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 Ada, an Englishwoman who has found herself in medieval Spain after fleeing her homeland, is addicted to opium and will do almost anything to get it. She ends up at a slavery auction, blissfully addicted and completely unaware of her circumstances. Luckily for her, she’s spotted by two men: Gavriel, a former warrior and now dedicated novice, and her friend Jacob. Between them, they rescue her and take her away, but she faces a hard battle fighting her opium addiction. Can Gavriel’s dedication to her cure her of her addiction – and help him face down the trouble from his past?
I loved how this romance was different and yet still had all the essential ingredients for a wonderful romantic read. First off, the book is set in medieval Spain. There’s currently a total glut of historical romance (and regular fiction for that matter) set in England, which is all well and good, but sometimes I’m looking for something different. This fit that bill, and the author even includes a helpful note about what’s accurate and what’s different about her history at the end. I love when authors do this, it shows such dedication to their research that I really respect and admire. Her website lists the books she used to research in case readers are interested.
Secondly, I loved the characters. Gavriel himself feels familiar, as there are plenty of emotionally scarred warriors hanging around in the romance genre (I think immediately of Kev/Merripen in Seduce Me at Sunrise), but his character is done well and his journey to redemption is admirable and engaging.
It’s Ada that is different. She has severe issues with her life; opium addiction just one of the ways in which she is unusual. She’s treated her sister horribly, she’s seduced a man for her own purposes, and she’s not even willing to be rescued from the drug she’s addicted to. I started the book really wondering how the author was going to pull this off. Characters are absolutely essential to a successful romance, because really the entire book is centralized on the relationship between two people, and Ada was not a character that I liked at first. Somehow, though, I found myself really caring about Ada by the end. She recovers herself and realizes that many of her actions have been wrong, and that she can do better. Gavriel helps her on that path, but it’s really her that becomes strong and dedicated, and he’s not a necessity for it to happen.
Finally, I really loved the adventurous take that Lofty took with this one. Everyone fights and travels, so there is plenty of action mixed in with the more thoughtful and romantic scenes. It really helps to move the book along and provide a dimension which isn’t totally focused on the central romance. I always appreciate that.
Scoundrel’s Kiss has made me especially eager to read the author’s first book, What A Scoundrel Wants, which uses the Robin Hood legends and introduces Ada and her sister. This was a great read and I definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate, so if you purchase books through my links I will earn a tiny percentage of the profit at no cost to you. Thanks! I received this book for free from the author as an ebook.
 I had fully intended to participate in this weekend’s Bloggiesta, because there are definitely things that need to get done around here. I need to make sure I’ve visited everyone participating in my challenge, set up a link page for reviews, and consolidate the info on a tab, I have an opinion post I’ve been meaning to write, and I have 3 reviews that need to get done. And I’m sure there are plenty of other tasks that I could do, like fix the images from when I lost my blog awhile ago, but to be honest, Friday rolled around and I just wasn’t feeling it. My husband got into an accident on Thursday and while he’s perfectly fine, repairs are frustratingly expensive in a month where money is very tight due to his job switch. As in, we have two months to get through on about half of a month’s pay. So, it’s either cut deeply into savings we need, or go back to the credit card we just paid off. It’s so frustrating; if he could have crashed two months from now, we could have shrugged it off fairly easily, that’s how much more he’ll be making, but now we just have to get by somehow. The road wouldn’t have been icy in March anyway. Needless to say, I won’t be getting those books I mentioned in the last post until March, and my birthday on Tuesday is looking a whole lot less exciting. The fact that my job prospects are horrid to say the least has not really been helping.
So, what have I been doing besides fretting? Reading a ton of comfort reads. I’ve read a book a day so far this month, which is downright strange after I declared I wanted to read less. I went straight for the comfort reads and have been completely indulging myself, although I did start A Suitable Boy, my target challenge read for the month, and I’m enjoying it so far. 100 pages a day will get it read in a couple of weeks. It is nice to see my TBR numbers shoot down for once, especially considering I was anticipating a shoot upwards with my birthday and Christmas so close together. Since I haven’t actually received any books – I haven’t even received my Holiday Swap gift – it’s going to go down even further, although I think my parents have some books for me at home, where I’ll be in a couple of weeks.
Those comfort reads have actually got the wheels in my brain turning though. Yesterday I finished an older medieval romance, The Lily and the Leopard by Susan Wiggs, and it really had me thinking how much had changed, and how it’s pretty easy to see why others can disdain romance novels. I really didn’t like it. Too much physical activity and purposeful misunderstandings had me both failing to believe in the romance and wanting to slap the characters. Sure, there are some modern books like this, but the few I’ve read this year have proven far more worthy. It’s set right before and during the Battle of Agincourt and the author’s research is surprisingly decent, but I just have so many things to say about this. When I feel better about life, expect a post!
Anyway, apologies for the depressing nature of this post! I hope to be back to my cheerful nature sometime soon, just wanted to let everyone know what was going on. I’m planning a visit to Massachusetts in 3 weeks to see some of my college friends and I can’t wait. I haven’t seen one of them in over a year because I haven’t been home for long enough and the train is expensive, but I’ve been lucky this time and I’m heading up at a fraction of the cost, albeit only for about a day. As long as the weather doesn’t prevent it, all I have to do is suffer through the flight, since I abhor flying more than anything else, and hopefully when I return to the UK I will have an interview or two to attend. Fingers most definitely crossed.
I hope everyone else is having a much brighter start to their 2010! See you next week!
 Words cannot describe Arissa Illahi’s grief when her husband dies in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. The videotape sitting on her dresser doesn’t cease to remind her that they were due to have their baby’s first ultrasound, and she never imagined raising her child alone. Arissa also finds her husband’s unfinished novel, a project that powered her husband through his life and now must help propel Arissa through her grief.
Saffron Dreams is such a moving book. Arissa’s grief is portrayed beautifully and is extremely touching. I could almost feel how much pain she was suffering, certainly enough to hope that nothing of its like ever touches me. Married only two years and left pregnant, Arissa has to rely on her in-laws, people she didn’t really know until her husband died, but who left their own lives to help her fix her own. Her slow recognition of what matters in life is admirable and her journey constituted an emotional but worthwhile read.
Abdullah’s writing is smooth and beautiful, too:
The brush fell from my guilty hands, landing on the floor with a tired thud. I stepped back as if struck and looked at the picture in mad fixation. Staring back at me from the canvas, behind the dull last strokes that failed to hide the subject, were entwined towers engulfed in reddish blue smoke. And in the midst of the smoldering slivers was the face of a forlorn and lost child. – p. 6
So much of the book is conveyed right there. We know what Arissa is feeling and what she’s trying to tell us.
I also found the book pinpointed many important and significant issues that followed the attacks. Arissa is a Muslim, but she can’t understand why other Muslims would do such a thing, when it’s not really a part of her faith; she hates that news reporters lump them in together and ask her how she feels about being betrayed by one of her own kind; she experiences religious hatred when she wears her headscarf after the attacks and finally removes it to give her son a better chance at a normal life. She not only has to adjust to her changing life but a changing world and fit in a place for herself when she’s faced with so much discrimination. I felt that the author here built a strong and understandable character, flawed and human but someone the reader can still root for, with a journey to self-discovery that was still compelling and touching.
I really enjoyed Saffron Dreams. In its pages I found a character to care about, a story to enjoy, and issues to think about. Highly recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the author for review.
 On the West Coast of this alternate United States, vampires reign supreme, but Marius Dumont has a problem. He’s in love with Jillian Cooper and always has been, but he must marry Tatiana Asprey, a New York werewolf, in order to maintain peace between their races against the humans. He’s determined to put his love aside for politics until a deadly virus hits the vampire population, and he and Jillian must team up to discover a cause and a cure before it’s too late. Interspersed with their gripping story is the Victorian tale of Edward Vaughan and Charlotte Paxton, an uneven match that proves the basis for everything Jillian and Marius deal with in the present day.
Even though Crimson & Steam is apparently the eighth novel set in this universe, I had no trouble at all quickly picking up on the story and surprisingly falling in love with it. It will shock no one that the Victorian sections were my favorite part. When it comes to romance, generally the only kind I like is historical, and Edward and Charlotte have a very sweet story that is totally relevant to the modern day part.
What is surprising is how much I liked that modern day part. Jillian and Marius don’t really have a romance exactly; they are soul mates and Marius is capable of hearing Jillian’s thoughts and sensing her emotions no matter where she is. It’s established that they’ve had this connection for a good long while. At first, I had Jill pegged as a very weak and whiny heroine, incapable of facing the world without a man she’d come to rely on. She got stronger in the end, but ultimately I still preferred Charlotte, the Victorian heroine. Marius could have been annoying himself, given his clear love for Jillian yet insistence on marrying someone else, but I thought the political situation was well played out and I understood his motives.
I liked it all so much, I think, because there was a clever plot behind it and the focus was on that, rather than what was happening between Marius and Jillian. The side characters of Tatiana and Hayden, Jillian’s ex-boyfriend with some back story issues of his own, really livened up the story. There is just the right amount of suspense and because it doesn’t feel much like a romance novel, I wasn’t sure the happy ending was guaranteed in either of the storylines. I found I was much more engaged and interested as a result. Plus, I loved the steampunk world and reading about it in the present day and then back to its Victorian origins was a lot of fun.
Crimson & Steam was a great light read that I’d recommend to romance or urban fantasy fans. An intriguing world, a clever plotline, and a few great characters make this a very enjoyable book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the author for free as an ebook.
 In this sequel to Inda, Sherwood Smith follows her young hero through some seaside adventures as he grows up learning to fight against pirates after his exile from his childhood home. Inda’s complex plans and capers form the basis for most of the storyline, but exciting events are also afoot in Iasca Leror, Inda’s birthplace. When his brother is killed, Inda becomes the heir to Choraed Elgar, his family’s realm, and they launch a search to find him. Treachery strikes the royal court and if Inda ever goes home, he will find a completely different place than he expects.
While I really enjoyed Inda and found it was a great fantasy to lose myself in, The Fox suffered from second book syndrome. A lot happens, but it’s spread out over the 750+ pages, and as a result the book feels fairly slow even though there is actually plenty of action. Not much at all is resolved, but progress is generally made across the plotlines as the characters that were introduced as children in the first book grow up.
I will admit freely that part of the problem I had with this book is that so much of it took place on a ship. I’m one of those strange people that really prefers fantasy books in particular settings, and aboard ship has just never been one of them. The only exception to this rule so far has been Robin Hobb. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been on a ship, but I just found it really hard to continue paying attention during the sea battles, and given that 2/3 of the book takes place there, this was a problem. I always enjoyed it when the narrative returned to Inda’s family and friends on dry land in Choraed Elgar because I vastly prefer kingdom politics to piracy politics. Luckily, this one seems to indicate that more of book three will be spent on land, so my enthusiasm for the series is not as diminished as it could have been.
Regardless of my criticisms, I really enjoyed how the characters developed and I found myself caring a lot about them. I’m interested to see where the story is going and that is really what matters here. It’s still a fairly solid continuation to a promising epic fantasy saga, and I think approached in that way would be a very enjoyable read for anyone who likes that kind of book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 The Morland family has survived the Wars of the Roses to see the Tudors take the throne of England. French Paul, the great grandson of the founders of the dynasty, now runs the Morland properties, but struggles with jealousy of his half-siblings and dislike of his wife. Only his mistress in the city of York brings him happiness, but she also brings strife within his family. Meanwhile, Paul’s niece Nanette becomes a beloved maid to Anne Boleyn, witnessing first hand the conflict and drama inherent in the Tudor court.
This second volume in the Morland dynasty may mark my abrupt end of reading the series. This is just far too romanticized a version of history for me. Most historical fiction does it to some extent, but this goes a little too far. It’s like a story you would tell a small child, rather than an attempt to actually imagine history as it might have been, at least as far as I’m concerned. When Nanette has witnessed the many murders of Henry VIII, including that of her friend Anne Boleyn, and still manages to see these murders as something that just had to happen and doesn’t fault him at all for it, I just have to take exception to that. Yet the characters that don’t appear are purely villainized, like Henry’s next wife Jane Seymour, who is called something like the honey scorpion.
The author clearly attempts to have characters with multiple sides to them. Paul’s bastard son is one such, as the author makes him a love-starved boy that finally seeks vengeance on the father who never gave him what he needed. Despite that, everything just feels painted with a rosy brush. Of course Adrian would have been a good man if he’d been given love. Of course the council would never do anything evil, even though clearly the king would never do anything evil either. There is incest in here that made me distinctly uncomfortable, but no one seems to mind when an uncle marries his niece, even though the characters mention the difficulty they might have with it.
The entire series has a nice dynastic feel that I like, but overall I feel like I’m reading a fairy tale that has little to do with actual history. For that reason, I’m unsure if I’ll continue. The Dark Rose was entertaining, but I think I’d rather spend my time reading something with a historical feel instead of a rosy “oh-wasn’t-the-past-great” one.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Since he is such a socially awkward person, Will is astonished when Alice spontaneously makes her interest in him clear. She’s Will’s first girlfriend, as well as beautiful and smart. He can’t stop obsessing over her and worrying what’s going to go wrong. As always happens in such situations, his obsession begins to drive Alice away, and it’s only then that Will’s passion displays its most damaging consequences.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book and I was surprised, in a pleasant way, by what I found. This book reads partly like an example of how not to conduct a relationship. The situations are occasionally as sad as they are hilarious, but it’s impossible not to laugh. The author has taken obsessive love to an extreme which is difficult to believe in, but which provides uneasy entertainment nonetheless. We know there is something sad and wrong with these people, but at the same time they are mocking themselves.
The book alternates narration, using first person only when Will has the viewpoint perspective and third person for the other character. This gives the reader an insight into his uncomfortable and obsessive mind, since otherwise we’d have no reason as to why he behaves the way he does, but at the same time contrasts his inner thoughts with his outer appearance and behavior.
The Bird Room doesn’t flinch in describing any aspect of these relationships. A lot of the novel is obsessed with sex, as young people in new relationships generally are. One of the characters is an actress using her body to get by and to erase her previous school persona, so there really is a fair amount of graphic content. The book feels edgy, using the characters’ sexuality to portray the other happenings in their lives. Helen, always lacking confidence, feels beautiful when a man wants her enough to sleep with her. Will needs Viagra to encourage him along when his obsession with Alice takes control of his life.
A darkly comic tale about the extremes of obsession, The Bird Room manages to finish with hope and provides some very provoking thoughts to consider. This little book is worth a read for those who enjoy character studies.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a step back from blogging and focused more on my other interests. I had a fairly quiet Christmas with hubby’s mother and brother, and though I didn’t receive any books as gifts, I did receive some cash and I am deliberating over my potential acquisitions. It’s also almost my birthday, so I have more potential for bookish gifts. These days I try to only buy what I can’t get from the library as I really don’t have space for all the books I’d like to own and I’m finding that I actually don’t want to reread all that many books. So I’ve been spending time comparing lists and contemplating! My mother-in-law also gifted me with a knitting project, so I’ve been learning to knit. Although I’m not very good yet, I am excited by all the projects I can now contemplate, and it’s really not as hard as I remembered from when I was a little kid.
That, and my newly revived interest in video games (perhaps not the most worthwhile of hobbies, but I’ve been feeling low lately and it really helps), has shown me that I’ve maybe been spending a little too much time reading and blogging this year. I’ve enjoyed diversifying my activities and it’s much easier to spend time with someone doing something that isn’t sticking my nose in a book. I have no intentions to stop reading, but I think I want to read less, and to read more specific books. I mentioned some of this in my 2009 wrap-up post, but here is an outline of my goals:
- Read more classics. I love classics and I’m finding them so much easier to read these days, I think because I have 4 years of literary theory behind me. I want to get to more of the ones I own in particular.
- Read more non-fiction. I feel such a lack of learning in my life right now, and while I’m still unemployed and have the mental concentration, I should seize this opportunity to learn about other subjects, cultures, and people.
- Stick to a reading plan. I want to read 1/3 of my own books, 1/3 review copies until I can cut that number down, and 1/3 library books, so that I can diminish my TBR pile but also feel like I’m reading something new with the library and review books.
- Read one longer and/or more difficult book per month. I saw this on another blog and I love this idea. I want to read one huge chunkster or longer classic a month. I’ve had A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth sitting at me from the top of my immediate TBR pile for at least a month now. It’s my January project and I want to start it as soon as I’ve finished my current read.
- Don’t feel guilty. This is my most important goal. I don’t want to feel guilty for not reading every day, for not blogging every day, for doing something else with my time. I don’t want to beat 2009’s total of 283 books.
If I don’t achieve these goals, that’s okay too. They’re just outlines. And if all I want to do is read in my free time, that’s okay too, especially after I get a job and my time is more limited. I’ve seen a lot of similar posts to mine this week, and I wish everyone success with their 2010 goals.
 Shuya Nanahara and his junior high class of fifteen-year-olds are going on a field trip. Shuya is so optimistic that he’s even brought along alcohol. But on the bus he notices something strange; everyone is falling asleep, and that new tough kid Shogo is trying to break the window. Before he can think too much, he’s asleep, and doesn’t wake up until he’s in a strange classroom, and he and all his friends have cold metal collars around their necks. They are told that they are about to kill one another on an isolated island, and to Shuya’s horror, the seriousness of this proposition is proven when his best friend is killed before his eyes. Shuya’s worst nightmare is about to come true as he tries to protect the girl his best friend loved as his classmates set about playing the game.
I have a lot of conflicted feelings on this book. My most immediate basis for comparison is The Hunger Games. Battle Royale* is set in a dystopia based in Japan, but both essentially involve isolated kids killing each other after being given random weapons. It’s a thriller and apparently both very popular and shocking in Japan. I didn’t find it to be particularly shocking, although it did read very quickly for a 600 page book.
The problems started right at the beginning. I found the writing to be very plain. It’s readable, but there is something very juvenile about the sentence structure. I kept noticing the poor writing and it constantly threw me out of the story. Some of the characters quote poetry and song lyrics, but even these never rise above to form anything I’d consider quotable. I don’t know if this is down to the fault of the author or the translator, but I definitely felt let down. I didn’t like the narrative structure, either. The main focus is Shuya, but the viewpoint switches often. Unfortunately, after a few switches, it becomes apparent that almost every time the author introduces a new student, it means they’re going to die within a few pages. Few of the students are really interesting, but the author also tends to include a flashback from each one of them, introducing background that is generally unnecessary and boring. I get that they’re supposed to be regular kids who are forced into killing each other, the background is showing their personalities and motives, and that’s meant to be shocking, but again, I’m already familiar with the horror of this premise, and so this time it didn’t work. Three to five pages was not enough to make me care.
I also couldn’t say I liked any of the characters. They are only fifteen, but they are all in love with one another. Naturally, most of them are in love with Shuya, but we’re also treated to little dramas between all the other characters that are in love. To me, these seemed like simple crushes, and while everything is intensified in this sort of “game”, I simply got tired of the constant surprise each character exhibited upon learning that someone they barely knew loved them enough to die for them. I couldn’t imagine this happening in real life. Maybe if I was also fifteen years old, when I was convinced that a smile from a boy was everything in the world, I would have found this to be terribly tragic and romantic. As an adult, the students annoyed me without exception. I got tired of reading their irrelevant backstories and I didn’t really care much when any of them died. For some I even found myself flipping ahead to see how long before they died because I was so impatient. The book didn’t engage me at all on an emotional level.
There is also a lot of criticism against girls here which really bothered me. All the boys are convinced that the girls would never kill one another, not only because they’re all good but because a girl wouldn’t have the stomach to do such a thing. Worse, the author seems to agree; the girls are universally portrayed as weak and needing protection by the boys, none of them are intelligent enough to come up with an escape plan, and in general they do absolutely nothing of interest except act stupidly and get themselves killed. The only girl who does fight with some skill is a bully, beautiful but despised universally, who doesn’t hesitate to kill her friends. Even though her behavior is understandable to some extent given her backstory, out of so many girls is there really only one who can stand up to the boys? And does she have to use her body to do it? It just bothered me. I missed the strong, smart girls so prevalent in today’s YA literature.
Largely, this book suffered a lot from comparison with The Hunger Games. There, the concept of kids killing each other is carried out, in my opinion, to the best possible result, providing an emotional, riveting, exciting, and unpredictable read. If I’d read this first, maybe things would have been the other way around, but given what I’ve said here, I doubt it. I can’t say I really hated Battle Royale, as I certainly read it fast enough and wasn’t conscious of all its faults while I was still wading through it, but I didn’t like it very much. It brought up some interesting questions about trust and suspicion between friends, but not enough to save it from bad writing/translating, boring characters, and frustrating structure overall. It’s interesting for anyone who’d like to see what all the fuss is about, but I wouldn’t read it again.
*This link goes to a new translation which I hope will prove better than the one I read. I am an Amazon Associate and will receive a few pennies if you click these links and buy something from Amazon. I bought this book.
My reading has slowed way, way down this month. I’ve only read 11 books, roughly half of what I’ve read each previous month this year. I’ve had fairly frequent distraction in the form of a husband who has had about half the month off work due to the holiday we were saving to visit my parents. We didn’t get to, and as a result we’ve been hanging around here, and believe me, it’s hard to read with someone who often wants attention and distraction. I have no idea how anyone who has full-time jobs and kids manages to get anything read. I applaud all of you. I know that when I eventually land one of the five million jobs I’ve applied for, my reading will go way way down, as I won’t have the alone time I’m used to.
We also happened to acquire an Xbox 360 a couple of weeks ago, and have shifted full on into gaming mode. Obviously I’m still reading, but at a much reduced rate as my in-laws have taken the opportunity to buy us lots of new games.
I doubt I’m going to read another book in the next hour, and so I bring you reading statistics for 2009. I read a total of 283 books. In genres (these don’t add up, as I’ve included some overlap):
- Historical Fiction: 76
- Literary Fiction: 34
- YA: 29
- Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror: 88
- Non-fiction: 23
- Romance: 36
- Graphic Novel: 4
- Women’s Fiction: 8
- Classics: 6
- Thriller/Mystery: 11
I read 15 5-star (according to LibraryThing) books this year. Choosing a favorite out of those fifteen is hard! Unlike the past two years, I haven’t had a book jump out at me as an instant favorite for the year. Those that will remain favorites include Possession by A.S. Byatt, Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart, Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Emma by Jane Austen.
I definitely have some things I want to change for 2010 about my reading. I want to read more classics for a start. I loved five of the six I read this year and I have so many sitting around waiting for me. I’m pleased with the non-fiction I read, but I want to read more of both history and memoirs and perhaps other topics as well as they interest me. I also want to approach blogging differently. I want to include more non-review posts, but while I have so many reviews left to write, it’s hard to make this a priority. I do want to continue reviewing every book I read, so until I start to read less consistently, I will have to brainstorm. I also want to visit more new blogs and leave more comments on the blogs I do read. I’m still very shy on others’ blogs when I know I have no need to be.
As it is nearly upon us, I’d like to wish you all a very happy New Year! Here is to a successful, happy, and healthy 2010 for all of us.
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