Sakura of DOOM

I read this before a couple of years ago, and I wanted to reread to see if the dissatisfaction with the second half would go away in time. Alas, no.

While I really like Judith Ivory's style and the thought she puts into the characters, I've been turned off by some of her books because there's such a big power differential between the hero and the heroine. She does the sort of alpha, more sexually aware and more willful hero well and usually doesn't lapse into alpha male stupidity, but I've found that I have less and less tolerance for that unequal balance of power favoring the hero. Not really my kink anymore. (Isn't it interesting how kinks change? It used to be my kink, and then after too many bad books and a great deal of lit crit type thinking on the subject, it just stopped being my kink. Now my kink is the complete opposite. I guess it wasn't a bulletproof kink after all.) And the main thing that turns me off Beast is that power differential. I think this is the most uneven distribution of power between the hero and the heroine in all her books.

Louise Vandermeer is eighteen and gorgeous, and engaged to Charles Harcourt, a French perfume maker (and prince) who is disfigured and limps. I like how Ivory doesn't make light of Louise's beauty -- it is both a blessing and a curse, and Louise is believably ambivalent about it. I also like how Ivory doesn't cheat and make Charles' disfigurements mostly imaginary on his part. I've read books in which the hero goes on and on and on for pages about how no one will love him because he's been horribly scarred, and in the end, it turns out that the scars have mostly faded and only make him look dashing. Pah. Cheating. They are both on the same ship together crossing the Atlantic, and Charles decides to play a little trick on his bride-to-be, partly because he wants to get to know her without the impediment of his sort-of ugliness and partly out of a desire to prove he can. So he seduces her in the dark, without ever letting her see his face. Personally, this is where I really wanted to take a stick and beat him over the head, because honestly, who does stuff like this? It is, I suppose, a testament to Judith Ivory that I got through his plotting without throwing the book against a wall, which is what I normally would do.

So there's this giant power gap -- Louise is young and inexperienced, although she does have a fairly strong sense of herself. Charles is thirty-something, has a great deal of sexual experience, and he's the one who is pulling all the strings on the ship. Luckily Louise is not a bimbo, and she makes a very conscious decision to allow herself to be seduced. Alas, she falls in love with the mysterious stranger, and they must part ways once the ship docks.

The first half, detailing the seduction on the ship, is actually pretty good because it's interesting watching Louise grow and discover who she is in the dark, without her stunning looks, and she takes great pleasure in talking, in exploring. I really do like Louise as a character. She's believably real and rather spoiled, having grown up not only beautiful, but also in the lap of luxury. But she's horribly intelligent and very self-possessed, and it's fun watching her learning. The second half is mostly about Charles' re-wooing of his now reluctant bride (again, I ask, what did he think would happen?), and to be honest, I have no sympathy at all for him. He's going around being annoyed that Louise won't sleep with him, as she has fallen in love with the mysterious stranger, and all the times he throws temper tantrums about her unwillingness, I just want to bash him over the head and say, "Serves you right!" I feel if you have gone about and tricked your wife into falling in love with you in another guise, you have absolutely no right to go around yelling at her for her newfound reluctance to fall out of love with you-in-another-guise and fall in bed with you. I felt horribly sorry for Louise, who was extremely confused through the whole thing, seeing as how Charles would every so often remind her of the mysterious stranger.

Spoilers, sort of: ( spoilers )

Er, yeah. I may have gone off a little there. But really!

Very much worth giving in and ordering it online.

Somehow Cuevas manages to make Hannah the sort of spirited ingenue who is innocent yet sexual and keeps her real and unirritating. I particularly like Hannah's taste in clothes and accessories, despite the atrociousness of it ;). Mostly I liked how I could actually see Hannah and Nardi (the ex-ether-addict-ex-sculptor) fall in love, instead of fall headfirst into lust, like so many romance couples do. Of course, lust is a factor, but it was more wrapped into the general infatuation and then the growing friendship between the two. I very much appreciated that I got the see the parts in which they weren't just jumping into bed and were actually talking to each other or just having some fun. It's a remarkably angst free book, considering the various plot factors (he is engaged to another woman for the money factor, she has a checkered past, etc.).

( Spoilers )

The normalness of Hannah and Nardi was just really enjoyable. And I didn't really see Sebastian as the villain of the piece, although that may be because I know he's in Dance too. But heh, I was slightly more attracted to Sebastian in the book than to Nardi. It's the proper geekness that gets to me (see: Wesley and Simon).

Oh, and Cuevas managed to avoid having Amelia Besom fall into the stereotype of either horrible, mean old lady who refuses to give anyone a chance or crusty old lady with the heart of gold, once warmed up properly, and instead had her balanced somewhere between the two, which I also appreciated.

And note to self: do not start these books at 1 in the morning. Bad idea if any sleep at all has been planned for the night.

Have been going on a romance reading streak lately. I suspect it's because they're sort of comfort books and because I miss the boy. Also I sort of rediscovered The Romance Reader and had fun going through essays, and went rampaging through melymbrosia's romance conversion kit.

Read another Connie Brockway because I was quite impressed with All Through the Night. I like My Dearest Enemy. It was enjoyable, though not as hard hitting as All Through the Night. And while I enjoyed having the hero and the heroine meet, I almost wish that there had been a sort of supplementary book that the author refers to, The Unabridged Love Letters of Avery Thorne and Lillian Bede. The letters, particularly Lily's rather acid ones, had me laughing in delight. And I think the rest of the romance never quite lived up to them, with Lily being too attracted to Avery to make as many of her stinging remarks, all couched in that very polite yet scathing tone of voice. I also just liked the idea of Avery reading them aloud to his friends over fires in various remote parts of the world.

Then went on to Judith Ivory's Sleeping Beauty. I will admit, although everyone and their mother seems to think Judith Ivory is absolutely wonderful, I've never quite been able to get into her books. I recognize that they do interesting things to romance tropes and that she doesn't fall back on the often used means of expressing that the hero and the heroine are in love, but they've just never quite resonated with me. For Beast and Black Silk, the writing managed to put me off just enough so that I admired the books but didn't really like them. Black Silk more so than Beast, because I can never refuse a fairy tale retelling, much less a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I very much liked Louise in Beast and I loved the first half of the book, but got rather sick of waiting around for the Big Misunderstanding to be cleared up. The Indiscretion and The Proposal I don't even really recall much. But Sleeping Beauty had the older heroine who was rather jaded and closed off to love, with the understanding that the hero will of course be the one to touch her hardened heart, which is one of my hot button setups. And for once the book lived up to it. Loved the small references to Sleeping Beauty and enjoyed the rather odd setting for a romance novel -- Victorian England, Cambridge, the dentist's office. And I loved Coco and James. I also liked how the ending wasn't perfectly happy with everything resolved, just enough of a few bitter notes to make it believable.

Started watching La Femme Nikita yesterday (netflix is wonderful). I've put off Stargate for a bit, feeling a little burnt out from watching two seasons in a very short period of time. So now I'm overdosing on yet another show! I love TV on DVD. Anyway, I've only seen three episodes so far, but I rather like it, and I am rather disappointed that news seems to be that S2 is not going to be put out. I feel it's got the cool bits of Alias without falling into the bits of Alias that I disliked. Although I will admit that LFN so far does not have Jack and Sloane, who are really really strong votes for Alias. LFN is kind of clunky, tries a little too hard and leaves too many seams exposed, but I like Nikita and Michael is really enough to eat with a spoon. I like Nikita because she's so often the opposite of Sydney. She doesn't have much of a personal life so far, so I don't have to watch her commiserate over her friends' lives when I really just want to see cool gadgets. Nikita's also not as open and vulnerable as Sydney, which strangely makes me like her more. And Michael is really interesting. Well, not really so far, but he's an archetype I like with a French accent and a killer coat. Plus, UST up the wazoo. I think I never quite liked Alias because the leads, Sydney and Vaughn, were too intrinsically good (I say this only having seen half a season). I get hints of danger in Vaughn, of what he might be capable of, but he's really very uncomplicated when compared to Jack (who is awesome). I love Jack because he can be given a gun and told to shoot Sydney, and I can actually think, you know, he might really do it. Whereas I know that Sydney and Vaughn will be good people. I find this odd because I'm a stickler for disliking gratuitous violence and for liking good people, but I find it more interesting when my heroes and heroines aren't shiningly good. I like watching people who may not be perfectly kind and lovely (which is why most standard romance heroines piss me off, with their campaigns for the poor orphans, etc. etc.) and Michael very much fits this. I like having the slickness of a spy show, with the intrigue and the distrust and the aura of fear. Sigh. I miss X-Files.