Some more books
Nov. 26th, 2009 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrRasl 1: The Drift by Jeff Smith
I was expecting Bone and got something rather more Frank Miller-ish. Frank Miller on a not-too-bad day mind you. Very sparse science fiction, I'm not sure I can describe it much without giving away the plot of the whole volume!
Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase So, this book was pretty racist and I really liked it anyway. It's about an Egyptologist woman solving the mystery of her brother's disappearance with the help of a good natured aristocratic layabout. It wallows in old fashioned stereotypes of Egyptians as dusky mysterious simplistic uncivilized types who by turns resent the European invaders and rely on their "advanced" knowledge/leadership. On the plus side the Egyptian characters, while stereotyped, are drawn with affection, and the really unsympathetic characters are all greedy plundering Europeans. And I found the romance really engaging and and fun.
"Almost a gentleman" by Pam Rosenthal:
I have very mixed feelings. She was obviously trying to tell the story she actually wanted to tell rather than just some generic romance, and poked at a lot of interesting things to do with gender, sexuality, and class, but for me at least wasn't entirely successful.
The heroine has become bitter as a result of a terrible marriage ending in the death of her husband and child. So she reinvents herself as a man, becoming a hugely successful dandy. Cue the hero falling for her and questioning his sexuality, and various misunderstandings and misadventures until the inevitable Happy Ending.
My main worry was that she'd be Healed By His Love and Become a Real Woman Again and that is pretty much what happened, though he does learn to be less narrow minded and patriarchal and let her be herself (and he was pretty open minded and decent to start with). Also while the author makes nods towards alternative sexualities and lifestyles it's a bit "..not that there's anything wrong with that." For some reason the sex scenes skeeved me out, I think it was the mishmash of somewhat clinical explicitness with flowery metaphors about centaurs.
I was expecting Bone and got something rather more Frank Miller-ish. Frank Miller on a not-too-bad day mind you. Very sparse science fiction, I'm not sure I can describe it much without giving away the plot of the whole volume!
Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase So, this book was pretty racist and I really liked it anyway. It's about an Egyptologist woman solving the mystery of her brother's disappearance with the help of a good natured aristocratic layabout. It wallows in old fashioned stereotypes of Egyptians as dusky mysterious simplistic uncivilized types who by turns resent the European invaders and rely on their "advanced" knowledge/leadership. On the plus side the Egyptian characters, while stereotyped, are drawn with affection, and the really unsympathetic characters are all greedy plundering Europeans. And I found the romance really engaging and and fun.
"Almost a gentleman" by Pam Rosenthal:
I have very mixed feelings. She was obviously trying to tell the story she actually wanted to tell rather than just some generic romance, and poked at a lot of interesting things to do with gender, sexuality, and class, but for me at least wasn't entirely successful.
The heroine has become bitter as a result of a terrible marriage ending in the death of her husband and child. So she reinvents herself as a man, becoming a hugely successful dandy. Cue the hero falling for her and questioning his sexuality, and various misunderstandings and misadventures until the inevitable Happy Ending.
My main worry was that she'd be Healed By His Love and Become a Real Woman Again and that is pretty much what happened, though he does learn to be less narrow minded and patriarchal and let her be herself (and he was pretty open minded and decent to start with). Also while the author makes nods towards alternative sexualities and lifestyles it's a bit "..not that there's anything wrong with that." For some reason the sex scenes skeeved me out, I think it was the mishmash of somewhat clinical explicitness with flowery metaphors about centaurs.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-26 06:31 am (UTC)That's a shame, 'cause done right it sounds like it could have been a truly awesome book.
Your description of Mr Impossible makes me want to track down a copy, or would, if not for the fact that I have a !massive! to-be-read pile already. (Also, the cover trips my 'Ew-formulaic-romance-tripe!' filter, which is odd, given that you've already pointed out it's better than that, and besides, I like tripe.) ;9
no subject
Date: 2009-11-26 06:58 am (UTC)They're both in the library system should you ever get to the end of the pile :)
Romance novel covers are terrible, I don't know who they're designed to appeal to but it's not me.