REVIEW: Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale
And we’ve come to it…the end of my five-year, twelve-book reread and review of Laura Kinsale’s oeuvre. This is Kinsale’s second-to-last published book – it originally came out in 2004. My trusty book log indicates that I gave it an A- but noted that it was a “bit disappointing.” To be fair, highly anticipated books about beloved secondary characters are almost always a little bit of a letdown. And an A- is a great grade!
Let’s start with a blurb:
Dangerous and dashing assassin Allegreto wants to regain his rightful place in the rich Italian principality of Monteverde. Happily, the means to do so is Lady Elena, long-lost Monteverde princess and sole heir to the kingdom. Though she is promised to his rival, Allegreto seizes her ship, takes Elena prisoner, and weds her, thus beginning their battle of wits and passion.
As the book opens, Elena is known as Elayne; she’s been raised in England by her sister Cara and retains no real memory of her early childhood in Monteverde or the perilous journey to England (Allegreto rescued her from the clutches of the Riata family and brought her to Cara, whom he nursed a teenage tendre for).
Elayne is 17 and thinks she’s in love with Raymond de Clare, a knight of Lord Lancaster’s visiting the forest castle where she lives with her sister Cara and brother-in-law Sir Guy. The castle belongs to the Lady Melanthe, the Countess of Bowland, who is, of course, the heroine of For My Lady’s Heart. Elayne seems a bit bumbling and silly at first, trying to cast love charms to snare Raymond. When one of her charms is tied to a blight on the local poultry, Raymond renounces her and Elayne is sent to her godmother, Melanthe, presumably in disgrace.
It’s there that Elayne learns what she has never been told – she is not just Melanthe’s goddaughter, but a ward of the powerful Lancaster. She is not just Lady Elena Rosafina of Monteverde, but she is a princess of Monteverde. Summarily, she finds out that Raymond is to be married off to get him out of the way, and she herself is being sent to Monteverde, as bride to Franco Pietro, one of the Riata family.
Three families – Monteverde, Riata and Navona – had long been locked in a power struggle for control of the tiny principality of Monteverde. Melanthe was caught up in this struggle in For My Lady’s Heart. Now Elayne/Elena is intended to bring Monteverde and Riata together. (Navona being considered no longer a player since the head of the family died in For My Lady’s Heart, and his bastard son, Allegreto, has disappeared.)
All this a lot for Elena to take in. She trusts Melanthe and tries to absorb her lessons about survival in the treacherous atmosphere she’s about to enter, but she misses her home and the simple life she’s left behind. Still, she boards the ship intended to take her to her betrothed and her new life. She’s guarded by Knights Hospitaller and a convoy intended to protect against pirates. Not surprisingly (because why introduce all that security if it’s not going to be breached?) the ship Elena is on is first lured away from the convoy and then boarded by sailors who convince Elena’s chaperone to board their superior vessel. This ship then alights on a desolate island in the Mediterranean, Il Corvo (the Raven), where Elena is introduced to the island’s master of the same name.
Il Corvo the man is, of course, Allegreto. When he realizes he has the Monteverde princess in his clutches, Allegreto begins to plan for a return to his “rightful” place as the master of Monteverde.
Since we last saw him in For My Lady’s Heart, Allegreto has not only acquired an island and fortress; he has a loyal army of young servants who he has trained in the arts he himself was trained in as a child (i.e. how to be an assassin). Elena is both terrified of and drawn to her captor (which is what it quickly becomes clear Allegreto is). His interest in esoteric scientific arts has her fearful that he’s a wizard of some sort. (Hey, I just realized the symmetry of Allegreto as wizard and Elena as witch. This was the concern in regard to the blighted poultry at the beginning of the book – that she would be accused of witchcraft.)
Allegreto sets about wooing Elena in his fashion, which involves drugging her, a sham wedding and a consummation while she’s drugged. Which is, of course, rape. I know I’m being too flip about it and I should probably be outraged but my Kinsale rereads have dredged up more than a few distasteful elements that are artifacts of Different Times and Different Thinking. For some reason I just can’t get myself as properly outraged as I think I should be about this. It helps (if that’s the right word?) that Elena is an enthusiastic participant. (Though again, not able to consent because drugged.)
I remember there being a bit of controversy at the time of publication over the (really rather mild) BDSM aspects of the love scenes. I don’t know that I was scandalized at the time (I kind of doubt it?) but BDSM is not my thing so I believe I found it a little off-putting. I found it a little off-putting this time for sure. One of my issues (besides it again, just being Not My Thing) was that Allegreto’s desire to be hurt is clearly tied to childhood trauma. This was also the case in another book that I read and really liked recently – that book was literary fiction. I’m far from being an expert on anything BDSM, and don’t want to offend anyone, but it in turn seems offensive to me to draw a clear line between “abused as a child” and “needs to be abused to get off.” It just takes something that I could be neutral on (like, not hot to me, but whatever) and makes it kind of icky.
I really didn’t remember anything that happened once Allegreto and Elena leave the island, so the latter part of the book had the advantage of feeling new to me. There’s kind of a long separation, and so it felt to me like the two of them were moving forward (eventually, in Allegreto’s case – moving forward is at first not his strong suit) on parallel tracks but not together. I didn’t love that aspect; I’ve never been a fan of h/h separations in romance.
All in all, I’m not sure how I feel about Shadowheart. It wasn’t my favorite Kinsale when I first read it, and it’s not my favorite now. It’s probably in the bottom third of 12. It has all of the Kinsale hallmarks – strong prose and interesting characters. It probably has a cleaner plot than several others that I can think of. But though it moved me here and there (an accomplishment in and of itself these days), it didn’t have nearly the emotional powerful of my favorite Kinsales. For better or worse, Kinsale is an author I judge against herself. Right after rereading this, I gave it an A- (again), but I think I’ll drop it down to a B+.
Of the other eleven books I’ve rereviewed, I gave one a C (in part due to a distasteful plot development); the rest were all between A and B, with most getting an A-. In retrospect, it’s not the book that I gave an A to, Flowers From the Storm, that I think is my current favorite. When I look back on my recent rereads the one that sticks out for me the most is The Dream Hunter, which I gave an A- (really anything I took off the grade was because I favored Zenia over Arden, and I felt like Kinsale favored Arden over Zenia).
This has been a fun five year journey! I would love to do the same with Patricia Gaffney or Penelope Williamson, but the latter’s books, particularly, can be hard to find electronically, if at all. I’ve lost a lot of my paper versions of various books over the years and moves; it’s sad to think I’ll never read some of those books again. I’m glad that Kinsale’s books remain in print, for now.
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Right now, I see there are 5 Penelope Williamson and 15 Gaffney kindle books so there’s a start. ☺
I know I read this book when it came out but for the life of me, I remember nothing at all about it besides the fact that Allegreto was the hero so you’re way ahead of me there.
Wasn’t this about the start of the time when BDSM went from the icky thing that villains did (because doing that sort of thing proved that you were depraved) to something that daring authors had the MCs do (while still having it be slightly outré)?
My book reading list has me giving it an A- but who knows what I would think now.
Not a good indication of a future read when my only post-review interest is if there is a cute animal in the story.
I’ve been perusing a lot of my old keepers-a box that’s been taped shut for 9 years, lol. Most of them suffer badly in the “times have changed” view, although Linda Howard’s alpha holes were sketchy even back in the day.
I refuse to re read The Windflower-my memories of those characters are too fond to lose.
@Jayne: The Penelope Williamson book I really would love to reread is A Wild Yearning – it may have been the first book I read by her. I wonder how it would hold up.
@Jayne: I did have memories of the island part – not specific ones but I remembered there was an island, LoL.
I think you’re right – I think it was probably just at the time when spicier romances got more mainstream; also, this was Laura Kinsale, and maybe people didn’t expect it of her?
Have you reread any Kinsales recently, Jayne?
@Jennie: “Have you reread any Kinsales recently, Jayne?”
Not in years and there are still several that I’ve never even read. At this point, it’s probably iffy if I ever will.
@Jennie: Of course that’s one that hasn’t been released digitally. And some optimistic soul thinks they’re going to get $753.91 for a used paperback edition.
@LML: Ugh, I had to look it up – I couldn’t remember! It was a dog named Nimue. Cute, but not memorable the way the penguin is in Seize the Fire.
@Jayne: Yeah, no. I remember a million years ago paying $40 on an elusive Susan Elizabeth Phillips historical (I can’t even find it any more but it was maybe written with another author?). I didn’t even like the book, and $40 was a lot more then than it is now.
I don’t even *want* more paperbacks, so I’d probably only get A Wild Yearning if it fell into my lap. Until then…pray for digital version?
@Laura: Yeah, a couple of Linda Howard’s books were very emotional reads for me but even then you had to overlook A LOT.
I actually am somewhat curious as to how I’d feel about The Windflower – I think at the time I read it (some years after it was first published), I was aware that there were a lot of readers who found it entirely too twee, and the heroine a bit of an idiot. I really liked it, but I’ve only gotten older and more cynical, so….
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This one was around a B- for me, and I was a huge fan of Kinsale at the time (she was my favorite romance author then). For My Lady’s Heart is my favorite of her books and Allegreto was possibly my favorite character in it (Melanthe was also an amazing character). I was one of the many readers who wrote to Kinsale begging for a book about him (he was that kind of character). Over ten years passed between the two books by the time it was published, and my expectations were high. I thought it wasn’t bad but still disappointing.
I remember the beginning of Shadowheart as super slow. It bothered me for the whole book that Elena never tried to hurt Allegreto back after the rape. She had multiple opportunities to at least scare him a little (isn’t he tied up at one point when she has access to a knife?) but disregarded them. I kept waiting for something like that to happen. By this point in my romance reading, I was tired of romance heroines with whom the sense of violation didn’t stick long.
I also felt that Allegreto wasn’t as magnetic and compelling as an adult as he had been at age sixteen in FMLH. Since we are speaking of the importance of contradiction when describing a hero in the conversation thread, I’ll say that in FMLH a lot of his appeal to me had to do with the contradiction between his youth, his vulnerability, his captivity to his father, and his lethal killing abilities as well as the danger he presented to all the other characters, even Cara, whom he loved at least as much as he hated.
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That said, it didn’t strike me as a bad book by any means. I haven’t reread it and can’t say how it holds up.
@Jennie: The Windflower actually *is* available as an ebook.
https://www.amazon.com/Windflower-Laura-London-ebook/dp/B00ECEA4F6/
Many of their others are also digitized and most of those are attractively priced, too.
There are a couple of older books I keep wondering about rereading. One is Jane Feather’s book Virtue. It’sthe only one of hers I liked. I’ve been waiting what feels like generations for the ebook to drop down in price, but I think I should just bite the bullet. The other is Patricia Coughlin’s 1998 RITA winning historical romance Merely Married. I’ve despaired of that one ever being digitized.
@Janine: The ending of FMLH with Cara was really affecting and I think did increase the reader demand for a book about Allegreto. What’s poignant about it for me is that even though Cara is not a particularly compelling character I felt at the end that she almost had some regret over not being able to return Allegreto’s affection. I don’t know, it really moved me.
@Laura: I still have a copy of The Windflower packed away. That and Flowers from the Storm might be my 2 favorite romance novels.
@Janine, gracious. The emotion of that ending is palpable.
@LML: I know, right? It is hard to find closing paragraphs in the romance genre that pack that much punch.
@Janine: Ooh, I’m tempted by The Windflower.
I read a bunch of those Jane Feather V books but I don’t recall any of them being that memorable to me. I do remember really liking the Coughlin book, though!
After reading Jennie’s review of FMLH, I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed that book, so thanks for the recommendation! I found Allegretto a wonderfully unique character, so I immediately started reading Shadowheart. Jennie and Janine both pointed out many of the flaws in that book more ably than I could, so I just want to give my perspective as a newer romance reader, encountering Shadowheart for the first time in 2021. My feeling was that this Allegretto 2 did not feel the same Allegretto 1. He lacked the wit, the charm, the calculation and quickness of the first. And we do not get enough of his inner journey to understand how he got to where he is in Shadowheart. I was appalled that the man who risked everything for Cara and Melanthe, who then risked more to reunite Cara with her beloved sister Elena, would then force Cara’s sister into marriage and rape her and hold her captive. Finally, I never warmed to Elena as a match for him. I wanted him to be with someone as clever as Melanthe, as beautiful as Cara (but not her sister— eww) and someone who could be his equal. Elena seemed too young, foolish, willful, a pawn, and weirdly, she got turned on biting him after he’d raped her. The whole thing was just not what I was hoping for, so I DNF’d it. I choose to keep Allegretto as he was in FMLH and there he will stay in my imagination.
@Becky: I totally get having that feeling. I wonder if there was enough time between my original read of FMLH and Shadowheart that I didn’t come in with expectations for Allegreto? But it’s been so long I really don’t remember.
I do think teenage Allegreto was a unique character and it is hard for me to see how he’d translate to a romance hero. One of the things I loved about him were the glimpses of the child you saw – not just a child but a fearful and superstitious one. I would have loved to have had a better understanding of what happened to him in the intervening time and how he became the man he was.
@Jennie: Jennie, I agree that a little distance and lower (or different) expectations might have helped. Reading these back to back put me in mind of reading Joanna Bourne’s Spymasters series back to back last spring. (I am a newer romance reader, so I am encountering these stories for the first time.) I loved the young Hawker in the earlier books, and I felt Bourne did a masterful job of showing his trajectory from young man to mature spymaster. As an adult, he lacked some of the charm and impetuosity he had as a young man, but for me the changes were understandable because Bourne showed us more of his life along the way. I wish we had more of Allegretto’s journey in Shadowheart because it could have been awesome.
@Becky:
Re Allegretto—I’m glad you said that because I never found anyone to agree with me on that when the book came out. That was possibly my biggest disappointment with it—he read like a different character to me.
You’ve reminded me of the POV issue! I wanted to be in his POV a lot more. Uncertain Magic would also have been more effective if it hadn’t been for that. UM is my least favorite Kinsale for more reasons than that, though.
Re Elena—as I recall, she grew out of her foolishness and turned her situation around so she was no longer a pawn. She had a coming-of-age character arc that the best thing about the book for me and I ended up liking her quite a bit. In many ways she developed more power than he had and I don’t mean just in the context of her relationship with him—in the context of their society/social group too.
The biting didn’t work for me but I think the idea was that it was a response to the rape and then to the power it gave her (over him and over her situation). Anyhow, I thought she was all the things you say—foolish, young, willful, a pawn—in the first part of the book but her journey was empowering, life-expanding, engaging, and one of growth, and that was one of the main reason I gave the book a B- and not a C grade or lower.
@Becky: I don’t remember the Bourne books that well but I felt like maybe I didn’t like Hawker’s book that much? Or I liked each book less than the first book. I should maybe reread them, since I’m on a reread kick.
@Janine Ballard: The thing with Uncertain Magic is that I view it as quasi-Gothic, in that the thoughts and motives of the hero need to be hidden for story purposes. It’s a flawed book for sure; the ending makes NO SENSE. But I liked it anyway.
I was looking at Goodreads reviews of Shadowheart and saw some other readers complain that Elena’s sexual transformation – they thought it unlikely that she would be so assertive and dominating as a sheltered young woman. But that aspect didn’t bother me, because as you said a lot of the book has Elena coming into her own and really growing into her own power.
@Janine Ballard: Janine, it’s good to hear that Elena’s character had a good arc. I have wondered what would have made Allegretto’s story better for me, and in addition to having his more of his backstory and POV, I would have enjoyed seeing him use his considerable powers to seduce Elena rather than drug, marry and rape her. While there was always a brutality to the character, he also was intelligent and charming and beautiful. But that would have been a different story!
@Jennie: Jennie, I really enjoyed the Bourne series, some books more than others. I was a tiny bit disappointed in Hawker’s story, in the sense that he was older, wiser, more cautious and not as fun. But 20 years had passed, and he had a lot of responsibility, so those changes were understandable to me. Plus the story kept shifting from past to present, so we got to see the younger Hawker and his love story develop. If you do decide to re-read the series, it will be interesting to see what you think.
@Becky: I remember feeling that I wanted two characters like Allegreto and Melanthe together, too, at the time. Now that I write though I see how hard it is to pull off, though. Someone has to believe in love or the characters won’t find their way to a HEA.
As well, the trusting person versus the person whose eyes are open to the harshness of the world pairing/conflict is a very common theme in Laura Kinsale’s books. Off the top of my head it’s in The Hidden Heart, Uncertain Magic, Seize the Fire, The Prince of Midnight, The Shadow and the Star, For My Lady’s Heart, My Sweet Folly, Shadowheart, and Lessons in French. I’m not sure about Midsummer Moon, which I’m fuzzy on. I would say that Flowers from the Storm is the most even-handed in that IMO (Maddy is less trusting of Christian but Christian is more worldly and a bit jaded in general) and The Dream Hunter is also even-handed.
Maybe that’s part of why I liked them so well back in the day. I may reread Flowers at some point and see what I think. If you haven’t read any of her books, definitely try that one. It’s the best one with which to convert readers to liking her books IMO.
@Jennie: @janineballard Uncertain Magic is one of my favorite Kinsale’s–I know a lot of people dislike it, including Janine, but I loved the mystery of the hero, loved the heroine, and loved the supernatural element. I like how you put it–that its meant to be read as a Gothic romance. The ending was bananas but I loved that after not knowing about the hero for so long–that finally he is revealed, and it was very romantic to me.
I havent read Shadowheart in a long time–since it came out. But Allegretto stands in my mind as one of the most memorable characters in the genre. He was sly and cunning but sacrificial and capable of loyalty and great love. He was relatable in a universal way–his longing for approval or acceptance and his desire for purpose–and also completely and totally alien! A teenage assasin from a time that is totally exotic to me. I think what disappointed me about the book (and again this is from my memory of reading it a loooooong time ago) was that the adult Allegretto didnt have those dimensions. He was more of a stock romance hero–or a conventional romantic hero. As a character in FMLH, he reminded me a lot of Christian the hero of FFTS. They were both self aware and self depracating, and also hedonistic and dangerous and attractive with a strong will and strong sense of self. They also both suffer terribly. The adult Allegretto needed to either suffer more, or have more contrast or dimensionality. It wasnt enough to rely on what was built before in his characterization in FMLH. I dont remember the heroine, Elena much. She was disappointing and forgettable. She felt like an echo or poor imitation of Kinsale’s best heroines (I dont know about the order of publication, I’m just saying this for effect)–Lena from The Shadow and the Star, or Maddy from Flowers from the Storm.
@Layla: The comparison to Christian is an interesting one. I guess for me one of the most intriguing aspects of Allegreto in FMLH is one that a reader can’t reasonably expect him to have maintained – he was a child. His personality was this dichotomy between cold-blooded, razor-sharp assassin, and child who feared the plague and his father. That what was made him so compelling to me.
@Janine Ballard: Thanks, Janine! I loved FFTS so much, and that is the only other Kinsale I’ve read. I am wondering which of her other works comes close to getting to that high? She writes so beautifully, and I just don’t find many newer books rising to that standard.
@Jennie and @Layla: I am not a fan of gothic romances written entirely from the POV of the heroine so that isn’t a mitigating factor for me. Not my cuppa period. Also I hated the handling of the English/Irish conflict—it has some parallels to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and being that I am Israeli by birth it rang 100% false to me; there was little examination of the cost of war in lives or in physical and emotional suffering. The addition of fairies and the twee piglet running around the battlefield didn’t help. Making sectarian violence *cute* should be outlawed. And the hero infantilizing the heroine by calling her “Little one” is also a button for me. Even thinking about that book makes me grind my teeth. This is a book that had one trope I hate after another and it wasn’t well-executed beyond that (it had a ludicrous ending as you both point out).
@Becky: I like the idea of Allegreto seducing Elena. I can see that being wonderful, but you’re right, that would make it a completely different book.
@Layla: Shadowheart was her next-to-last book (the last being Lessons in French) so you actually have the reading order right. I don’t see much similarity to Maddy in Elena, though. A little to Leda in the beginning, maybe.
@Jennie:
How are either of those fears childlike? Gian was incredibly dangerous—keep in mind what he did to Melanthe in the backstory, or to Allegreto at the end of the book. The Black Death killed as much as 60% of the population of Europe. It makes Covid-19 look like a flea bite. The main childlike thing I remember about Allegreto is that emotionally he still needed his father. He knew Gian was horrifying but part of him still craved Gian’s approval and love. Overall, Ruck to me was almost as childlike.