REVIEW: Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley
Spoiler (Possible Trigger): Show
Although it goes against her workaholic nature, literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw lets herself be whisked off to Wales for the Christmas holidays by her star client, flamboyant children’s author Bridget Cooper. She suspects Bridget has ulterior motives, but the lure of South Wales with its castles and myths is irresistible. Perhaps a change of scene will bring relief from the nightmares that have plagued her since the death of her child.
Lyn immerses herself in the peace and quiet of the charming Welsh village, but she soon meets an eccentric young widow who’s concerned her baby son is in danger—and inexplicably thinks Lyn is the child’s protector.
Lyn’s dreams become more and more disturbing as she forms a surprisingly warm friendship with a reclusive, brooding playwright, and is pulled into an ancient world of Arthurian legend and dangerous prophecies. Before she can escape her nightmares, she must uncover the secret of her dreams, which is somehow inextricably located in a time long ago and far away…
Dear Ms. Kearsley,
Here is another reissue of one of your earlier books as we wait for our next new book fix. I’m tempted to call it Woo-woo in Wales. It’s got a little heartache, a bit of romance, a sprinkle of paranormal and a gorgeous setting. It’s also filled with writing that I can sink into like a comfortable chair and characters who seem real all the way through to The End.
Tempted with the opportunity to sign a major authorial client, agent Lyn Ravenshew is sucked into spending her Christmas holiday in Wales where she soon finds herself surrounded by the beauty of the place, several interesting people and a bizarre situation with a local woman who thinks Merlin has spoken to her and that dragons are after her child.
Lyn is a Volvo kind of woman while her client and sorta friend Bridget is more like a finicky, foreign sports car. Lyn is the kind of quiet person to get a job done and not be a drama queen while doing it while Bridget revves her engine and roars around making sure every man within a mile sees her at all times. At least the guy who gets her is aware of how high maintenance she will be. But Lyn has her fragile moments too and despite several other characters’ exasperation with a delicate woman’s fears, it’s Lyn who understands the fear for a child.
She’s also confronted with an arrogant playwright who seems determined to think the worst of her and act on that. Good for her that she verbally zings him the first time he pulls his attitude on her and she doesn’t let up after that. The romance here is the classic gruff hero + earnest heroine = modern gothic. I can understand Gareth’s reluctance to allow anyone he sees as being from the shallow world of London publishing back in his life given his experience there following his meteoric initial success. He’s not the kind to feed on the superficial glitter or welcome (who he guesses is) an uncaring person he thinks might be grabbing at his muse for profit. The shift in their viewpoints on each other is a slow one which takes the length of the book to bring to a boil. It’s fun to watch for the subtle clues and changes in feelings.
Lyn’s dreams are certainly vivid and long lasting. Five years of that nightmare about her child would have driven me loco. Then to have a Dream Lady begin to show up – plus be stingy with her clues as to what Lyn should do to save this other child – and afterwards discover that someone else is sharing her dreams? Very eerie. But I have a friend who has vivid dreams in which her child visits her. As she says, “I know what I know.” so I guess anything is possible.
It takes quite a while for all the threads to be woven and clues to be salted through the story. A lot of these just have to be filed away until the moment it all begins to come together. When the mystery is solved, well, it still doesn’t exactly make a great deal of sense and depends on a lot of circumstance to throw doubts and questions about to confuse Lyn. Still, the moments when Lyn is scrambling to save herself and another is full of tension and danger in true Mary Stewart heroine fashion.
The setting is detailed and I’m not surprised that it’s based on an actual place. It’s just too descriptive to be otherwise and so easy to slip into and believe. But after a while, I had to wonder what it was all there for. It’s like taking the scenic route instead of the Interstate. I guess it’s the journey vs just getting to the final destination but it seemed like this took up a lot of space in the place of plot.
This one has a restrained romance which is fun to watch evolve and an immersive setting which snuggles around me. I’m not sure about the whoo-whoo stuff in the story. But it does create a bond which solves a mystery and saves a situation. And the story did mostly take place in Wales where myths and legends are right at home (merely trying to understand the prophecies of Merlin would drive me to strong drink) and the heroes are never dead, only sleeping. B-
~Jayne
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I love this book. I read it years ago as it was the second book of Susanna Kearsley’s that was released in the U.S. in paperback (after my all time favorite The Shadowy Horses). It’s old school in the best possible way. The hero and heroine butt heads immediately but in a very real, not “cutesy” way and I love the way Lyn just cuts him off and puts him in his arrogant place immediately. I also liked that Gareth is not just gruff to make him Mr. Darcy like. He has real issues and it makes perfect sense, as you point out in your review, that he would be very wary of Lyn when he realizes what her job is. There is a terrific sense of place and the supporting characters are all interesting and in no way cookie cutter. It feels like a very ‘adult’ romance to me, not because the characters are older (they aren’t) but because it’s not all about mental lusting. The main couple are drawn to each other despite themselves. They both seem to be very settled in their lives and the idea of romance (and this may just be my interpretation) probably just annoyed them at first but, the pull of the other person was strong enough to make them break out of their narrow spheres. For those seeking very overt romance and anything sexy, this is probably not the book for you as it could put an inspirational romance to shame with its lack of physicality. If you are a fan of the Barbara Michaels style of writing and enjoy a very subtle romance based on two characters who intellectually challenge each other and come to really like and mutually respect each other (with a bit of mild non-scary woo-woo elements) then this is the book for you.
@Christine: Oh, definitely no cutesy here, thank goodness. No mental lusting and as you say, Lyn and Gareth in no way think they’ll ever end up together. Which makes watching them change their attitudes towards each other so much fun.
@Jayne: I just reread this about a month or so ago and it was such a great palate cleanser! I don’t know if it was because I had been reading a lot of very explicit modern romances with Motorcycle Club type heroes but this book was so refreshing. I enjoy a great variety of romances but it’s very nice sometimes as you say in your review to take “the scenic route” and just “enjoy the journey”.
I’m really conflicted about this one. Because while there were a lot of things that I liked about it, which are detailed really well in this review, I had a pretty big problem with one part of the narrative that left me feeling very unhappy and unsatisfied with the story as a whole. I don’t know how to use spoiler tags so there are spoilers and a trigger warning below.
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Trigger warning: rape
I get that this is an older book and that the way we talk about consent and assault continues to evolve, even since the late 1990s the book was originally written, but I think that most people now agree that intentionally getting a woman extremely drunk in order to have sex with her, is rape. This was never addressed in any way. It’s clear that no one in the story, including Elen, see this as rape, they see it as an affair or as a mistake Elen made. No repercussions for Christopher other than he maybe feels kinda bad. I read the original a while ago, so maybe this is addressed or softened somewhat in the re-issue, but I found it really upsetting would not recommend the book without a strong trigger warning.
@srs: No, from how you describe your reaction to it and how I read the reissue, I don’t believe this was changed in the book. And I’m sitting here, gobsmacked by the fact that this didn’t strike me as rape while I was reading it. I was disgusted by Christopher’s actions but then I didn’t really like him as a character all along so it didn’t surprise me when this information about what he’d done in the past was revealed. I was kind of like “Yeah, it makes sense he’d do something like that.” And I was happy that he feels guilty and like crap over it but no one really does or says anything about him having done it. I’m sorry I didn’t point this out in the review and thank you for doing so for me.
@Jayne: I thinks it’s pretty easy for you not to notice. No one in the book thinks it’s rape. The author (imo) pretty clearly doesn’t consider it rape. But Elen says that she was tricked, like Igraine. And later she says that she doesn’t drink much, but he (implying Christopher) kept re-filling her glass or she wouldn’t have done it. So to me, that means that she was either so drunk she mistook Christopher for her husband, or she was so drunk she couldn’t really consent.
And that’s actually pretty realistic. Most sexual assault is by someone the victim knows and there are studies that show rapists intentionally use alcohol to blur the lines of consent and provide a screen of plausible deniability. So if this had been addressed in any way in the narrative, I wouldn’t have been so upset. But… it’s treated like just this kinda sleazy thing this kinda sleazy guy did.
@Srs and Jayne- I found it unclear in the book if we are to believe Elen was completely out of it or her guilt over it made her deliberately misremember details. Gareth says something about it to Lyn but I don’t remember his exact words. In the book everyone thinks Christopher is a playboy and a cad but Gareth is only mentioned as angry enough to want to hit Christopher because he was good friends with Elen’s husband. Elen seems to have remained friends with Christopher so I guess I interpreted it more as Christopher knowing there was an attraction on her part and taking advantage of it when they both were drinking but now I will have to go back and reread what is actually written, not what I recall. I think also the idea of Gareth and Owen as such fierce protectors of Elen was stuck in my mind I assumed if they thought what happened wasn’t consensual they would have dealt with Christopher directly and violently.
@srs:
I’m really sorry I upset you with that part of the plot.
Not that it helps, but I wanted you to know that I do, without question, consider it rape. The fact that the characters don’t react to it the way we would today is, as you say, a product of the time that they were living in when I wrote this book in 1996.
We’ve progressed a bit since then—not far enough, in my opinion, but at least enough so my own teenager, when watching the movie Sixteen Candles, was beyond disgusted by Jake’s casual comment he could “violate” his passed-out girlfriend if he wanted to, and by his “gifting” of the very drunk Caroline to Ted. My kid refused to consider Jake a good guy, let alone a romantic hero, and if that movie had been made today instead of in the late 1980s, I think (I hope) most people would have the same reaction.
Authors take different approaches when having an old book reissued. My personal approach—and this probably comes from my past work as a museum curator—is not to change or update anything, but just to let the story stand the way it was originally written.
I didn’t even think about the rape issue in this one, and again, I’m truly sorry about that.
Thank you for speaking up and pointing out what could be a very painful trigger for some readers. I’d be grateful if Jayne did add the trigger warning of “Rape” to this review.
@Susanna Kearsley: The trigger warning has been added.
@Susanna Kearsley: Thanks for your comment. The Sixteen Candles analogy is a good one and I appreciate your response. I really enjoy your work and, like I said, there were parts of this book that I enjoyed as well. It’s just that this one aspect, that most people seem not to notice, ended up overshadowing the whole for me.
I just finished this book yesterday, funnily enough. I really enjoyed it, but I lived in a place a lot like Angle and it was fun to soak up all the atmosphere. The plot moved slowly, but I was in the mood for that kind of book, and I always love Susanna Kearsley’s writing.