Of Swords and Parasols

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.

I have been fed.  I have chocolate.  I have checked the f-list and noted the shameless linking.

I will now "read" the second half.

Post to be updated until I finish. 



 

A few things before I begin:

1.  These things don't deserve my "books" tag.

2.  Lets get something straight before I get started and everyone starts "all romance novels suck" and "there's no such thing as a good romance novel" and "all that matters is the sex scenes in these things anyway":  romance novels are like any other genre, regardless of medium.  There are good books, there are bad books, there are books that are just fun, there are books that should have never been written, and there's everything in between.  Edwards is of the next to last category.  Like every piece of fiction, it's the individual product, not the genre, that determines if it's good or bad.

3.  I will not be closely reading these.  I will be looking for amazingly bad things, and things that seem plagiarized.  If it's something Smart Bitches, Trashy Books already covered, I'll just mention that I saw it.  If not, I'll quote it and anyone who wants can use their googlefu to investigate.

I will update this post until I can't stomach anymore in one sitting, then start a new one when I start up again.

I will now get a glass of milk and something with hot gooey chocolate to ease the pain and begin. 


Note:  I shall now refer to the leads as Mighty Wang and Busty Boy-Girl(Busty BG for short.) 

 
 
Ok, enough for now.  Time to fix me some food.

Both of the Cassie Edwards books that I have have already been gone through by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  Honestly, guys, I doubt I'll find things they didn't.  They went over both pretty thoroughly in this document.  One of them, though, is apparently the book where she not only copies the author's note from somewhere else, but also where she uses The Song of Hiawatha.

For those not familiar with what I'm referring to: Cassie Edwards is a romance author who writes rather bad Native American romances with titles like Savage Longings, Savage Beloved, Savage Moon and Savage Dream.  I am not ashamed to admit I read a few in high school.  The reason I am not ashamed to admit it is because they're one of the main things that got me to realize that popular and good were not synonymous, and that thinking a book others loved was bad was a problem with the book, not with me.  Because of her, bad native american romances are my limit.*  Well, that and things like rape, alpha male pressuring the doormat into submission, abuse and other squick and annoyance factors.  Oh, and boredom.  You can be great or awful and not hit hot buttons and I'll read, but the second you start to bore, we're done.

Anyway, recently, one of the lovely ladies at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books recently sat down with some of her books with a friend, who reading them, noticed that some of the passages didn't fit with the rest of the prose.  With a few minutes in google, they discovered that they were directly lifted and minimally paraphrased from various sources without credit.  According to crumpeteer, apparently she even plagiarized one of her author's notes.

Here is the introductory post.

Here is a document with comparisons between the original texts and Edwards's books.

Here is a link to an article containing Edwards's response, which includes this gem: [Edwards] acknowledged that she sometimes “takes” her material “from reference books,” but added that she didn’t know she was supposed to credit her sources. 

Here is a letter posted to myspace, allegedly by Edwards.  I'm fond of this part: The sad thing is that I am writing these books now in a way to honor our Native Americans, past, present and in the future. And I am honoring my great grandmother who was a full blood Cheyenne. She would be so proud of me if she could read what I am writing about the Indians who have been so maligned for so long. And do you know? I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history. I am trying to spread the word about them and what do I get? Spiteful women who have found a way to bring attention to themselves, by getting in the media in this horrible way. 

There are several other articles at the site, and I think they're adding as more come out.

ETA:  I forgot to mention:  the best part of the plagiarism is that the copied texts are used as DIALOGUE.  Yes, academic and research texts are, word for word, used as dialogue.  No wonder the dialogue was awful.  Also, interesting links in comments.  Scroll down to  estara's comments.

*That and vampires who sparkle in the sun and willingly attend highschool over and over.  I'm sorry, I tried to give Twilight a chance and at least read the first chapter in Hastings, but I just couldn't.