DUELING REVIEW: The Shadow and the Star, Part II
A Reviews / Book Reviews / C Reviews1880s / child abuse / Hawaii / martial arts / mentorship / ninjas / rape survivor / sword / unrequited-love / Victorian England / virgin12 Comments
Trigger warnings:
Spoiler: Show
Note: Jennie asked me to collaborate on this review with her and as it turned out, we had a lot of thoughts. So many that we decided to split this review in three. This is the second part. You can find the first part of our discussion linked below. The third will run in two days. –Janine
Janine: I didn’t find Samuel believable as a character. Despite his extensive exposure to sex as a child, he doesn’t recognize the hymen or its significance. He also believes that sex is always traumatizing to the woman (or more accurately, to the person being penetrated). In all his years with Tess and Gryphon, how did he not notice that Tess has never been traumatized? This though he’s supposed to be unusually observant.
Jennie: I did have to suspend disbelief here. Not about some of his naivete regarding sex, because he was so young when he was abused and it seemed like he deliberately blocked out a lot of what he’d seen.
Some of the other stuff- the fact that he didn’t have any thoughts about Tess and Gryf’s obviously happy relationship, or that he never seemed have gotten to the point of thinking about what marriage to Kai would entail – I could view it as unrealistic or I could just view it as Samuel being massively screwed up. Which for me is both a strength of the book and kind of a problem.
Janine: I viewed it as contrived and inconsistent. When I try to square his naivete and ignorance with his success running two shipping companies, I just can’t. A position like that, with its savvy back-room deals and its attendant familiarity with everyone from sailors to other successful businessmen to Hawaii’s royal family, requires worldliness. I couldn’t picture him occupying these roles at the same time. He read more like a construct than a person, a mishmash of traits that don’t fit together.
Jennie: That’s fair. His business acumen was not something I loved about Samuel’s character, because it put him in the in the realm of being what I call an “-est” hero – handsomest, bravest, most noble, most successful. Samuel doesn’t need to be a great ninja and a great businessman. It’s a bit too much.
Back to Samuel’s trauma, I think what it comes down to for me is that Kinsale does her job almost too well, depicting vividly how a victim of childhood sexual abuse might think and feel about women and sex. Which then has me circling back to the believability of the HEA.
Janine: There’s something to that, although I know a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who is nothing like that. But yeah, I can imagine some of that development (or lack of development) resulting from early childhood trauma. What bothered me was that it read like he clung to his obtuseness purposefully.
Jennie: I think that’s the romance part of it, where the central tenet is that love saves. Samuel needs to cling to his obtuseness so that Leda can transform him.
Janine: I know, but when combined with everything else– with his ignorance of Leda’s virginity even after she bleeds profusely, his lack of thinking about the happiness of Tess and Gryf’s marriage, his failure to realize that Kai would want and expect children, his unlikely business acumen– his obtuseness reads like one more facet of the author trying too hard to shoehorn a character into a plot that doesn’t fit and contorting him in the attempt.
Jennie: The action eventually moves from England to Hawaii, where a subplot involving a Japanese sword, a shark, and Samuel’s mentor, Mr. Dojun, takes center stage. This has always seemed to me to be one of Kinsale’s sillier, messier subplots.
Janine: I didn’t mind that so much because it allowed us to *finally* see Samuel care about Leda’s well-being.
Jennie: I noted this time that the conclusion of the subplot had a purpose that it allowed Samuel to let go of some of the training and discipline Dojun had rigorously instilled in him; the discipline itself was holding Samuel back from self-acceptance. Dojun would always tell Samuel “you want too much”, which allowed Samuel a convenient excuse to cut himself off from his feelings as much as possible.
Janine: I didn’t interpret it that way because Dojun told Samuel that sexual attraction wasn’t necessarily wrong. Samuel was what held Samuel back from self-acceptance. Your words, “a convenient excuse” are astute.
I had other issues where Dojun was concerned, though. His depiction owed a lot to racist tropes. He was a textbook example of the orientalist Magical Asian trope and what’s worse,
Spoiler: Show
Janine: While I’m on this topic, I want to take a moment to delineate everything I found offensive in this book, because there was a lot.
Cultural appropriation—although Kinsale makes the white ninja thing persuasive, it is still appropriative—check.
Orientalism –the aforementioned Magical Asian trope as well as the Old Master trope; like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid, Dojun exists to serve Samuel’s growth arc but has no growth of his own – check.
Othering—“The very foreignness of his features was reassuring. Samuel had never known anyone like Dojun: he never looked mad or hungry or eager. The enigmatic Oriental eyes made Samuel feel safe and curious at the same time” – check
Casual racism—the dressmaker refers to the Japanese ladies like this: “it won’t do to bring out the sallow in their complexions”—check.
Slut shaming—Madame Elise, for the mere act of passing on the letter, is a “false, revolting hussy,” and Leda is distressed to have been “ogled as if she were some loose servant girl”—check.
Stereotyping—Tess says, “And I can assure you, Leda, there’s no one more conversant with the physical love between a man and a woman than a Tahitian,”– check.
Possible antisemitism—the greedy dressmaker’s surname is Isaacson and Miss Myrtle’s genteel friends dislike their new neighbors because they are “coarse featured,” because the husband is a successful merchant (at the expense of animals, apparently) and because “You can see her nose beyond her bonnet.” — check
Plain old snobbery—“Of course she must wear gloves, Clarimond. There will be persons of a common class involved in such a post. Runners. Shopboys.” – check.
Jennie: Some of these bothered me more than others. For instance, the reference to the sallow complexions of the Japanese ladies seemed a bad reflection on the dressmaker, if anyone, rather than the author. Leda is uptight and judgmental to a degree about moral matters, because she’s been raised to be. The snobbery of the elder ladies was well established; perhaps it should have been seen as more of a moral flaw but I just saw it as realistic.
Janine: With regard to the slut-shaming, there was Samuel’s disgust of prostitutes as well. I know he had reasons too but when you have slut-shaming in the heads of both main characters, it becomes a bit of an issue. Although Tess’s discussion with Leda on her wedding night is sex-positive, and that helps to offset Samuel and Leda’s views.
With the snobbery of the elder ladies, I might have seen it as you did if Leda hadn’t looked up to them so much. As it was, I felt the novel presented them (and by extension, their snobbery) through rose-colored glasses.
Jennie: Maybe. I think I sort of saw them through Leda’s rose-colored glasses; they’d been the only family she’d known.
Janine: That’s a good point. Maybe I am being too harsh here.
Jennie: I’ll confess I did not note the instance of possible anti-Semitism. Google tells me that “you can see her nose beyond her bonnet” was a Victorian expression, but that of course doesn’t mean that it’s not anti-Semitic at its root.
Janine: Thanks for catching it. I was unaware of that expression. In the context of “coarse featured” it’s some kind of discrimination on the basis of a different appearance, but likely only unattractiveness. I’m definitely being too harsh.
Jennie: Honestly, the single instance that bothered me the most was Tess’s reference to Tahitian women; there was a whiff of that in The Hidden Heart as well, and I didn’t like it there, either. Because, unlike the South Street women or the dressmaker, Tess is supposed to be a heroine, and a mature one at that. There’s no excuse for having her repeat prejudices about sexed-up Polynesians.
In general, though, the othering and cultural appropriation is the largest issue for me, and it does hang over the book. I feel like it should affect my enjoyment of the story more than it does, though.
Janine: It’s hard for me to parse the plethora of the different problematic aspects. There are enough of them that it feels like they are all of a piece. And that’s before we get into the rape.
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
Janine and Jennie–
I am enjoying the dissection of one of my favorite Kinsale titles. Now I am afraid to re-read it, as it is obvious that the ‘suck fairy’ has struck again. Please don’t do “Prince of Midnight”, okay?
Janine, I do believe you are being a tad harsh on the dessmakers. Yes, they mention the sallow complexions, but they also want to make a sale and burnish their firm’s reputation. I interpreted the remark as a cautionary one–show the ladies the fabrics most flattering to their skin tone. We would have had no problem with the remark if it had read “It won’t do to bring out the sallowness in Lady Baxter’s complexion”.
I do recall gasping over the ‘Tahitian’ remark from Tess. ::eye roll::
I also came to the conclusion that Kinsale had done very little research into the gods and goddesses of Hawaii, which disappointed me no end. And that whole bit with the shark and Pearl Harbor–sheesh!
I’m really not sure that writing about a white ninja is cultural appropriation. There’s not a lot of solid evidence about ninja, even the terms used to describe them are pretty late developments. The covert tactics definitely saw use and there were people who specialized in those tactics, but a lot of named people who are traditionally called ninja are only dubiously real or are described as samurai in more contemporary sources. Almost everything about ninja you see in Japanese media is just as made up and casually treated as Western depictions of same, and I just don’t think it’s really appropriation to use something whose primary existence in the source culture is as a fun entertainment trope. I’d have been a lot more bothered if Samuel had ended up a white samurai (although there’s some slight historical precedent even there, it would be totally unrealistic for the political and cultural situation within Japan during the time period and the position of samurai.)
@Barb in Maryland: You might not feel the same way.
That’s a good point about the dressmaker. At least she didn’t use “swarthy” which is a word I hate even more.
Jennie already did The Prince of Midnight and she gave it an A.
@K: Thanks. I had no idea about that!
@Janine: Think of ninja in Japan as basically like Age of Sail pirates in terms of the amount of fiction vs reality in how people in Japan envision them and how seriously they take them. I’d been groping for a good comparison when I wrote the previous comment, and it finally occurred to me.
@Barb in Maryland: So far, in my rereads, I tend to find that Kinsale pushes my buttons in her depictions of non-white people. Which isn’t great, but I think everyone in The Prince of Midnight is white, so at least I didn’t have that problem with it (and I liked it quite a bit on the reread).
@K: Thanks, that’s very interesting!
I read this maybe 8 or 9 years ago but I don’t remember much about it. Somehow I missed Laura Kinsale until I discovered DA and SBTB, even though I was a pretty avid romance reader when this was published.
I vaguely remember being kind of overwhelmed by it. It was my first and last Kinsale.
I don’t remember my reaction to the portrayal of Samuel or his trauma. Except that it didn’t make my short list of romances that do a good job of handling CSA. So there’s that.
As to whether it’s realistic that he was naive about sex and relationships but still a successful business man. I can see that – the thing about childhood trauma is that part of you stays (developmentally) the age you were traumatized at. So I’d say its possible for someone to be successful professionally while completely shut down around sex and intimate relationships. Can’t comment on how convincing the char development is in the book tho.
I’m curious for part three. All I remember about the ending is that something about it made me mad (and maybe ruined the hea for me)
@cleo: That’s a good point about the stunted development in one area but not in others. I think I might have bought it better if I’d seen Samuel in the shipping magnate role more often. He did very little work that we saw on the page.
Another great review installment! As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tried to read Seize the Fire recently, and I ended up throwing the book across the room, because of its depiction of the POC characters. Unfortunately, it seems that Kinsale’s strengths aren’t evident in her depiction of non-white characters.
@Joanne Renaud: I’m really discovering on rereads that it’s a weak spot for her. It’s unfortunate.
Fascinating review. I will admit, I’ve enjoyed my share of problematic books that continues to this day. When you go back and read it in the age of enlightenment, it does make you think twice about reading it. I don’t do rereads for that reason plus no time. This one was published in 1991 I think. The bookstore I bought it from doesn’t exist anymore. I remember I didn’t want to buy it because Fabio was on the cover. I did enjoy it and the author became one of my favorite writers. She has better covers now.
@Keishon: I’ve enjoyed a lot of problematic books too. Kinsale was my favorite romance author for most of the 1990s, so I was shocked at how little I enjoyed The Shadow and the Star this time around. If I hadn’t been reviewing it with Jennie I probably would not have finished it.