Lord, Karen - Redemption in Indigo

Paama has left her husband, the glutton Ansige, and in doing so, she's managed to attract the attention of several djombi. One of them decides to give her a rather mysterious gift for rather mysterious purposes.

The back cover copy tells me that this is based on a Senegalese folktale, and as far as I could tell, the central folktale is largely about Paama and Ansige, with the djombi and the Chaos Stick and the tricksters added into the story by Lord. I wasn't surprised to find out; there are still a few seams showing between Paama getting rid of Ansige and Paama's adventures with the djombi, but Lord manages to tie everything back together in the end.

This is a fun little book with a very fun, oral-tradition-inspired narrative voice. The narrator isn't above giving the reader hints or going off on asides, and that's half the fun of the book. It was especially fun for me to get a retold tale that wasn't based on various European fairy tales. Don't get me wrong; I grew up on fairy tales and Robin McKinley and the like, but there's only so many times you can read a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" before wanting another base story. I only wish I was familiar with the folktale this book was based on. Also, as far as I can tell, Lord slips in a lot of references to her native Barbados. Alas, I didn't manage to pick up on any of them...

I was a little worried that the story would be too slight, which I think is a danger of retold tales. Thankfully, there's a bit of a twist where things start to come together. ( Spoilers )

I think people who really like retold tales, especially folktales, double especially non-European folktales, will enjoy this a lot, as well as people who like tricksters and ordinary people tangling with gods. Very fun, with a great sense of humor and place, and I am happy to see that Lord is thinking of a sequel!

Chase, Loretta - Last Night's Scandal

Olivia Wingate-Carsington and Peregrine Dalmay, Earl of Lisle, are now no longer the trouble-making children they were in Lord Perfect. Instead, Lisle is back from Egypt and trying to deal with his overly dramatic and demanding parents, while Olivia is breaking engagements left and right. And when Lisle's parents come up with yet another scheme to keep him from returning to Egypt, Olivia comes up with one of her own.

First off, Olivia was one of the best parts of Lord Perfect, which was sadly boring, and she continues to delight in this book. She's prone to writing letters with sentences like "If I am caught, IMPRISONMENT IN THE COUNTRY awaits me—but as you know, I regard my own Safety and Happiness as of No Consequence in the pursuit of a Noble Cause." Furthermore, she has no morals or ethics whatsoever (and admits so freely) and would probably try to con everyone she met if she could get away with it.

Lisle, on the other hand, protests that he has no imagination to counter Olivia's overabundance of the thing, but he has imagination enough. As evidence, when he meets Olivia after a five-year separation, he notices she's grown up in quite a few ways and dubs one of them her "satanic bosoms."

Truly, that is not a phrase I see often in books, much less in a romance describing the heroine's assets.

Soon, they're off to repair a haunted Scottish castle. Normally I would roll my eyes at ghosts and Scotland, but Chase pokes sly fun at Scotland. I'd take more offense at this, except my feeling was that she was poking fun at all those dreadful romances set in Scotland with the kilts and the lairds and the accents.

I also sighed in relief when I saw it took place mostly in Scotland, as the terrible racism has made Mr. Impossible, one of my former favorite Chases, impossible to reread. There's definitely a lot of annoying references to Lisle's time in Egypt in here (dancing girls ARGH), but at least it's not as bad as it could have been?

The book isn't one of Chase's best, and even though Olivia breaks with most romance heroine molds, Lisle can be a bit annoying at times. It's mostly a very fun romp without the genre-convention-overthrowing that would make it one of Chase's better books, like Lord of the Scoundrels. Still, a fun romp from Chase is heads above a lot of romances, and I enjoyed this one a great deal.