With a title like that, how could this not be a blog-worthy romance novel? The Bride and the Brute, as implied in the title, is a historical romance set at the end of the 14th century. The 14th century. Remember that.
The plot of this romance novel is fairly basic: two people are forced into marriage without consent and then fall in love. What's ridiculous about it is everything else. First, the names. Our leading lady's name is Jayce. J-A-Y-C-E. You know, that classic 14th-century name. Our hero is Reese, another anachronistically-named personage. This continues with the rest of the characters: Reese's sister is named Nicole, his brother Morse. One of his vassals is a Dylan. I don't really understand what this author was thinking with those names, but I don't think she does either. You really can't go wrong with Elizabeth and George; there's no need to make names up. The only explanation I can think of is that it was originally written as a modern-day novel that was then transposed into a historical one. Or that it's self-published. Or both.
Let's get to the plot, shall we? We begin at Jayce and Reese's wedding. She's terrified of him (fairly typical reaction to getting married in the 14th century, I imagine), and he's pissed at her. Why? It turns out he was forced into this marriage by her father, who kidnapped his sister Nicole and threatened to kill her if Reese didn't marry Jayce. Despite the fact that Jayce is the sole heiress of her father's fortune, making her husband the sole heir of her father's fortune, and the fact that she is very beautiful, he's completely not interested in marrying her. Why? He only wants to marry for love. You know, that typical 14th-century mindset.
Anyway, then Reese takes Jayce upstairs, lays her on the bed, cuts his arm, drips blood on the sheets, and takes it down to show her father that he's consummated the marriage. Which, I should point out, is a LEGAL OBLIGATION. There are consequences for not consummating. So, you know, good.
Jayce is sad and confused and alone. Then it starts thunderstorming. God, could it get any worse? As it turns out, yes. Jayce is mortally afraid of thunderstorms because her mother died during one. Ah, yes, that is how many people develop phobias, isn't it? Anyway, without her father there to comfort her, she has a breakdown, gets tangled up in the curtains, and passes out from sheer terror. Again, as often happens. Reese finds her later and puts her to bed, and he's so sweet that you just know they're going to get together. I mean, besides the fact that they're the two main characters of a romance novel so, you know, duh.
The next morning, Morse (Reese's younger brother, remember) appears and starts threatening Jayce. He accuses her of manipulating Reese into marriage by kidnapping his sister. She insists that she's innocent, trying to hint at Reese that he needs to defend her, which he persistently refuses to do. Asshole. Dylan, the cute little vassal who is apparently like, twelve, challenges Morse to a battle for Jayce's honor. Aw, how sweet. Except she freaks out because he's too little and will get pwned. So she hunts Reese down and yells at him for not defending her. He says it's her fault if Dylan dies for being involved in an evil plot, while she insists he should defend her honor himself. That's when we get the big reveal that Morse is Reese's brother, but I already told you that and ruined the surprise. Sorry.
Anyway, Reese refuses to fight, Dylan refuses to back down from a fight, and therefore Dylan is going to die. Pobre Jayce is completely torn up about this, but everything is all better when surprise!Reese appears at the battle and jousts with Morse. They both get unhorsed, and it looks like Morse is going to kill Reese, but Jayce runs between them. She agrees to all Morse's charges (even though they're totally false), and he's about to behead her when Reese jumps up and starts fighting him. Reese wins, and you'd think he and Jayce would have a moment, but instead Reese is mad at Jayce for making him fight his brother. And for everything being her fault, which he still believes. So he sends her back to her father.
Jayce is depressed and ashamed, so she hops on a horse and leaves. But then! A letter appears, informing Reese that Jayce's father has died. He immediately sends his men after her, and when she comes back she's very upset. She didn't even know her father was sick! He hid it so well!
Since this is a romance novel, Jayce gets over her father's death really quickly. Since she can't spend time bonding with Reese, and everyone else hates her (okay, except Dylan, who has a crush on her, and Nicole, who is inexplicably nice to someone whose father kidnapped her and threatened to kill her), she starts wandering around and discovers the SCARIEST HORSE OF ALL TIME. He's gigantic, mean, and generally evil. I mean, seriously, his name is SATAN, and he's about to be put down because they can't tame him. But they're both alone, so they start bonding.
Reese does not like this at all. He's convinced Satan is going to kill Jayce. She, however, insists they're besties and tells Reese he should bond with the horse too. Aw, how cute. They're bonding.
Anyway, Jayce and Reese are totally in love by now, but neither of them knows it. Just when it seems like they're going to be together forever, Morse strikes again! He shows Jayce the letter that Reese wrote (before the wedding) asking for an annulment. He leaves the parenthetical information out, of course. Jayce realizes that she and Reese will never work out and decides to leave. She runs outside, only to discover that it's thunderstorming (wow, this is a clusterfuck for poor old Jayce). She grabs Satan and rides away, without a real plan.
Reese, meanwhile, is running around the castle looking for Jayce, because he wants to sleep with her for realsies. Instead, he finds Morse, who is über proud of himself for getting rid of that stupid bitch. Reese freaks out and runs off to look for Jayce, and Nicole pops in and yells at Morse. Morse's excuse is that he had no idea Reese actually loved Jayce. Plus, there was all that stuff about her father kidnapping Nicole and threatening to kill her if Jayce and Reese didn't get married. "Oh," Nicole says, "about that..."
As it so happens, Nicole wasn't exactly kidnapped. She and Jayce's father met at a tournament, where she saw Jayce and decided she'd be a good match for Reese and Jayce's father saw Reese and decided he'd be a perfect husband for Jayce. Which is pretty important, since he now knows that he has a terminal illness and still won't be able to take care of her. So they plot out this whole thing to get the two of them together. "Reese is going to kill you," Morse tells her, but he doesn't, because this whole little plotline is completely forgotten.
Out in the thunderstorm, Jayce is having a panic attack. She parks her horse under a tree and sits on the ground sobbing because her life is so terrible and also it's thunderstorming. That's how Reese finds her. They overcome their confusion, confess their love, and have sex. Under a tree. In a thunderstorm. I mean, presumably they survive, but the novel does just kind of end there, so it's possible they died. Darwin Award for these two!
Aside from all the ridiculousness, this novel was annoying because the actual story was only 38% of the content. The rest of it, a solid 62%, was previews for the author's other books. WHAT. Seriously, who does that? It's okay if the last 10-15% is previews, because hey, you need to sell other books too, but more than half the book? Ridicule.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
LORD OF MY DREAMS
That capitalization is not accidental. That's actually how the book is listed on Amazon. As it would indicate, this novel is self-published. In case the title isn't enough to convince you, let's examine the plot.
We start out in a hell dimension, where Demeana (get it, because she demeans men?) is tormenting men as part of her job. She works for Femilla, goddess of womanhood, to punish men for doing wrong by women in their lifetimes. That's...empowering, I guess. The men get tortured for one hundred years, then they get one month on Earth to redeem themselves. If they don't, they spend another century in torment, unless they give themselves over to their demon torturers, who get to eat their souls. So there's some incentive for poor Demeana here.
Demeana is super-pumped to eat the soul of her favorite victim. His name is Andrew, and she's been tormenting him for all of 500 years. He's bound to give in soon! But alas! Femilla appears and tells her it's time for Andrew to go to Earth and find true love in a single month. Demeana's kind of pissed, but she heals up his more recent wounds and sends him along anyway.
Now we go to Australia, where Caitlin and her best friend whose name eludes me are driving out to her parents' house to spend the weekend. We get some backstory on Caitlin: she's recently single, broken up with her abusive boyfriend who's in jail for raping a teenager. Cute. Naturally, she's completely put off men. Her friend is getting married soon, which is just making Caitlin depressed. All she wants is true love! Will she ever find it? (SPOILERS: yes. Well, depending on your opinion. If you ask me, most romance novel love isn't actually true love)
Suddenly, Caitlin and Friend encounter a naked man on the road! He's, um, naked, and it's really cold out, so that's no good, and also he has all these cuts and bruises and scars, so they assume he must have been set upon by robbers (because highwaymen are, apparently, still a real danger in Australia). Being kind souls, they decide to take him back to the house with them, even though he's clearly deranged, ranting about Demeana and hell dimensions.
Andrew is confused. He doesn't understand technology or women in pants. Keep in mind it's been 100 years. He decides not to get distracted by technology like he usually does and spend his month wooing a lady. We also learn that apparently he spends a lot of his brief time on Earth sleeping with random women, which does not bode well for him (and which, we discover later, is completely out of character, presumably because the author changed her mind midway through writing this and never went back and fixed it. Which is why self-publishing is dangerous).
That night, chez Friend's parents, Caitlin has a horrible dream! She's stuck back in medieval England, about to be married to some lord. Her name here is Catherine (which is technically the same name as Caitlin, except Caitlin is Irish), and she looks exactly the same as she does now. Except them she goes into all the differences: Catherine is about twelve years younger, more blond, less freckly, skinnier...you begin to wonder if they actually look alike at all. Then she meets her husband-to-be and HOLY SHIT it looks just like Andrew, the mysterious man they rescued! WHAAAAT IS HAPPENING????
Caitlin's dream fast-forwards to Andrew and Catherine's wedding night, where Andrew has sex with Catherine without, shall we say, "preparing" her. Caitlin is horrified and decides that Andrew is a rapist, which pissed me off to no end. I'm not going to go into my opinion of rape in a medieval setting, because I think it's something of a gray area, but I will say this: when a man has sex with a woman without, ahem, "preparing" her first, IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR BOTH PARTIES. It's fairly clear that Andrew just has NO FUCKING CLUE how to have sex. You'd think, as a modern woman, Caitlin would figure that out, but since she's a romance novel heroine and there needs to be conflict, she's too stupid. Ugh. It made me really, really mad.
Anyway, when Caitlin wakes up she thinks, "Man, that was pretty fucking weird" and moves on with her life. We learn she's descended from Englishmen (this is important and will come up later when we talk about time loops and why you shouldn't fuck with them) and I don't know, there's probably some more angsting. Caitlin isn't really that interesting.
We also learn that the person behind these strange dreams is Demeana, who is so determined to eat Andrew's soul that she'll do anything to convince Caitlin not to fall in love with him. Which does make you wonder why she's a threat, when no one from Andrew's previous Earth-times is. Perhaps there never really was anyone? But then why would Demeana assume Caitlin is someone? Can anyone see these memories, or only Caitlin, because of her heritage? NEVER EXPLAINED.
Back in Catherine world, she's making nice with the servants. One of them, a wise old lady (you really can't have a wise character unless s/he's also old), tells Catherine Andrew's terrible life story. His father loved his mother very much, but she died giving birth to him. He locked his only son and heir away in a forgotten wing of his castle (common practice in medieval times, when having sons and heirs was basically the only goal in life, besides accumulating money, power, and land) and remarried. It isn't until he has another son (Steven, I want to say?) with his new wife that Andrew is discovered at all. By now, he's ten years old. Yes, somehow they kept a child quiet enough for ten years that no one discovered him. But now that he's been discovered, his father is required to keep him as his heir, even though he hates him for looking like his mother.
Catherine, of course, is mortified by this story. She decides she's going to make an effort to make Andrew happy, even though he's bad at sex (though being a.) a lady in a medieval society and b.) a virgin, I don't really know what her point of comparison is).
Enter Steven. Steven may not be his name, but it is now. Steven is handsome and charming, unlike Andrew (who, though way handsomer than any other man ever, is too surly to be charming), and he's very nice to Catherine. Until he comes onto her and refuses to leave her alone when she asks him to. Naturally, misunderstanding happens and Andrew assumes Catherine and Steven are a thing. She somehow manages to convince him otherwise, and they fall in love, learn how to have sex, and are well on their way to a happily ever after. Caitlin, dreaming all this, realizes she quite likes Andrew as a human being, and they fall in love and have sex. It seems like everything's going to work out. Andrew will be freed from the clutches of Demeana, and the two of them will live happily ever after. But then, Steven!
Steven is evil, and he doesn't take no for an answer. So he comes after Catherine, attempts to rape her, and then challenges Andrew to a duel when he tries to defend her. On the day of the duel, Catherine jumps between the two men (don't remember why), and Steven pulls her in front of him so Andrew stabs and kills her instead of his brother. Tragedy!
Femilla and Demeana are also watching this footage with Caitlin, and they apparently have never seen it before, since when it's revealed that Andrew's killing Catherine was an accident, they're shocked and amazed. Um, isn't that something you would have liked to look into BEFORE the 500 years of torture? I mean, what kind of god of womankind are you, Femilla? So busy avenging wronged women you can't even check to see if you're right? Is this a statement by the author against militant feminism? So. Many. Questions.
Anyway, Caitlin completely forgives Andrew all his wrongdoing and decides she's in love with him instead. Then Demeana appears and frees him from his deal and then offers them a wish in return for being shitty and not doing her research. You know, like how people offer you 20% off coupons when they ruin your life with bad customer service. They decide they want to go back and live in medieval times and PUNISH STEVEN. Because, you know, there's something romantic about no toothbrushes, oppressed women, and castles with no central heat or air conditioning. I would pick it too (NOT).
Anyway, Andrew and Caitlin blink and are back in medieval England. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that while Caitlin is in a long skirt, she's still not at all appropriately dressed, and Andrew is wearing JEANS. Still, before they do anything else, they overhear Steven conspiring with highwaymen, and Andrew goes off to tell the sheriff about all this shit.
Caitlin, meanwhile, goes back to the castle, where no one notices that she is a.) more ginger, b.) twelve years older, c.) Australian, and d.) poorly dressed. The excuse for this artistic laziness is that "servants never look their lords in the face." Um. It's also never explained why the original Andrew and Catherine disappeared. Did they just stop existing? That's a shame, because they're way better than their modern-day counterparts.
Steven comes to the duel the next day, but before they can get started the sheriff comes and arrests him for consorting with highwaymen. He gets hanged, Andrew and Caitlin live happily ever after, and a few days later Caitlin's defunct cell phone (I'm willing to accept that it gets service, since said service is from a hell dimension, but it still has battery life? What kind of phone is this and where can I get one?) gets a call from Demeana, who's just letting them know that now Steven is getting tortured in a hell dimension, to Andrew and Caitlin's glee. Because if there's one thing you need in a likable character, it's a deep appreciation for the torture of other people. Even awful villains.
Okay, let's talk about a few things here. First, parallel storylines. They didn't actually annoy me as much as they could have, mostly because I liked Catherine and Andrew so much. They were cute. I really felt the chemistry. Caitlin and Modern Andrew were really annoying, and it seemed like all they wanted to do was have sex with each other (which, admittedly, is true of most romance novel couples). Second, consistent characterization. As I mentioned, at the beginning of the book we learn that Andrew is usually kind of a slut when he gets his month on Earth. So why does neither Modern Andrew (who is only interested in Caitlin) nor Past Andrew spend any time with prostitutes? Again, because the author changed her mind halfway through and didn't go back and fix it. Editing is a pain, I know, but there's really no excuse for that.
Third, time loops. Oh, my God time loops. So we know that Caitlin is descended from English people, and that she's a reincarnation of Catherine. So she must be descended from Catherine, except Catherine died before she had any children, except Caitlin replaced her...Holy fucking shit. Caitlin is descended from herself. And that's why you don't fuck with time loops.
We start out in a hell dimension, where Demeana (get it, because she demeans men?) is tormenting men as part of her job. She works for Femilla, goddess of womanhood, to punish men for doing wrong by women in their lifetimes. That's...empowering, I guess. The men get tortured for one hundred years, then they get one month on Earth to redeem themselves. If they don't, they spend another century in torment, unless they give themselves over to their demon torturers, who get to eat their souls. So there's some incentive for poor Demeana here.
Demeana is super-pumped to eat the soul of her favorite victim. His name is Andrew, and she's been tormenting him for all of 500 years. He's bound to give in soon! But alas! Femilla appears and tells her it's time for Andrew to go to Earth and find true love in a single month. Demeana's kind of pissed, but she heals up his more recent wounds and sends him along anyway.
Now we go to Australia, where Caitlin and her best friend whose name eludes me are driving out to her parents' house to spend the weekend. We get some backstory on Caitlin: she's recently single, broken up with her abusive boyfriend who's in jail for raping a teenager. Cute. Naturally, she's completely put off men. Her friend is getting married soon, which is just making Caitlin depressed. All she wants is true love! Will she ever find it? (SPOILERS: yes. Well, depending on your opinion. If you ask me, most romance novel love isn't actually true love)
Suddenly, Caitlin and Friend encounter a naked man on the road! He's, um, naked, and it's really cold out, so that's no good, and also he has all these cuts and bruises and scars, so they assume he must have been set upon by robbers (because highwaymen are, apparently, still a real danger in Australia). Being kind souls, they decide to take him back to the house with them, even though he's clearly deranged, ranting about Demeana and hell dimensions.
Andrew is confused. He doesn't understand technology or women in pants. Keep in mind it's been 100 years. He decides not to get distracted by technology like he usually does and spend his month wooing a lady. We also learn that apparently he spends a lot of his brief time on Earth sleeping with random women, which does not bode well for him (and which, we discover later, is completely out of character, presumably because the author changed her mind midway through writing this and never went back and fixed it. Which is why self-publishing is dangerous).
That night, chez Friend's parents, Caitlin has a horrible dream! She's stuck back in medieval England, about to be married to some lord. Her name here is Catherine (which is technically the same name as Caitlin, except Caitlin is Irish), and she looks exactly the same as she does now. Except them she goes into all the differences: Catherine is about twelve years younger, more blond, less freckly, skinnier...you begin to wonder if they actually look alike at all. Then she meets her husband-to-be and HOLY SHIT it looks just like Andrew, the mysterious man they rescued! WHAAAAT IS HAPPENING????
Caitlin's dream fast-forwards to Andrew and Catherine's wedding night, where Andrew has sex with Catherine without, shall we say, "preparing" her. Caitlin is horrified and decides that Andrew is a rapist, which pissed me off to no end. I'm not going to go into my opinion of rape in a medieval setting, because I think it's something of a gray area, but I will say this: when a man has sex with a woman without, ahem, "preparing" her first, IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR BOTH PARTIES. It's fairly clear that Andrew just has NO FUCKING CLUE how to have sex. You'd think, as a modern woman, Caitlin would figure that out, but since she's a romance novel heroine and there needs to be conflict, she's too stupid. Ugh. It made me really, really mad.
Anyway, when Caitlin wakes up she thinks, "Man, that was pretty fucking weird" and moves on with her life. We learn she's descended from Englishmen (this is important and will come up later when we talk about time loops and why you shouldn't fuck with them) and I don't know, there's probably some more angsting. Caitlin isn't really that interesting.
We also learn that the person behind these strange dreams is Demeana, who is so determined to eat Andrew's soul that she'll do anything to convince Caitlin not to fall in love with him. Which does make you wonder why she's a threat, when no one from Andrew's previous Earth-times is. Perhaps there never really was anyone? But then why would Demeana assume Caitlin is someone? Can anyone see these memories, or only Caitlin, because of her heritage? NEVER EXPLAINED.
Back in Catherine world, she's making nice with the servants. One of them, a wise old lady (you really can't have a wise character unless s/he's also old), tells Catherine Andrew's terrible life story. His father loved his mother very much, but she died giving birth to him. He locked his only son and heir away in a forgotten wing of his castle (common practice in medieval times, when having sons and heirs was basically the only goal in life, besides accumulating money, power, and land) and remarried. It isn't until he has another son (Steven, I want to say?) with his new wife that Andrew is discovered at all. By now, he's ten years old. Yes, somehow they kept a child quiet enough for ten years that no one discovered him. But now that he's been discovered, his father is required to keep him as his heir, even though he hates him for looking like his mother.
Catherine, of course, is mortified by this story. She decides she's going to make an effort to make Andrew happy, even though he's bad at sex (though being a.) a lady in a medieval society and b.) a virgin, I don't really know what her point of comparison is).
Enter Steven. Steven may not be his name, but it is now. Steven is handsome and charming, unlike Andrew (who, though way handsomer than any other man ever, is too surly to be charming), and he's very nice to Catherine. Until he comes onto her and refuses to leave her alone when she asks him to. Naturally, misunderstanding happens and Andrew assumes Catherine and Steven are a thing. She somehow manages to convince him otherwise, and they fall in love, learn how to have sex, and are well on their way to a happily ever after. Caitlin, dreaming all this, realizes she quite likes Andrew as a human being, and they fall in love and have sex. It seems like everything's going to work out. Andrew will be freed from the clutches of Demeana, and the two of them will live happily ever after. But then, Steven!
Steven is evil, and he doesn't take no for an answer. So he comes after Catherine, attempts to rape her, and then challenges Andrew to a duel when he tries to defend her. On the day of the duel, Catherine jumps between the two men (don't remember why), and Steven pulls her in front of him so Andrew stabs and kills her instead of his brother. Tragedy!
Femilla and Demeana are also watching this footage with Caitlin, and they apparently have never seen it before, since when it's revealed that Andrew's killing Catherine was an accident, they're shocked and amazed. Um, isn't that something you would have liked to look into BEFORE the 500 years of torture? I mean, what kind of god of womankind are you, Femilla? So busy avenging wronged women you can't even check to see if you're right? Is this a statement by the author against militant feminism? So. Many. Questions.
Anyway, Caitlin completely forgives Andrew all his wrongdoing and decides she's in love with him instead. Then Demeana appears and frees him from his deal and then offers them a wish in return for being shitty and not doing her research. You know, like how people offer you 20% off coupons when they ruin your life with bad customer service. They decide they want to go back and live in medieval times and PUNISH STEVEN. Because, you know, there's something romantic about no toothbrushes, oppressed women, and castles with no central heat or air conditioning. I would pick it too (NOT).
Anyway, Andrew and Caitlin blink and are back in medieval England. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that while Caitlin is in a long skirt, she's still not at all appropriately dressed, and Andrew is wearing JEANS. Still, before they do anything else, they overhear Steven conspiring with highwaymen, and Andrew goes off to tell the sheriff about all this shit.
Caitlin, meanwhile, goes back to the castle, where no one notices that she is a.) more ginger, b.) twelve years older, c.) Australian, and d.) poorly dressed. The excuse for this artistic laziness is that "servants never look their lords in the face." Um. It's also never explained why the original Andrew and Catherine disappeared. Did they just stop existing? That's a shame, because they're way better than their modern-day counterparts.
Steven comes to the duel the next day, but before they can get started the sheriff comes and arrests him for consorting with highwaymen. He gets hanged, Andrew and Caitlin live happily ever after, and a few days later Caitlin's defunct cell phone (I'm willing to accept that it gets service, since said service is from a hell dimension, but it still has battery life? What kind of phone is this and where can I get one?) gets a call from Demeana, who's just letting them know that now Steven is getting tortured in a hell dimension, to Andrew and Caitlin's glee. Because if there's one thing you need in a likable character, it's a deep appreciation for the torture of other people. Even awful villains.
Okay, let's talk about a few things here. First, parallel storylines. They didn't actually annoy me as much as they could have, mostly because I liked Catherine and Andrew so much. They were cute. I really felt the chemistry. Caitlin and Modern Andrew were really annoying, and it seemed like all they wanted to do was have sex with each other (which, admittedly, is true of most romance novel couples). Second, consistent characterization. As I mentioned, at the beginning of the book we learn that Andrew is usually kind of a slut when he gets his month on Earth. So why does neither Modern Andrew (who is only interested in Caitlin) nor Past Andrew spend any time with prostitutes? Again, because the author changed her mind halfway through and didn't go back and fix it. Editing is a pain, I know, but there's really no excuse for that.
Third, time loops. Oh, my God time loops. So we know that Caitlin is descended from English people, and that she's a reincarnation of Catherine. So she must be descended from Catherine, except Catherine died before she had any children, except Caitlin replaced her...Holy fucking shit. Caitlin is descended from herself. And that's why you don't fuck with time loops.
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