meganbmoore | Jan. 24th, 2008

Jan. 24th, 2008

To cleanse my brain and remind myself that Cassie Edwards is not representative of the entire genre, I shall read a couple of good romance novels next. Well, Loretta Chase and Elizabeth Thornton usually write good books, so I shall assume the recent book by each that I have is good. Uhm...seriously...most things would look good right now. After that, I shall return to epic fantasy because...uhm...it's all, novelwise, I seem to really be inthe mood for the last couple months. Due to yesterday's infusion, I have...a wide selection. The first 4 are continuations of series I'm already reading. The others, as far as I know, are the first books of their series. If I am wrong, I feel I should be told.

[Poll #1126501]

And, since I am in the mood, fantasy vids.

This one cracks me up because of the song choice(yet, I can't 100% say it's inappropriate)

And, because nothing says "love" like an abducted, injured woman...

Now, here's something I don't get in fiction(spawned by various posts and discussions the last month or so, as well as yesterday's adventure): Falling in love with your kidnapper stories.

I mean, seriously. Why on earth would a person fall for someone who abducted them and held them against their will, typically with imprisonment and/or being bound at some point?

There are times I can get past it. Fantasy, for example, can often get me to smile and nod and get past it, though even then thats the exception. Typically it involves a case of abduction but not captivity, either because of a vase of mistaken identity, and/or things quickly happening(such as a mutual enemy or the abductee freeing her/himself) and most of those cases involve a preexisting relationship or some sort that keeps the people in question from knowing each other purely in the context of abductor/abductee.

There's also Stardust, of course, though I hesitate to include it(but feel I should.) There, it's more a case of a stupid boy doing a stupid thing and needing to grow up(and doing so) and the girl going "ok, am ditching the stupid boy first chance I get" and then doing so, and then not giving him a chance until he's proven himself in another context, at which point, it's "ok, the stupid boy has his uses and isn't so bad...just stupid" and eventually "ok, he's a stupid boy but he grew a brain and he's my stupid boy anyway, so I'll keep him."

But mostly, though, these stories are women(and sometimes men) falling for a person who abducts them and holds them prisoner, and falling for the person in that context.

I'd like to handwave it as a certain subset of romance novels, but it seems to be in most genres of any medium, and has a huge following. It also seems to be really, really popular in fanfic.

Anyone have any opinions on this one(and, seriously, it is something I've always wanted to understand why it's popular)?

Here we get the backstory of Hwaran, the rival shaman who claims that Sunbi’s grandmother’s artifacts belong to her. Honestly…I don’t care for Hwaran or find her interesting at all. On the one hand, she seems to have the same sense of isolation and introversion that Sunbi has, not to mention the lack of social skills, but with Sunbi, it comes across as frankness and the inability to dissemble. With Hwaran, it seems to be more of a superiority complex. If she sticks around(which seems to be unlikely) the contrast could be interesting-Sunbi was raised traditionally and now has to adjust to the modern world, Hwaran seems to have been raised to be modern and normal, but was called down a traditional path-but I’m not sure.

Mostly, Hwaran serves as a final straw to finally cause Sunbi to leave her family (and let her kick a little spiritual ass) and strike out on her own…which means we now get street gangs.Most of the volume focuses on Sunbi and Jonghan, a former runaway who takes in runaways and helps them find jobs. He seems to be a do-gooder, but has his own secrets, including the ghost of his sister, who he left with their abusive father, even after his sister asked him to take her with him. His story was good, but I mostly wished the regular supporting cast hadn’t been reduced to a few pages each. I am, though, extremely fond of the scene where Jonghan’s girlfriend tells Sunbi that she’ll kill her if Sunbi goes after Jonghon, and Sinbi straightup asks her how she’ll do it without batting an eye. Not that the girlfriend ever had a chance of taking Sunbi.

Meanwhile, Sunbi forgot to take Gwangsoo’s ring with her when she ran away, resulting in much over the top fretting in our resident dokebi. It wasn’t really helped any by a handsome young man-who likes to randomly work out shirtless in the living room, for some reason-moving in with Sunbi’s family and introducing himself to Gwangsoo as Sunbi’s fiance.

Out of boredom, I have looked at Amazon reviews for the book I read. Here is the lone, sane reviewer:

SAVAGE HONOR is the tale of Shawndee, a girl forced to dress as a boy so as not to tempt the drunks that frequent her mother's saloon. Shadow Hawk, a Seneca chief, is appalled by his fellow warriors, who go to the saloon most every night to get 'firewater.' He wants to run Shawndee and her mother out of town, as do the rest of the town's 'respectable' citizens. Shadow Hawk thinks that if he kidnaps Shawndee, or 'Andrew' as she is called, he will run the old woman out of town.

Or something like that. I didn't get past the first few chapters because the writing is atrocious. The dialogue is unbelievable. They all talk with an excessive amount of ellipses that are supposed to convey hesitant speech, but are just annoying. Shawndee and Shadow Hawk fall in love almost instantly. It is as if Ms. Edwards is just feeding the reader the story instead of letting it flow on its own. I tried another of her books, SAVAGE DESTINY, and again I couldn't get past the first chapter it was so bad. I don't see how this book could have gotten the reviews it did. I might try Ms. Edwards one more time, though not another Savage Etc. book, but only once more and only because I like the whole Native American/white romance sub-genre. Please, don't waste your money on this one.

Note: The reviewer went into more detail about the alcoholism being a problem than Edwards did.

( the painful stuff is here )

Hero and Heroine when Hero tries to win a sparring match:

"A Lady and a gentleman may not know each other unless they have been properly introduced," she said coolly. "If they do not know each other, they cannot have met. Since we were properly introduced only a moment ago, we cannot have met previously."

"What a madly contorted logic that is," he said.

"It is a rule of behavior," she said. "It needn't be logical. There may even be a rule that rules of behavior must be illogical."

Hero, internally, when he catches himself acting like a romance novel hero:

It was a sure way to find himself (a) standing at the altar hearing the marriage service or (b) at the wrong end of a horsewhip, or (c) facing a pistol at twenty paces.

Fights to the death over females were common enough and all very well among the birds and beasts. Among reasoning beings, however, such behavior was absurd. Especially when the last thing a reasoning being wanted was to offend her father.

ETA(will just keep adding to this):

( more under here, because this stuff is Shakespeare after the Cassie Edwards adventure )