Thief of Shadows – Elizabeth Hoyt

What a charming surprise from my Netgalley list. It sounded like a classic wish-fulfillment adventure-tinged romance: lady rescues famous masked thief, whom she actually knows in his alternate (secret) identity, as the rather colorless administrator of an orphanage. And adventure-tinged romance was exactly what it was. I’m a little surprised to have given this four stars – but I had a lot of fun.

It is enjoyable to see a woman rescuing a man. And it’s always, always fun to have secret identities and avenging crime-fighters added to the mix – particularly in a Victorian setting. The setup for the latter is actually rather nice – it’s at least as good as some of the superhero origins I’ve seen.

Winter Makepeace is the head of an orphanage in St. Giles, one of the seamiest and most dangerous areas of London. He is utterly devoted to the home and to his charges – during the day. At night he forgoes sleep to roam the streets of the district in a mask and cape, carrying an illegal sword and looking to protect and avenge those who need it so badly. It’s a charge that was laid on him by the one who taught him the sword, and he takes it seriously. Very seriously. I think to state how seriously would be a bit of a spoiler for the romance, so I’ll leave it at very.

However, his legend is muddled. Some hail the Ghost of St. Giles as a savior and avenger of the downtrodden – and others whisper that he is a ravager of women, a thief, an assassin. One night a mob who subscribes to the latter view almost manages to catch him, and he is wounded in escaping – to be found in the middle of the road by Lady Isabel Beckinhall and her servants. Isabel – finding this all very exciting and intriguing – has him tucked into her carriage and gets all of them to safety through sheer aristocratic will.

In being treated for his injuries, the man recovers enough to demand that his mask be left on – and Isabel sees to it that his wish is respected, which may be partly because she enjoys the mystery. This sets the stage for all sorts of suspense and, of course, Clark Kent moments as Isabel becomes involved in the orphanage and is thrown together with Winter. The poor man is put through the wringer in this, in more ways than one.

To paraphrase another review of another book, this isn’t Literature, and makes no pretenses: it is an entertaining and fast-moving read with a vein of smut, and as such is very nicely written and very enjoyable.

As I read, and as the supporting characters moved about the stage, I kept thinking that quite a few of those characters had stories of their own to tell. It wasn’t obtrusive, just enough information here and there that intrigued me. And, of course, as it turns out, this is part of a series, and other books in the series do in fact feature those other characters. And I have to say: well done. My interest was very much piqued without my ever getting the feeling that the current story was being interrupted by ads for other books. Very nicely done. I’ll be reading the others.

 

Last Chance Beauty Queen – Hope Ramsay

What fun. Stereotypes of the British peerage collide with stereotypes of Southern townfolk, and in the crash most of the clichés fall away.

This was a download from Netgalley (thank you!) which I enjoyed quite a bit: the story of Rocky Rhodes, who, and who can blame her, has remade herself in the city far away from her little Southern hometown: there she is called Caroline, and her beauty queen past is buried as deep as she’s been able to shovel. (I’d call myself Tallulahbelle to avoid being called Rocky Rhodes.)(After having killed both my parents for a name that borders on abusive.) Her goal is to ride along with the senator she works for until she makes it to Washington DC: that’s the world she wants to live in, not what she’s left behind. And things are going pretty well, when the track to DC loops her back home – just in time for the Watermelon Festival. Rocky has a history with the Watermelon Festival.

To her humiliation, she is roped into the anniversary parade, and into the pink and green dress she wore when she was its queen – and from the parade she is roped into another humiliating situation altogether. Every aspect of her life that she would prefer to keep hidden from her boss and from the hunky British peer he’s saddled her with naturally comes popping out: the baron, Hugh Debracy, has business with the slightly mad owner of a Scriptural Mini Golf establishment which, though it’s seen hard times, is still hanging on – the baron wants to buy it to combine the land with other plots and build a factory, and the owner – who happens to be Caroline’s father – refuses to sell. Which is where she comes into the picture.

I have a bit of a hard time reconciling the idea of a Christian romance (in terms of a good Christian girl, if not of a romance novel written for a specifically Christian audience) with the steamy sex scenes: a “good girl” who leaps into what looks like a one-night stand doesn’t sit well. Also an ill fit to my mind is the element of the weeping angel with the pragmatism of the rest of the story. It might be an easier path to slip into for someone who has read the other two books in the series, who knows the characters; to me it was jarring to go from a fairly straightforward and mundane (in that there were no supernatural elements) to passages of quirky mysticism.

I liked the characterizations. They flirted with caricature, but never married it: there were some believable personalities here, and likeable ones. Rocky’s father’s determination to keep the golf course preserved until repairs can be made is never belittled; Rocky is embarrassed by him and it, but loves him wholeheartedly nonetheless. There are several classic Romance Misunderstandings, along with a case of classic You Two Are Meant To Be Together And Just Don’t See It. But with the credible personalities, it all works. It was a fun read.

Related articles

• review: Lies Beneath (hellyslibrary.wordpress.com)
• ARC Book Review: Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown (cuddlebuggery.com)

 

Jockeys and Jewels – Bev Petterson

This was a Member Giveaway on LibraryThing, in ebook form – thank you!

The basic storyline: Kurt was a cop, specializing in undercover work, until he burned out on the deceit and absence of trust and the danger. His new life is as a trainer of racehorses, some of which are his. Then his old boss calls asking – begging – him to come back for one more case: Kurt’s old partner, who was just murdered in circumstances involving the racetrack. Reluctantly, he takes a couple of horses and heads to Calgary to look into it.

One of the “people of interest” in the case is an apprentice jockey, Julie: cute, of course, blonde, of course, and adorable. Dimples. It takes Kurt about four minutes to eliminate her from suspicion – she was the last apart from the murderer to see his ex-partner alive, and that’s it. Her adorableness has nothing whatsoever to do with it, of course.

What it says on the tin for this one is: mystery/romance set in the racing world. And it hits all of those elements pretty equally.  Kurt is looking for the reason the dead cop, Connor, was investigating the track’s stables, why he was murdered, as well as who did it. Naturally enough, he finds himself irresistibly attracted to Julie, and vice versa. And the book is placed in a detailed racing setting. Unfortunately, I think it fell a little bit short on all three components.

The mystery was not terribly successful, to my mind. Kurt has a total of one real suspect once he’s ruled out Julie, a horse-abusing short-tempered bully called Otto. Not to spoil anything, but what are the odds he’s guilty? Karma is big here.  The idea is that Connor helped Otto with a flat tire and saw something that raised his antennae, and looking into that was what got him killed. Is Otto using the horses to smuggle something? Drugs? Wait, what was the title of the book again? Yeah. Having a hugely massive spoiler in the title is just unfortunate.

Which is in addition to the fact that I find the title rather unfortunate for itself. Alliteration for alliteration’s sake – spoiler or not – is not a positive.

The romance is … quick. It begins with Julie distracted in nearly every other paragraph by how attractive Kurt is, and Kurt being distracted in nearly every other other paragraph by Julie’s cheekbones. And it runs fairly predictably from there, and features the least romantic love scenes I have ever read, not that I’m a connoisseur. Kurt is mildly Neanderthal, and it’s always from his point of view. And – not that this is necessarily a complaint, but it is odd – there is not much mention of anything below the waist. It almost seemed as if the author was uncomfortable with writing that part.

The writing, speaking of which, is well done, apart from some questionable punctuation and a considerable amount of head-hopping. This is something I’ve been guilty of, something which lots of books – older books especially – do, and which is generally frowned on now. This is an excellent example of why. There were some passages where point of view switches from one sentence to the next, and it’s flat out confusing.

I’ve loved horses as long as I’ve loved anything, and I enjoy books set in their worlds. It’s been a long time since I’ve read one, actually, possibly since the young adult horse books I used to revel in. Here there is no doubt that Bev Petterson knows what she’s talking about; she talks the talk with authority.  She Gets It Right according to the strictures of Judith Tarr.  The danger of racing is emphasized, which is a great choice to make – although it does also emphasize the fact that Julie’s a young woman.  I have two problems with the horse-world aspect, and they are both a little surprising to me. First is that in a book filled with horses, only one really becomes a character in the story. The rest are just creatures that eat and buck and run, lacking personality.

The other thing I didn’t like about the setting was the use of jargon. The author avoided the classic “As you know, Sarah” fault, so common in CSI, which involves one character telling another something they both should know as well as they know the alphabet, but which the audience needs explained (“Ah – look: petechial hemorrhaging – the blood vessels in the eyes have ruptured, indicating asphyxiation”) … The problem is that the way she avoids this is to not explain half of the jargon. The best way to clue a reader in is to engineer the context. This doesn’t happen here, over and over. I didn’t have any idea what a claims race is, and I still don’t, really; there was frequent mention of tack and equipment with which I was completely unfamiliar, and I have to say: if I don’t know what it is after a lifetime of reading about horses, then I can only imagine a complete newcomer to the environs would be baffled by it plus a lot more.

I can’t say I cared about anyone in the story; some of the minor characters were enjoyable, but the main focus was on people I couldn’t drum up much interest in. Kurt’s lack of finesse as a lover (in the old-fashioned use of “lover” as well as that more commonly used now) is off-putting, and Julie – a driven, ambitious apprentice jockey who wants to ride more than anything else – just made me angry as she proceeded to get comprehensively drunk the night before her first big race. The stupidity blew my mind. “Kurt stepped from Lazer’s stall, his expression inscrutable, and the butterflies in her stomach morphed into giant moths. Was he disgusted with her drinking last night?” If he wasn’t, I was.

It was a quick read, and mostly enjoyable; it could have been better.

 

I hate Valentine’s Day.

I never realized how much red and pink clothing I have until I had to reject as much as I did this morning.  I used to wear pretty much all black and blue and gray, until I realized I was wearing all black and blue and gray (probably after watching What Not To Wear), and branched out (though except for one deep rose denim shirt, anything pink I own was a wrong-headed gift.  I rarely do pink).  I didn’t really intend to wear black today – that’s a statement I didn’t want to make, I simply declined to wear red or pink… but black was all I had clean and pressed and not from that end of the spectrum.  *shrug*

I’ll be honest – of course part of the reason I hate V-Day is that at no other time of year is the media’s attitude quite so in your face about how worthless life is without Love.  They don’t hedge about it, either: probably half a dozen tv shows both scripted and reality in the last year have featured some extremely wise person who earnestly proclaims that love is the only, only thing worth living for.

Thanks, then, my vacant life having been deemed worthless, I’ll just be slitting my wrists now – or should I go the folk ballad route and fling myself into a stream? 

In all seriousness, I’m astonished if the suicide rate does *not* increase around now.  It’s brutal out there. 

From: http://silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com/

Most of the time, I’m fine with old maidenhood.  Spinsterhood.  Being on the shelf.  Though the world insists otherwise, I don’t see that I need someone else to make my life complete.  I’m sure it would be very pleasant, it never happened, so … It is, as they say, what it is.  It’s just now, with the relentless barrage of PDA’s, that a few shots make it through the barricades, and I feel it.  (The airing of Emma right on target to hit me during the monthly Slough of Despond didn’t help, I have to say.)

But apart from that basic bitterness, Feb. 14 is a very bad anniversary.  It was four years ago today that the announcement went up on the original Board Which Shall Remain Nameless that instead of doing as they’d been promising for the four years I’d been a member and fixing the original message boards so that they didn’t crash every fourteen minutes, they were going to abandon ship and move to a new …everything.  And that was the beginning of the end, for me at least, though I know several people I cared about dropped away much more quietly than I did at the same time.  It was broke, and they didn’t fix it – they kicked it to the curb and started over, and the new board was shiny and new – and it was chrome and steel where the old boards were oak-panelled and comfy (if somewhat threadbare in places).  I really do hate Valentine’s Day. 

Mainly though, and as long as I can remember, there is always the simple fact that … I don’t get it.  Even if I were in a relationship, I can’t see myself being happy because he, having been poked and prodded and nudged and reminded by every commercial and DJ and newsanchor for the past two weeks, arrived with flowers and chocolate.  I worked retail too long: I saw the men who flocked into the store just before closing on February 13 – and, even better, closing on Feb. 14 – to pick up the random pink stuffed whatever or box of anything they could find.  I always derived some sadistic pleasure that a good many of these guys had to choose between the cheap stuff that tasted like something made by people who had heard of chocolate and never tasted it, and the great big huge expensive heart boxes – because that was all that was left.  Oh, and the monster two-foot high cards, also all that was left.  Hee.  That was fun.  But … isn’t this sort of like someone apologizing only after having it clearly pointed out that an apology was owed?  “I’m sorry for whatever it is I’m supposed to be sorry for”?  If it’s not something done with intent, what’s the point?  “I demand a present!”  “What would you like?”  “That! *points*”  “If the six hundred thousand commercials and your nagging are enough to remind me, I will buy it, just to keep out of the doghouse.”  Why?  Just to create an excellent opportunity to make people miserable when they forget or are forgotten (or have no one to forget or be forgotten by)? 

Oh, and balloons?  I hate balloons. 

On the sitcom The Middle, the father, Mike, spent the whole episode last week ranting about how V-Day is a vast gimmick cooked up by the greeting card companies and chocolate makers to drum up business.  And he’s wrong how?  And have you seen the price of greeting cards lately?  

http://a.abc.com/media/_global/swf/embed/2.6.5/SFP_Walt.swf

That’s it, I’m shuttin’ it down!  You guys shouldn’t be celebrating Valentine’s Day anyway because it’s a scam cooked up by the greeting card companies.  You know what you should be doing?  You should be studying.  ‘Cause guess what they’re doing in China right now?  They are doing math, and they are learning how to be CEO’s of greeting card companies so they can sell us American’s a heart-shaped load o’ crap!

Thing is, though, I can’t help but think I would be either really easy (so to speak) or really difficult on V-Day.  I wouldn’t want flowers – I hate cut flowers, as they’re dead in a day or so, and I’m not good with plants (black thumb).  A stuffed thing?  Unless it’s astonishingly adorable – and I have been known on occasion to find certain fluffy creatures irresisitible – no.  I’m an adult.  I have no use for an ugly pink whatever with something sappy stitched on it.  Chocolate – sure, any time, but I am going to raise an eyebrow if the best a man can do is a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover.  (I can’t imagine who the appropriate recipient is for a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover; secretary?  Nurse at a relative’s bedside?  Kid’s teacher?  Even then … Oh, sorry to have put you to so much trouble – wasn’t there something you could have put less effort into? /sarcasm)  Good chocolate, now – that shows at least a little thought.  As for jewelry … Again, I’m either particularly easy or hard, because I don’t like gold and wouldn’t want diamonds.  I’m a simple soul; I wouldn’t ever want expensive jewelry.  What on earth would I do with it?  And I’m hell on jewelry; I can’t tell you how many half-pairs of earrings I own, because the other half vanished from my ear.  My favorite pendant first broke and then vanished entirely; it was a little knight, 1″ tall, whose arms and legs were jointed and whose tiny visor went up to reveal his (rough-carved) face.  All I have now is the arm that snapped off.  So that’s one strike against jewelry – if I were to wear something pricey I’d be a nervous wreck.  Most of all, though, I think both eyebrows would rise if someone were to gift me with one of those mass-produced diamond-studded things for which commercials flood the airwaves around now and every other remotely gift-y holiday.  (Trick or treat?  Treat!  Give your special someone an Open Hearts necklace for Halloween!)  I can’t help but wonder why in the world I would want the same piece of jewelry 321,610 other women have been given over the last twenty-eight or so holidays.  Something hand-made, something unique – not necessarily expensive: go to eBay and search for “steampunk”, and good things appear - would, to me, mean a huge amount more than some kind of diamond-chip-crusted whatever empty of meaning. 

And I know I’m beginning to sound male here, but … the connection between the day and the martyr – who was apparently beheaded, unless you mean one of the other ones – is specious.  There might be some kind of connection to Lupercalia – and having read Roma, that’s not exactly in keeping with what the day is now.  There would be mass arrests if Lupercalia was celebrated properly.  It’s all a great deal like Coca Cola creating the modern image and pervasiveness of Santa Claus and diamonds being force-fed to the country as THE engagement ring: it’s all a marketing campaign that would do Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce proud.   I think that’s sad.

 

“Highland” romance with Karen Marie Moning

I’m almost embarrassed to post this one, but what the heck: I just finished To Tame a Highland Warrior by Karen Marie Moning.

I read a review on Amazon that described this book as cheesy. I went all defensive – I wouldn’t say cheesy!  ”Slang: inferior or cheap”. “Of poor quality; shoddy”.  Nah.  Silly?  Sure.  Guilty pleasure?  You don’t see me toting KMM to work to read on my lunch break do you?  Guilty pleasure: check.  Fun as all get out?  Yes.  Cheesy?  Noooo.

There are so many reasons I should hate KMM’s books.  These, the “Highlander” novels … Well, the series title probably capitalizes on whatever lingers of the Highlander TV show fan group; the Scotsmen involved aren’t all highlanders (and in fact the bad guy is the only one explicitly called a highlander).  But more, the first one of the series, her first published novel, completely rips off Diana Gabaldon: modern woman gets yanked back in time to be the perfect mate of a magnificent Scottish warrior.  And the language … Foul?  No. I could handle a few soap-in-mouth-worthy pages.  No, what it is is über modern – the heroine of TTaHW, who was born into the time in which the book is set, could in any given scene be pulling on jeans and slipping on her Jimmy Choos and dealing with her Berserker boyfriend after her three o’clock focus group meeting.  And in a couple  of memorable paragraphs the eyes of the Berserker, who calls himself Grimm (awww – ’cause he is.  And it’s his initials.  So cute!) are described as “incandescent”.  Incandescent? Really? They had light bulbs in 16th century Scotland?  I knew the Scots were brilliant.  (Seriously, the word was coined, afai can tell, in the mid 1700′s.  It probably wasn’t very widely used until the light bulb came about.)

“Incandescent” is even worse than “okay”.  An anachronistic “okay” will generally make me at least want to throw a book across the room (and occasionally I do it).  I never do understand why writers – and, apparently, editors – don’t remember that the word didn’t exist in the Renaissance or Restoration or whenever, pre-1830′s. But incandescent is so closely related to technology that I can’t believe a) it made it into the book (candescent would have been, er, okay, though) and b) I *didn’t* want to throw the book.

Another reason I should want to fling the book is the half-hearted (I was going to say half-assed, but I won’t) glancing blow at the brogue.  There is very little attempt at dialect, which when all’s said and done is preferable; there’s a word here and there, and Jillian is pretty consistently “lass” – but the brogue is mostly represented by people saying, instead of “do not” or “don’t” … “doona”.  Now, in other books where the writer is going for a brogue I’ve read “dinna” – “I dinna ken, lass” – but “doona”?  That doona compute.  (I unfortunately don’t know enough Scots to know if it is remotely phonetically correct; I don’t think so, but sadly I’m no expert.  Just an enthusiast.)  But I still didn’t want to throw the book.  The dialogue makes very little attempt at authenticity for the time period or location.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, really … Better to avoid entirely than to do it badly.  Fantasy and historical romancers could learn something here.

Oh, they talk about invading one’s space, too. My semi-educated guess on the earliest appearance of that one as a phrase is the 1960′s. I could be wrong, of course, but it has that smack to it: it was popularized then, at least. Eyes: rolled. Book: still not flung.

The premise is ridiculous: Jillian St. Clair’s father is tired of her scaring off all the men, because after all she is nearing spinsterhood at 21, and so as he and his wife go off on a months’ long visit to a new grandchild he sends off messages to three hunky rogues – “Come for Jillian”, more or less. Grimm Roderick, the Berserker, fostered with the family, apparently (though not really) as a landless, homeless, nameless waif; another foster son, Quinn de Moncreiffe, is also invited, along with a third man famous for his virility, Ramsay Logan. Off go the parents; in come the three studs; and into a tizzy flies Jillian, who wasn’t told about the competition her father incited. Interestingly, her father doesn’t much mind if one or more have bedded her by the time he and his wife; as long as the wench is married at some point soon, that’s fine by him.

Part two of the premise is that the reason Grimm was off appearing to be a landless, homeless, nameless waif was that in the course of one rotten day his father murdered his mother in a berserker rage; and enemies of the family (and/or of berserkers) raided his village and started a slaughter; and they didn’t finish the slaughter because Grimm – actually Gavrael McIllioch (it appears KMM created the McIllioch clan) – summoned a berserker spirit of his own at the ripe age of 13, and forcibly put a stop to said slaughter. With a slaughter of his own. He couldn’t stay at home after what his father did (though he thought his father was dead), and lost himself in the woods, where he was found by young Jillian, who first adopted him and then fell in love with him. He, of course, is afraid of what will happen if he lets her near him – after all, he has not only the taint of madness from his father, but he’s a berserker – so, like so many big strong stupid men in books before him he holds the woman he adores at arm’s length for fear he will hurt – or kill – her. Add to this comedy of errors a nice (and, in the words of the immortal Penelope Garcia, smokin’ hot) man who is also very fond of her and a roguish (and smokin’ hot) man who lusts for her and figures she’d make an admirable wife, and hijinks ensue.

But I don’t hate the book. I actually have a deep, if furtive, fondness for KMM’s books, including this one. I like Jillian, anachronistic as she is.  I like Grimm, thick as he is; the thickness is kind of sweet.  I like the minor characters.  They’re all a step above the moronic cardboard cutouts in the few typical romance novels I’ve dipped into.  Yes, they’re all, every one, smokin’ hot – but they have at least rudimentary personalities, and the writing, while not the Best Ever, is extremely readable. “Doona”s and space invasions and “incandescent”s and all.  At least Jillian has amber eyes, which is doable, instead of lavender or some such nonsense.  And while the other romance novels I’ve looked at (you can’t really call that “reading”) used absolutely mortifyingly horrendous language in describing love scenes, KMM manages to avoid many of their anatomical euphemisms.  Usually.

I’m a little hazy on why she would insist on setting the books in 16th century Scotland when absolutely no notable use of that time is made in the stories, and the only use the place is put to is to underscore that these men must be gorgeous because they’re Scots Highlanders.  They certainly don’t behave like the 16th-century men most romances throw around, praise be; again, they’re far too modern.  As stories, I think they would be better served by being set in a fantasy place and time … but then the publisher wouldn’t be able to throw them on the Outlander bandwagon, of course. Silly me.

So, in the end, will I keep reading KMM? You bet. Will I use her books as reference material in any way, shape or form on any topic at all?  Not a chance.  Will I admit my guilty pleasure outside this blog?  Heh.  Probably not.  Do I recommend them as a fun, unchallenging read, sort of sexy comfort books?  Yeah, actually, I do.

 

Alternate 1800′s – The Smoke Thief

They sneaked Shana Abé’s  Smoke Thief by me in the fantasy section – had it been where it (sort of) properly belonged, in with the romances, I would never have cracked the cover.  But it was in fantasy, and had a great title, and the premise – a (beautiful, of course) young woman making her unique way in Georgian London as a jewel thief, who apparently steals the wrong jewel and is stalked by the (handsome, of course) owner – sounded like fun.  I like charming and accomplished fictional thieves.  Case in point: John Robie. 

And now Rue, the heroine of Smoke Thief.  I hated the historical-recap beginning; it bordered on purple, and is why I had as much trouble as I did getting into the story.  But it’s fairly necessary information, and soon over, followed by another vignette closer in time to the story, nicely showing the youth of and demonstrating the difficulties for the two main characters. 

And then we’re off at the gallop into the story, in which Clarissa Hawthorne has escaped a miserable childhood as a half-breed in a society which does not tolerate half-breeds.  She comes from a small, secret English village which is held by the drákon, who once were purely draconian in form and function but who have adapted to their perilous existence by learning human form.  Appearance of humanity isn’t acceptance of humanity, though – they are, of course, far superior to mere humans, and any intermingling of the races leads to, at best, ostracism for all concerned.  But it is generally held to be better to remain in the village as a despised adjunct to the clan than to flee the village and be hunted down and executed – because only the highest ranking of the drákon are allowed to leave, for fear of exposure. 

Except Clarissa has left, and is living the life she wants as Rue.  Until the Right Honourable Christoff René Ellery Langford, Earl of Chasen (aka Kit) shows up … He is the head of the tribe, and is responsible for a) retrieving the jewel stolen from the tribe (jewels having a similar effect on the drákon to drugs), and b) retrieving this person who somehow escaped from the tribe’s strictures.   When he finds out that the runner in question is a woman, and one who can successfully change shape, the priorities shift.  Centuries after they learned to take human shape, the drákon are finding it more difficult to shake it off: men normally grow into the ability to change their form to smoke and to drákon (dragon), but women seem to be losing the knack – and the head of the tribe must mate with a woman who can shift. 

Enter the romance portion of our story.  It’s a different twist on a classic romance theme – two (excessively beautiful) people who are going to marry (and, er, etc.) whether they both like it or not – and Rue very much doesn’t.  Except when she does.  She loved Kit when they were both children, but she was (almost) beneath his notice; now she hates and fears the idea of being dragged back to the village and forced to – best case scenario – go back to the restricted life she once had … and, worst case, face imprisonment or execution.  She’s forced into the union – but she likes it.  And happily ever etc.  Classic romance. 

But it was really not bad at all.  Some of the writing rose above what I expect of a romance, certainly, and even what I expect of a fantasy novel; the characters were believable and not paper cutouts.  I liked the conception of the drákon and how they were integrated into what would otherwise be a well-written romance novel – it takes it off the romance shelf in my library (which actually is just a shameful little section of “fiction”) and moves it, as Books & Co had it, firmly into fantasy. 

There are sequels; I probably won’t buy them new (sorry), but will at some point when I don’t feel like I’ve spent an absurd amount of money on myself (I just bought a laptop) put some effort into finding the ones I don’t have (one was at a library sale last year – yay).  What I wonder is whether there is so very much of a subgenre of romances with such strong fantasy elements.  I know there are lots – and lots – AND lots of vampires out there, but this … this was different.  I liked this.