(no subject)

[oyceter]

I give up, Mary Jo Putney. I do.

I tried to read one of her earlier books on the suggestion that her contemporaries and her later books haven't been as good. Picked up Dearly Beloved at the library. The first scene opens with a rakish male ogling at a barmaid. This is our hero, of course, and this scene is to demonstrate how morally dissolute and secretly heartbroken and tortured he is without our heroine. Anyhow, he arranges a tryst with said barmaid. When he goes up into his room, he is discovered with the priest's daughter in a Compromising Position (tm) and forced to marry her.

Because her father is insane and makes him marry her, our hero jumps to the utterly reasonable conclusion that of course she was in on the scheme and is ev0l and wh0rish (I have no idea if that is actual netspeak). From there, despite her protests, he jumps to his second utterly reasonable conclusion that the ev0l wh0r should pay and basically rapes her. He discovers upon doing so that she was a virgin, and thus (and only thus, may I add) does he feel remorse for his actions.

OMGWTFBBQ??!?!?!@?@!1111?

(pardon me, I seem to have been bitten by the netspeak bug today. The sheer stupidity of this setup demands it, I feel)

I promptly chucked the book across the room and now wish to scrub my mind of its presence.

What the hell? What is wrong with these heroes? Ok, maybe not what is wrong with these heroes, because hey, forcing one's wife into sex back in the Regency era was probably not as passe as it is now. But still. He is the freaking hero of the romance novel, and this girl is obviously set up as his Designated Love Interest, and somehow, I, the reader, am supposed to forgive him for this because he feels oh so sowwy that he forced her only because she's a virgin?! Note the part that pisses me off the most isn't the rape, although that does piss me off, especially as a set up, but the part in which Putney is manipulating the reader to feel that the hero should somehow be forgiven because *gasp* he didn't know she was a virgin! I don't care if the hero thinks that, but the fact that the author seems to and that the author seems to expect me to makes me want to hurt something badly.

I only wish I had thrown the book harder.

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Oy!

Yeah, that's NOT one of her early books to read.

It's her kinkfic book, swear to dog.

The Rake and the Reformer (republished as straight historical under the title, The Rake) is a better place to start.

Dearly Beloved gave me an OMGWTFHUH? reaction.

[oyceter]

I seem to have really bad luck with Putney, for some reason! Well, the first two I read of hers were ok (The Wild Child and The Spiral Path), but then I picked up The China Bride, which was extremely, extremely sporky because of the extremely, extremely stupid exoticism and the whole noble and self-sacrificing Chinese thing, and I chucked it against the wall.

[minim_calibre]

Yeah, I think The China Bride was the last Putney I bothered with. I didn't throw it, but I think my eyes rolled until they hurt.

[oyceter]

Bwahahaha, yes! I think that was the first book with the dubious honor of being thrown against a wall.

I love books, I do. But some of them really, really piss me off.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Not her best treatment of that dynamic. Although, oddly enough I like practically…well it’s not really the same scenario in the medieval. I guess because he’s wandering around thinking these practically lifted from the “Art of Courtly Love” thoughts. And then she does the, girlfriend, stop reading the third book of “The Book of the City of Women,” thing. Owe. And then, you know, penance is more like a hair shirt and some flagellation. You know, like someone in the middle ages trying to atone for something.

Then again, you may hate it. I’d hate to think of you giving her one more try only to fling bookage across the room.

Best to stick to novels that don’t annoy you. How about the Art of Courtly Love. It’s full of fun advice, like never fall in love with a nun, because she’ll just break your heart.

Plus, 1500 year old Slashy UST.

[oyceter]

Hee! 1500 year old slashy UST! If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

I think my tolerance for assorted romance novel tropes is rapidly going down the more good romances I read, ironically! So I end up irritated with a large part of the genre while adoring another bit wholeheartedly. I think I get more irritated with this genre because the tropes have much more to do with gender than the tropes of other genres (i.e. fantasy, although if there is one more spunky princess, I will spork myself).

[fresne.livejournal.com]

“ Hee! 1500 year old slashy UST! If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.”

Exactly. About the fifth time our world weary priest of love (well, he was a priest and he writes about love) tells the young man who he’s writing the book for that it is impossible for a man to love another man in “that” way you just start to want to hook them up.

Course he also has UST for nuns and ladies of Upper Upper estate, so it’s all good

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I remember I REALLY didn't like that one. I sort of blotted it out.

The first one of hers I read was ONE PERFECT ROSE (period-accurate classism), and I liked it enough to read THE RAKE, that had a rake who actually was an alcoholic, not easily cured, and a heroine who is a bailiff of an estate. (It was a rewritten version of her early Regency, THE RAKE AND THE REFORMER.)

[oyceter]

Oy, yes.

Hrm. I seem to have bad luck with Putney of late. The first two of hers I read weren't unbearable like this one and The China Bride.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I find her unreadable for many reasons, one of which you gave above--stupid plotting. (Her best plots appeared to come from Heyer, same place as her research.) The rest, cliche down to the bad word choices and unawareness of how people in the period really talked and acted, instead applying general romance-novel melodrama to every period.

But she has a tremendous following, which suggests that this sort of book really appeals. So, hey. Whatever works, I guess.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Also, since she was one of the first romance authors I read, my tolerance for badness was not nearly as high as it is now....

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

There's that--heck, when I was sixteen and starved for more Heyers, I binged on Barbara Cartland for a short time.

[oyceter]

Hrm, yah, oh well. Someday I will have my own little subgenre of gender role bending romances, and I will be a happy, happy camper.

Hee, at least this is really making me want to write my Rules for Romance Heroes!

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I don't know about wh0rish--\/\/h0r15h? (of course, this from someone who regularly yells at the screen to Angel while vidding, "Angel, you slut!"--uh, this requires some context, never mind), but I've usually seen 3vil or variants. Just say you 5p33k 4 |)1ff3r3n7 |)14l3c7 0f 1337.

(Okay, so in Megatokyo I was highly amused when a friend remarked that if I had trouble reading the 1337, there were paraphrases at the bottoms of the panels or however it worked, and I had to tell him that I found reading raw 1337 actually kinda trivial. :-p I've hung out with too many 1337 h4xx0r5.)

[oyceter]

Hee! I think my eyes are bleeding from the 1337! But I like the idea of different 1337 dialects! I wonder if there is Japanese or Chinese or Korean 1337? I know in Japan people use funny little number codes with their cell phones -- 0840 reads "ohayou" because that's how the numbers are pronounced in Japanese! And my friends and I would type "881" for "bye bye" because if you read it out in Chinese, it sounds like "ba-ba-i."

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I don't know about 1337, but I remember 8282 was "quickly" because 8 = pal, 2 = i, and "fast/quick(ly)" in Korean is bballi, which you can reduplicate for emphasis, so pal-i-pal-i -> bballibballi. Uh, yeah. Bad pun.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

"I only wish that I had thrown the book harder."

Do you have a balcony?

[oyceter]

LOL! Yes! Alas, it is a library book and I must not be too cruel to it.