used by homosexuals
The usage of the word has definitely evolved since the 14th century, but there are indeed people who use it to denote things other than homosexual.
Again, I agree that the usage here was not appropriate, but it’s also wrong to claim that ‘gay’ always and forever will mean homosexual.
GrowlyCub, as someone with a middle name of “Gaye,” I do understand that it means something else! :) But it’s pretty darned obvious Meredith didn’t meant it that way, either, because gay is a happy thing and that’s not what she was implying.
Huh. I didn’t know about meaning #3 there. Is that why it switched from #1 to #4, I wonder.
GrowlyBear: where did anyone say that “gay”==homosexual was the original meaning? Sure, it has meant other things before, but that doesn’t mean that use of it in this context isn’t homophobic. To make an imperfect analogy, the original meaning of “bitch” has nothing to do with humans, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of the ways people use it aren’t misogynistic even when not applied directly towards women.
The use of the n word, and in New Zealand ‘Maori’ also went through a period of meaning something of poor quality, well after open racism was tolerated. I used the later thoughtlessly at least once myself as a teen, and was appropriately corrected. I think the derivation here is clearly of a similar sort.
BTW, Jennie, this is a great review–definitely got me thinking. I never got past hero’s “once was enough” line, either, and never quite figured out what she did to make him change his mind about her. I think it was supposed to be her cleverness but, as you mention, he predicts her every move, so that can’t be it. I guess it was her dying that really did it for him.
Marnanel,
it’s actually GrowlyCougar. :)
Anah said ‘The word has not evolved; it maintains its original purpose, to denigrate something by associating it with the state of being homosexual.’
She may have meant the ‘phrase’ and in that case I would not disagree, but she said ‘word’ which I took to refer only to ‘gay’.
I’m all for refuting the idea that ‘that’s so gay’ has nothing to do with sexuality or homosexuality, but in doing so I believe in staying accurate. I’m a language whore, what can I say. :)
SarahF: I recently saw ‘The Libertine’ with Johnny Depp about John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester at the court of Charles II. I don’t know, but I could easily see both usages 3 and 4 evolving during that time in English history.
Meaning #3 is one I’ve run into in 18th cent. writing– can’t cite which ones right now unfortunately but I think iI first saw it in a 19th cent. commentary on an early 18th cent. broadsheet ballad– and I think this meaning may have been used as a folk explanation for the term gay becoming connected to homosexuality.
the opportunity to read a book full unfamiliar ideas–well, that’s one of the main reasons I read books.
Not everyone reads books for the same reasons. Some people may not read books in order to encounter unfamiliar ideas. Secondly, there may be some people who read in order to explore unfamiliar ideas/cultures etc, but only as long as those ideas are not ones they find offensive, illogical etc. Thirdly there may be people who are happy to read about unfamiliar ideas, even if they find them offensive, illogical etc, but not if the novel concludes by endorsing those ideas. There are no doubt plenty of other possibilities.
really, hating on a book because it’s too conservative puts us in a place similar to people who hate on Harry Potter for promoting devil worship and lack of respect for authority.
If you mean that both groups analyse the ideas underpinning the novels, then that’s possibly true, though the extent of the textual basis for the criticisms made by the different groups may vary. There is also the question of what you mean by “hating.” I wouldn’t think that reading a book in an analytical manner and critiquing some of the ideas it contains constituted “hating.” There may also be differences in terms of what actions the various groups propose should be taken in response to the book. Nobody here is suggesting the book should be banned from public libraries, for example.
I mean, it’s FICTION. You shouldn’t HAVE to agree with it.
Precisely. We’re not all agreeing with it. But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss both the books we like and the books we don’t like.
I do not understand looking for real life lessons in a fiction book… it’s an imaginary tale…
So are fairytales, parables, fables, myths and other stories which are told in order to help people to understand and internalise particular messages. Fiction can be an extremely effective way to transmit ideas and “real life lessons.”
Okay, as an eighteenth-century scholar who has a passion for Rochester, I now feel completely inadequate! :)
I HAVE to watch that movie! What could be better than Johnny Depp as Rochester.
He was great and once you hear the prologue you’ll know why I see both usages evolving around that time. I got it from Netflix and it has a low rating there. That’s interesting to me, because while the subject matter was definitely depressing for the most part, I thought the film itself was very well done.
Maybe the folks who saw it took the prologue very seriously. ‘I do not want you to like me.’ :)
@laura vivanco: I’m not suggesting we can’t discuss books we don’t like-that’s what I thought I was doing. I would suggest it might be more interesting to discuss reasons the book didn’t work BEYOND not liking the idea/value system, because once you’ve said that, there’s not much more to say. Also, I truly believe that a good book can make ANY idea or value system seem interesting and/or compelling to a reader, so we might consider why this book did/didn’t do that. And by “hating on” I was attempting to describe, in the vernacular, the act of acting on the visceral reaction you get when you read something that really doesn’t jive for you. :) This COULD include anything from comment postings to hurling books into volcanoes. This would not include “reading a book in analytical manner and critiquing some of the ideas it contains.”
Gosh - I liked this book. Generally, I have like most of the books she’s written. I didn’t all tied up in “who’s sin is worse”. I just read it without judgment and enjoyed her storytelling.
Well, I agree. I’d never use it, even in a phrase, but I’ve recorded it in some research and just thought I’d clarify that since some comments focused on that word instead of the review. If we want to get really technical and philosophical here, we might all consider that the book being discussed is misogynistic. That’s probably a more constructive debate. However, I’ve not read the book.
I would suggest it might be more interesting to discuss reasons the book didn’t work BEYOND not liking the idea/value system, because once you’ve said that, there’s not much more to say.
But (a) for some people that might be the main/only reason they didn’t like the book, and (b) depending on the book in question, it can actually take quite a lot of time to work out how the idea/value system affects the characterisation, the plot, the imagery etc.
In any case I’m not sure if you’re directing this at Jennie’s original post (which went beyond just discussing the value system) or whether you’re suggesting the comments thread would be more interesting for you if the discussion had gone in different directions.
I think, in her latest books, Linda Howard has been trying to stretch the boundaries of romance fiction. A lot of people didn’t like the book before Death Angel, Up Close and Dangerous, which dealt with a strong woman “saving” a strong man and was definitely more of an action/survival/suspense novel than a typical romance. The book prior to that one Cover of Night was also more of a survival/suspense novel with a very strong & capable heroine. I really like these smart/strong women!
Personally, I love these newer books! I think her latest books are much better than the ones she used to write that seemed to always feature abusive men and the women that put up with that kind of treatment. (Yes, I do realize that I am in the minority.) I also love her sense of humor.
Death Angel was a real departure from the norm of romances. I think maybe it should have been categorized as suspense thriller instead of romance. I think that it is more comparable to Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter series (where the characters do indeed shoot and kill). Death Angel to me seemed like a “let’s see what I can do” novel for Linda Howard. She took two basically unsympathetic characters and tried to create a compelling narrative about them. Does it work? Well, that’s up to the reader. It sounds like for many of you it did not. But is it compelling and disturbing? Yes, it certainly was for me.
In romances, we tend to like to have a compelling happy ending with no loose ends left dangling. In real life, and in this book, and in Brockmann’s books this doesn’t happen. Maybe that is what left many of us unsatisfied as well as the paranormal/religious aspects. If I could give this novel a theme I would call it redemption. How two unhappy characters find each other and become a team and fulfill each other.
I am guessing that Linda Howard is in a place in her life where she is writing what she wants to write and not necessarily what she used to write. Maybe she doesn’t need to worry so much about what will sell and now can produce the stories that she finds compelling??? I’m all for that! You Go Girl!
There’s a similar sexist women are HOORS message in Susan Mallery’s Sweet Trouble, as well. The heroine, Jesse, was a bit of a floozy party-girl as a teenager. Later, she’s molested by her sister’s husband, and when they’re caught in the act, Jesse gets blamed for seducing the husband because she was the family screw-up.
Of course, she didn’t have sex with the husband, but her boyfriend Matt believes hearsay rather than her, calls her a whore, and when she tells him she’s pregnant, he says he doesn’t give a crap even if the kid is his. Understandably, she gets the hell out of dodge.
Fast forward five years, Jesse comes back with her son and the entire novel blames HER for running off to another city and not involving her boyfriend in her child’s life. Not ONCE in the entire book is Matt blamed AT ALL for how he believed hearsay instead of the woman he supposedly loved. The entire book blames Jesse for the way things turned out, saying, oh, if only she hadn’t been a slut as a teenager, she and Matt could’ve been a happy family.
Gag me with a spoon.
@Laura Vivanco: All comments, unless specifically addressed to Jennie, were simply describing my own reaction to the book: why I had an unfavorable visceral reaction to the premise and qualifying that, while the use of a strange premise is not usually enough to make me dislike a book (because I like to think I’m more open-minded that that and also because, as I said before, a good book can make any idea seem interesting) I didn’t like this book for reasons beyond that. I completely agree with you that everyone has a right to like or dislike a book for whatever reason they want, and to post that reason in the comment thread. I also believe there’s a lot to delve into here. I mean, plenty of stuff in this book didn’t work for me, but I finished it anyway, and, oddly, I wasn’t really that displeased with the experience. (Jennie seems to be similarly conflicted, or so I’m guessing from the critical review/B grade juxtaposition.)
Absolutely… and if that is what a reader gets or wants to look for then that’s fine… but I pretty much know at this point in my life what works for me and what works for me is fiction that is fun to read. That’s all I was saying… that I enjoyed the reading of this novel and that’s all I need from an author.
Again, I know I’m missing all the deep meanings in this work, I’m so happy I missed them. And I’m so glad about this review because well… look at all the posts.
Are you saying that you cannot be set off as a reader by the idea/value system that is portrayed, no matter how unintentionally, by the author? That it is somehow inappropriate to suggest that an author’s portrayal of a woman who trades her body for comfort (money) is somehow less valuable in society, or at least less moral, than a man who kills for comfort (money).
In a book about an assassin and a whore, it seems perfectly natural to question and disagree the value judgments that the author is implicitly providing to the readers are not winning ones for that reader.
It would be one thing, I think, if the author were creating an alternative value system intentionally to provoke a reader to challenging her own beliefs. I don’t think that was the case here. The double standard of male v. female mores is pervasive throughout the romance genre, particularly when it comes to sexuality. A male whore is looked on with approval within the book and by a large body of readers whereas a female whore is looked upon in disgust (witness the reaction by many readers to the latest Loretta Chase book).
If romance novels are written for women by women, why not challenge the author’s point of view and the messaging of the story? It doesn’t matter if the book is just FICTION or ROMANCE FICTION because to say that implies that the work is not worth critical evaluation.
You’re probably right. I just couldn’t imagine anyone disagreeing that there was a completely screwed up moral judgement going on here, as Jennie does a nice job of pointing out. (I didn’t see what Drea had done in her previous existence to warrant almost being eternally damned, either.) But I guess there may be someone out there who disagrees with what is, essentially, my value judgement that hooking up with a gangster isn’t the most deplorable thing ever (presumably the author did) so I take your point.
You may also be right that we should challenge the author’s POV. In general, though, I’m inclined to explore whatever POV an author feels like espousing, as long as s/he makes the experience valuable for me. I feel an author (of ANY genre) should, to some extent, be able to anticipate what her audience will find difficult and develop ways to make sticky areas more appealing/relatable/interesting for her audience. My critique is that LH failed to do this for me here–I was fairly bothered by the whole thing–but I won’t go so far as to say an author shouldn’t be able to write about her values, even if I find them disagreeable.
And, to clarify, I NEVER implied romance fiction wasn’t worthy of critical eval. I simply contrasted an author who is receiving criticism from her own audience with an author whose books are being criticized by those who are NOT her core audience.
I just don’t think authors are necessarily aware of the value judgments that readers pick up in their work, in part because of the role the reader plays in the relationship with the book — that is, we come to books with our own views, too, some conscious and some unconscious, just like authors. So I’m not convinced that any author could anticipate reader reactions or even gain full awareness over what he/she is writing. Nor do I think we will ever resolve the controversy over whether things exist objectively in a book or whether readers see them there against the author’s intentions. In a sense it doesn’t really matter, because if you have a reaction to a book and can support it with evidence from the text, then it becomes a point of discussion for other readers, and readers will decide what makes sense to them.
But I definitely think these discussions are worth having, not only because they’re interesting textually, but also because we ALL harbor ideological views we’re not fully aware of, and IMO it’s valuable to talk about those in a genre written largely by and for women, especially a genre many believe to be inherently feminist, or at least pro-women.
And sometimes that process is difficult, especially when we find ourselves caught up in or even loving a book that rubs something inside us the wrong way. Should we enjoy books that go against our values? That seems to be a question that bogs discussions like this one down, even though it’s rarely asked, but merely inferred, which is why I think you get this side discussion about whether or not we should even be analyzing Romance.
So I think we should just put it on the table that we all can and do enjoy books that aren’t necessarily in agreement with our personal principles (whatever they may be), give ourselves a break with that right off the bat, and then decide whether we want to look more closely at the book in question. Personally, Howard is one of a number of authors — which also includes Anne Stuart, SEP, Melody Thomas, and more — whose books can be very compelling and entertaining to me, while also making me so frustrated I can barely stand it. I LOVE that we’re having this conversation about Howard, because I think her books have rarely been given this level of attention, even though they are, IMO, some of the most profoundly value-laden tomes in Romance. The value of vigilante justice, the virtues of violence, the subjugation of female sexuality, the sexual politics of gender roles, all of that and more is at issue in her books, IMO. I have yet to read Death Angel (Jennie just sent it to me — thanks Jennie, btw), but the patterns she describes are not unfamiliar to me in Howard’s books. So count me among those who am thrilled with this column, even though (or especially because?) I’m barely keeping afloat in writing hell myself right now (and damn, if only it had been a ton of fun that got me here!).
I enjoyed this. I put my disbelief on hold and read. But I do have a few thoughts…
Near death experience: each participant’s experience is unique. This from my friend who is an ICU nurse and has had many patients relate their experience. I thought Howard did a good job making Drea’s experience relative to her life–wanting to save her baby’s life was (in her mind) the most honorable thing she had done. I thought she judged herself just as harshly as the spirits in her afterlife. The event changed her–didn’t make her perfect. Have seen this effect on my brother after his near death trip. So for me this part worked.
Simon. I preferred not knowing his backstory. I didn’t see him as completely redeemed. She fell for him even though he was a killer. Engage disbelief suspension.
I’ve also noticed this, and wish that I could find more romance that doesn’t have this internalized double standard in it. I think that’s a major part of the appeal of my favourite authors (Amanda Quick, Loretta Chase), so when I find an author who ‘clicks’ for me in this respect, it makes me very happy.
My 2 cents: I don’t think Linda Howard made a judgment call on Simon, because he clearly doesn’t care or expect to be saved. His character said in the book he doesn’t/didn’t expect a miracle after death, he was grateful for the one he got with Drea coming back to life. I think that while Drea was judged and was given an opportunity to change, Simon wasn’t expecting the same for himself. I got the feeling that for Simon, redemption was not in his future regardless of how his life turned out.
I’m hesitant to assign any more self-awareness to authors for writing what they do, than I can to readers for either their choice of books, or their ability to discern author intent.
And speaking as someone who writes romances featuring protagonists who exist in a moral grey-space populated by thugs, whores, thieves and hired killers, well, I’m starting to wonder whether my books might put people off. Although I hope there is gender parity in my stories–in the sin department, anyway.
Hell, yes!
I got roundly trounced by a beta reader of my manuscript who was A) a couple of years new to reading fiction and B) definitely not a romance reader because I had written characters whose worldview she didn’t agree with–and she was extremely offended by me.
Her take was that I required readers to assume the characters’ values in order for the story to work. I had no rebuttal for that because, as a lifelong fiction reader, I’ve read all sorts of stuff that offended the hell out of me–but I still enjoyed myself. Those works changed me, transformed me in some way, even if it was only for me to realize, “Hey, somebody thinks differently from me.”
I haven’t yet figured out if she was an immature reader of fiction or if she had a point or if I’m an abnormal reader of fiction, but her reaction shocked me. Don’t buy my lie? Great. Tell me why or don’t. The fact that you don’t buy my lie is enough for me to go on. I don’t buy all the lies that are told me, but other people buy the lie I didn’t.
Offended by me because you think I’ve told you a morality tale that I want you to accept and embrace? I’m not even sure I know what that means. I was confused then and I’m still confused.
With regard to this book and this thread, I keep hearing the subtext, “the AUTHOR’S values.” Why is it assumed that the author’s values are the same as her characters’ values? I create people I don’t agree with all the time and I stretch myself as a person when I do that.
I have no idea what Linda Howard’s values as a human being are. I’ve never met her, I know nothing about her actions or philosophy or affiliations.
But the values that are expressed in this book (from the point of view of the narrative, which I understand is not the author and not synonymous with the author’s point of view), if Jennie’s outline of the plot is accurate, repulse me to the point where I would rather stare blankly into space than read the book.
There are some writers whom I’m willing to go out of my moral comfort zone for–Henri de Montherlant, Louis Celine, Ezra Pound, Stevie Smith, and a few others. I can note the racism/sexism/anti-Semitism/misogyny/whatever, deplore it, and keep reading for the beauty of the words or the insight into certain characters.
But if the whole plot is permeated with assumptions that make me sick to my stomach, I’m going to pass. I will defend Ms. Howard’s right to write and publish anything she wants, just as I defend John Norman’s right to write and publish the horrible, horrible Gor books, but I’m not going to read them.
I can enjoy a book where the characters don’t share my values, if written well. I can also hate a book with just one line of hateful preaching in it. It isn’t clear cut. And for romance I do want to identify with the protagonist and admire the love interest.
To be honest I already choose not to read 95% of romance for reasons along these lines, fortunately it is a large and diverse genre.