Hoyt, Elizabeth - To Seduce a Sinner

[oyceter]

Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale, has recently had one fiancee defect on him, and his second has just left him at the altar. Melisande Fleming sees her chance—she's plain and has never attracted his attention, but he's not really in a position to be picky now. So begins the marriage of convenience plot coupled with the loved him from afar plot!

Alas, Jasper is busy figuring out who betrayed his company when they were in the Colonies, leading to their being captured and tortured by Indians.

...yes. Tortured. By. Indians.

Suddenly, my DW has become "rant about race in romances" all day all the time!

Leaving that aside for a little, there are the standard Hoyt things in here that I like a lot. The heroine is more sexually aggressive than the norm in romances and neither the hero or the heroine are described as attractive, although I could have done without the descriptions of the heroine's skin being so white you can see her blue veins through it.

However, the revenge plot is a little too similar to The Serpent Prince for me, with more ARGH moments (Indians! ARGH!) and fewer bits I like.

And did I mention the tortured by Indians thing? I like Hoyt, but I tried reading the first book in this quartet and could not get through it because I was still so mad about the presentation of Native people in romances. I'll probably be skipping the rest of it until she comes out with a new series that hopefully does not have eye-rolling race issues.

Comments

[daedala]

I was going to say "I told you so," but I think this was the one you had already read when I warned you. So, so sad.

And yeah, so many things to like in that book and so many things to hate....

Oh, another warning -- Crusie et alia's new Dogs and Goddesses is fluffy, slight, and has a bunch of white people in Ohio as heirs to and reincarnations of made-up Mesopotamian demigoddesses. Sigh. (Also, the supposed math genius professor really kind of isn't. It's a particular pet peeve for some reason. :)

[oyceter]

I know! Also, aside from the plot having Savage Indians, it also makes no sense and IS BORING.

Thanks for the warning about the Crusie! I didn't realize, GRAH.

[daedala]

RIGHT IT MAKES NO SENSE.

Also? The thing where it's really the White People orchestrating the horrible things that the Brown People do? (Which is what Duran had and what I'll bet happens here?) DOES NOT MAKE IT BETTER.

My impression of the Crusie/Stuart/Rich -- which I started not realizing, and then kept reading because dammit I like math professors and Crusie and sometimes Stuart -- is that it is so slight that they didn't think of anything other than cute. And it is cute. But it doesn't undo the stupidity of the initial setup. I think that alien goddesses or wholly made-up goddesses or maybe just (woefully overused, but this is so slight) Greco-Roman goddesses would have worked just as well and not had creepy issues. There is a war going on over there and we are not exactly on the side of justice. Creepy.

[daedala]

By the way, should I keep providing officious warnings? It feels kind of presumptuous....

[oyceter]

Yes! Anything that lessens my chances of having my head explode is good. Sometimes I just do not rant that much back because too much anger tires me out.

[daedala]

Oh, I am not expecting ranting-back! It's just hard to tell someone being quiet from "oh I wish she would SHUT THE HELL UP" or something. :)

[rilina]

I had pretty much the same reaction. (Though I am reading The Leopard Prince right now, and enjoying it. But that other series is just...no.)

[oyceter]

Yeah... I just. NO.

Oh, I'm glad you're enjoying Leopard Prince!

[rachelmanija]

Whenever I read loving descriptions of visible veins I think the narrator is planning to either drink or draw the heroine's blood. (I have had people get excited over my visible veins. It was always because they were about to take a blood sample.)

[oyceter]

Yes! And even in vampire books, I frequently do not find that sexy!

[lady_ganesh]

I actually was going to use visible veins for my white character as something creepy/unusual, because he lives in a community where no one is as scary pale as he is. Maybe I should have the other characters call him "vampire bait."

[sanguinity]

Romance isn't my genre, and so I ask: are there any romances that write Indians well? In my mental map of romance, Indians run from savage antagonist (as showcased here) to noble elves of nature (as showcased by Cassie Edwards). I have a difficult time even imagining what a romance -- especially a historical romance -- would look like that doesn't frack it all up.

[oyceter]

AHAHAHAHAHA /bitter laughter.

I have not met any that do it even close to right, but part of that may be that I avoid pretty much anything that mentions Native people because of the FAIL.

Moondancer Drake (Cherokee) has written Ancestral Magic, which I think is urban fantasy/romance. I haven't read it yet, but I think some friends started reading it at Wiscon and liked it.

[sanguinity]

That bitter laughter is about what I thought. :-/


*goes to look at Moondancer Drake's book, not realizing that was out already* Lesbian paranormal romance. Maybe I should have a read.

[daedala]

You know, it occurs to me that Cheryl Reavis has some contemporary category books set on a Navajo reservation. Some characters are Navajo, some white, and the romances vary. (Not all her categories are in this series.)

I read them several years ago, before I knew what to think about the racial issues involved. That said, I have never been able to read most historical romances with Indians for the reasons you note, so it is possible that these are not too horrible. The series starts with One of Our Own from 1994.

This isn't so much a recommendation as a referral. I'm sorry my memory isn't clearer. My books are all packed so I can't grab one to see.