Review: The Chaperone

Title: The Chaperone
Author: Ethel Gordon
Publisher: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
Original Date of Copyright: 1973
Genre/Sub-genre: Gothic Romance
Part of a Series? No

I was impressed by the quality of the writing in this book, and by the fact that the author made the heroine self-possessed and not entirely wholesome. For an example of both the writing and the heroine's character, here is the first paragraph of the novel:

I received Miss Millicent Waldron's letter on the last day of school. It was the day of the annual farewell party for the faculty of the Burns Junior College for Women, and the Burns sisters who owned and headed the school had acceded to the times at last and allowed gin to be served. I'd had two martinis, but by the time I reached my apartment the elation of the alcohol was evaporating, my head was pounding, and my spirits were unaccountably low. (5)

However, in the end I was disappointed by the romance, which was flat, passionless and not described in a satisfying way. The hero, while dark and brooding, was not as attractive a figure as I had hoped, being too realistically flawed, as the hapless owner of a crumbling hotel, having gambled away his and his brother's money. The expression of sensuality was also entirely lacking.

Review: The Vampire Shrink

Title: The Vampire Shrink
Author: Lynda Hilburn
Publisher: Medallion Press
Original Date of Copyright: 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Paranormal/Horror Romance
Part of a Series? I think so...there is a second book coming out which also features Kismet Knight as the heroine

This novel was okay, and I really like the premise of a psychologist who encounters vampires, but overall I thought the horror possibilities of this book were not sufficiently developed, and that both the psychology and the vampirism in this book were used as mere plot devices instead of becoming the meaningful explorations they could have been.

The heroine is way too narrow-minded to effectively practice psychology (two examples: she bashes psychics and thinks it's impossible to be sexually attracted to more than one man at a time), and she uses cliched psychological terms like "inner child" more than once in the novel. The hero is well-adjusted and nice instead of brooding and dangerous like I was hoping. The romance was developed too quickly so there was little of that satisfying tension I so love. Beyond all this, however, there was a light-hearted tone to the book that I found disappointing and at times almost offensive.

Certainly The Vampire Shrink discusses dark topics, but the first-person narrative of the heroine is plucky and discordantly chipper considering the things she goes through -- being attacked, harassed in gruesome ways, torn between two men, etc. I just didn't get the dark torture vibe I hoped for, and sometimes the lightness gets almost offensive. For example:

"Playtime's over. Let's go back upstairs."
The woman on the floor had stopped screaming and was clearly dead.
The crowd actually applauded.
Vampires suck. In more ways that one. (365-66)

A woman just died. I know it's fantasy, but is that really an appropriate or plausible response? I know people laugh at funerals and things like that, but this degree of flippancy just seemed stupid to me.

Think of the psychological complexity and darkness of the Thomas Harris novels (e.g. Silence of the Lambs) combined with the best of the paranormal romances (those by J.R. Ward perhaps) or even Anne Rice's novels -- that's what this book could have been, with an idea this exciting. I don't understand why someone would want to write a totally conventional romance novel that just happens to have vampires in it and completely ignore all the amazing emotional/psychological dimensions that the vampire myth can add to a romance. One thing that Anne Rice does brilliantly is bring religious and psychological issues such as guilt, damnation, loneliness, etc. to vampirism, and these really make the myth rich and meaningful. I feel vampires are misused in this book, especially since it uses the field/practice of psychology to distinguish itself. Vampires have so much more to offer than is available in The Vampire Shrink.

Let's Talk Romance: New Top Five

I haven't been reviewing lately -- I've read at least ten books since the last review, but it seems like so much work to actually take notes and prepare a review, etc., etc. Plus, I know no one actually reads this, and I tend to have problems responding to self-motivation. Anyway, until I manage to scrape up another review or brilliant insight into romance fiction as it stands today, I decided to pick five new romance songs to replace the old five. Here we go:

1. Foreigner - Cold as Ice
No one does angst like Foreigner. Think "I Want to Know What Love Is."

I've seen it before
it happens all the time
you're closing the door,
you leave the world behind
you're digging for gold,
you're throwing away
a fortune in feelings,
but someday you'll pay

you're as cold as ice

2. Pink - You Make Me Sick

You make me sick
I want you and I'm hating it

3. NIN - Perfect Drug
This has long been one of my favourites.

You make me hard
When I'm all soft inside
I see the truth
When I'm all stupid-eyed
The arrow goes straight through my heart
Without you everything just falls apart

4. Nickelback - Saving Me
I ain't got no love for Nickelback, but I do like this song

These city walls ain't got no love for me
I'm on the ledge of the eighteenth story
And oh, I scream for you

Come please I'm calling
And all I need from you
Hurry, I'm falling, I'm falling...

5. Bif Naked - Lucky

How can I ever get over you,
When I'd give my life for yours?

I think my list is a bit moodier than last time. Angst is always on my mind, though I think the level of darkness required to satisfy me fluctuates. For example, I could have put NIN's "Closer" instead of "Perfect Drug" -- "Closer" is a much more dark and raw song. Maybe next list.

Review: Lover Unbound

Title: Lover Unbound
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet
Original Date of Publication: 2007 (released yesterday)
Genre/Sub-genre: Paranormal Romance
Part of a Series? Yes, it is A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

It is an unfortunate fact that I can't ever seem to put J.R. Ward's novels down until they are entirely finished, so I missed all four of my classes today polishing this one off. Next time, I'm going to have to try to save it for the weekend.

Lover Unbound isn't as good as the other novels in the series. It resolves the homoerotic elements in the last novel that I loved so much in a way I find kind of offensive (V just hadn't met the right woman), and the language style has become more valley girl than badass gangsta (e.g., "so" is used constantly, as in "I am so all over that"). It also just seemed...generic in relation to the others. They're beginning to all be very similar, and even with the few new characters that were introduced in this novel, the circle seems uniform and a little ho-hum. I hope in the next novel she spices it up by adding something different to the plot.

However, despite these disappointing features, I loved Lover Unbound. I like how she's complicated the sexual history of the Brothers, so that they have issues to work through -- somehow it makes them seem sexier than if they were totally confident studs. I also really loved the ending of this novel -- it was a twist that I wasn't expecting but that fit perfectly. And as with the other novels in the series, I finished this one anticipating the next few -- I'm especially eager for John's novel, now.

Review: Moongazer

Title: Moongazer
Author: Marianne Mancusi
Publisher: Love Spell/Shomi
Original Date of Publication: 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Action/Sci-fi romance
Part of a Series? God, I hope not

Moongazer is flat and dull and a painfully blatant rip-off of The Matrix. That isn't all I could say about this novel, but it's really all I want to say. It's not even that I feel angry or particularly disappointed about it -- I simply feel so indifferent to it that I can barely muster the energy to review it properly. Still, I'll give it a shot.

I was really excited about the possibilities of this novel -- the post-apocalyptic world! The dark angst-ridden love interest! The manga-esque cover! I was really hoping it would turn out to be like a grown-up version of L.J. Smith's The Chosen and/or Huntress with some cyberpunk thrown in.

However, the post-apocalyptic world turned out to be embarrassingly stereotypical and flat -- the mutated working class living sadly underground, their extra arms waving helplessly, as the evvvvvvil upper class takes advantage of them from their glitzy upper (but still underground) world. Earth as it once was is laid as virtual reality over the destroyed world, people tricked into the program by the upper class, eventually unaware of the real conditions of existence (sound familiar, Matrix viewers?). The revolutionary ideas would have been very interesting if only they had truly been examined, instead of used as a shallow plot device. The characters are cardboard cut-outs ("selfless revolutionary", "lower-class victim", "evil upper-class person"); even Skye, who has the benefit of essentially playing the role of two different people for most of the novel, and who is supposedly struggling to confront her two different sides, is a clear character type (the "real" person). Dawn, the hero, is sensitive, shy, and apparently stupid, rehashing the same issues over and over again (namely, "you're just a shell of the woman I once loved!"), and he doesn't even bother to use new dialogue when he does it. As for the eroticism in Moongazer, I will only say that this is the first book that I have EVER laid down in the middle of a sex scene (I went to sleep).

I think I could go on, but I don't feel like it. To quote Dawn, this book is an "empty shell" of what it could have been.

Review: Arrow to the Heart

Title: Arrow to the Heart
Author: Jennifer Blake
Publisher: Fawcett Columbine/Ballantine
Original Date of Publication: 1993
Genre/Sub-genre: Historical Romance
Part of a Series? No

I didn't enjoy Arrow to the Heart as much as the other historical romances I've read by Jennifer Blake. I've though hard about why that might be, and I've come to the conclusion that the power structure customary in Blake's novels is out of balance in this novel. Usually, the heroine is initially dominated by the man (i.e. kidnapped, held captive, forced into marriage) and a major joy of reading is taking in the situation, in which superficially the hero holds all the cards, all the while knowing the heroine, unbeknownst to herself, has completely mentally and emotionally dominated the hero. It's important that she not know, since (I believe) her power is greater than the hero's because it gives her the ability to control the hero's power, and the balance is equal only if she wields it unconsciously. Also, there wouldn't really be a plot otherwise.

However, in Arrow to the Heart, the hero and heroine are thrust into a situation by an external force and are equal in situational power, which immediately diminishes the hero's power. Also, the hero and heroine are more open and communicative than normal in Blake's historicals, which further upsets the power balance and makes the plot a bit more far-fetched, since the closer the heroine is to realizing the hero loves her, the more desperate the events keeping them apart appear. Basically, the delicious balance of the male dominating the physical while the female dominates the mental/emotional is off.

It's still a good book, and the ending is as satisfying as any other Blake historical. I wonder-- Blake returned to historical romances with Arrow to the Heart after writing a string of contemporaries-- can the difference in her typical power structure be attributed to the influence of more contemporary, "modern" expectations?

Review: A Walk in the Wood

Title: A Walk in the Wood
Author: Anna Gilbert
Publisher: Dell
Original Date of Publication: 1989
Genre/Sub-genre: Gothic/ romantic suspense
Part of a Series? Not that I know of

This was a really, really good book. Publisher's Weekly called it "Uncommonly meaningful romantic suspense", and once I got over being offended on behalf of the romance genre, I realized that it may actually be a good way of describing this book. I really enjoyed the twists and turns in the plot, and the overall depth of the work -- the ending, while satisfying and whole, does not tie up every loose end, leaving some things realistically ambiguous. It is very well written; a lot of lines made me stop and admire Gilbert's power of description. The heroine is a great female character -- rational, intelligent, and strong-willed. The ending, while probably predictable for some, took me completely by surprise. I didn't devour the book in one sitting like I usually do with my favourites, but my interest remained constant enough that even though I paused I did finish it, which is not generally the case for me (usually it's all or nothing). I would recommend this book to anyone who wants good writing and good romance combined, and who doesn't mind sacrificing the sex scenes to get it.