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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.