Book Review: Twice a Hero

Back when I was complaining about how much I hated Seize the Night, it was suggested to me that I read some Susan Krinard before I totally write off paranormal romances as utter twaddle. I took this recommendation with a small grain of salt, as it was coming from Susan Krinard's own husband, and I know that husbands often think that their wives are great writers (mine still maintains that the short novel I wrote at age 14 is awesome, whereas I know that it is garbage). Nonetheless, I felt that I should give Susan a fair chance, so I looked for her at the used bookstore* and found that they did not have Kinsman's Oath, which was recommended to me, but they did have a bunch of her books. I chose Twice a Hero, because it had time travel, and most of the others were about werewolves. Now, I don't hate werewolves the way I hate vampires, but I do love a good time travel story, so it was an easy decision.

The good news is that Twice a Hero avoids a lot of the problems that I've had with previous romance novels. I didn't feel like the author was ramming home to me that the leading man was "ohmygawd, the sexiest thing on the face of the planet." The description of his handsomeness was succinct and relatively objective, describing his features and allowing me to decide if that was what flipped my cookie. There was no "hot sexual chocolate" or "long, flowing hair." He read to me as ruggedly but believably handsome.

Likewise, the leading lady believes herself to be plain and unattractive, and describes herself in such a way that we can see how she feels that way, but when we see her through the eyes of the male lead, we can understand how and why he finds her traits attractive. It's not a case of a drop-dead gorgeous woman who believes herself plain, it's a case of a non-standard beauty and a man who finds that she's the sort of woman who revs his engine, so to speak.

And perhaps most importantly, the love scenes were sexy without being ridiculous, and were not the main thrust (if you'll forgive the pun) of the story. The romance is believably interwoven into a tale of being misplaced in time, along with a love quadrangle and a bit of intrigue, all set in the backdrop of 1880s Guatemala and San Francisco. I didn't feel like the story simply served as a way to get the characters from sexy scene A to sexy scene B. It served to introduce the characters, put them in trying and sometimes steamy situations, occasionally pulling them apart to bring them together again.

I'm not an expert on 1880s San Francisco, where most of the book takes place, but the story felt well-researched, and the characters felt authentic to their time. Almost too authentic, in the case of the male lead. Typically chauvenstic, I found him to be abrasive and really questioned whether he'd ever be able to adapt to living the rest of his life with a headstrong woman of the 90s (this book being set in the year it was published, 1997). I often have this problem with romantic stories about people from different times (whether it involves time travel, or centuries-old vampires). It's hard for me to believe that once the initial glow of passion subsides, that the vast gulf of eras will be so easy to bridge.

And really, that's my main complaint with Twice a Hero. I loved watching the clashing personalities of the two characters, as they traded barbed comments frequently throughout the book. And I found their attraction natural and believable (I also appreciated that their courtship spanned a month or more, rather than mere days). But I couldn't see them having a viable, long-term relationship. I also frequently found myself off-put by the leading man's condescending and at times almost abusive attitude towards the leading lady, not to mention his habit of turning to the bottle when he was upset.

Over all, the writing was good and relatively error-free. There was the occasional metaphor that I felt was over-the-top, but there was no throbbing manhood or burning groins or anything else laughably bad. The plot moved along at a believable pace, the secondary characters were believable and likeable, and the things that I thought were going to turn into stupid misunderstandings to tear the characters apart were actually usually handled in a reasonable manner.

Unfortunately, this felt like more of a gateway fantasy romance than a full-blown one. It was heavy on the romance and light on the fantasy, with only a possible family curse and the time travel to differentiate it from a standard romance novel. Perhaps I would have been better off with the werewolves in that regard. I'll probably pick up another of this author's books, one that looks to be more fantasy-heavy, and see if it has a less off-putting male lead. If so, they could definitely be a good guilty-pleasure read.

In the meantime, if you'd like to see some hilariously bad romance writing, worse even than anything in Seize the Night, click here. It has NSFW language, and may cause you to bust out laughing. Don't say I didn't warn you.

*Having learned how little authors get per book sold, I usually try to buy books new these days, to support the people who provide so much of my entertainment... but when it's a new-to-me author, I do prefer to hit the used bookstore, so I'm not out seven bucks if it's not any good.

The Infamous Book Review

And now, for your reading pleasure, my review of Seize the Night.

Also in this month's issue of Collector Times, my husband Chris Reid has written Chapter 3 of the League of Explorers round robin story. I did some editing work on the chapter, as Chris hasn't written fiction in a few years and wanted me to go over it before he sent it to our editor.

I've been caught up in renovating our game room and getting our house ready for today's dinner and gift exchange with my family, so I've done no writing lately. So much for not losing all of the momentum that I built up on Christmas.

I am a defective woman.

If stereotypes are to be believed, I should like romance novels. It's like porn for girls, right? So I guess if I was a guy, I wouldn't like porn, because I'm totally not getting into the paranormal romance genre. I've tried. Honestly I have. I've read a whole... three novels that might count as paranormal romance. Plus one entire series that sits somewhere between paranormal romance and normal modern fantasy. The series I can handle, but the honest-to-goodness romance stuff just annoys me on several levels.

I spent Christmas Eve reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's Seize the Night. It was a Comic Con give-away, so I decided I'd read it and review it for Collector Times. After writing a three-page review (which will be available on January 1st), I realized that I hadn't managed to complain about everything that annoyed me about it, so it's spilling over into this little rant.

So you don't feel lost, here's a capsule review: Seize the Night is a book in the middle of a series about a bunch of immortal demon/vampire hunters called the Dark-Hunters, who work under the auspices of the Greek goddess Artemis. This particular volume concerns a 2000 year old Roman general, and the 20-or-30-something human vampire hunter who are complete opposites but fall in luuuuuurve anyway, while kind of sort of maybe worrying about killing some demon/vampires that want to kill her twin sister, who is married to one of his old enemies.

I addressed a lot of my problems with the book in specific and the genre in general in the review, so I won't rehash them here, but here are a few more that I came up with:

1: Seriously people, learn how to portray gods. This was the second book I've read where the author comes up with a depiction of a goddess that I completely disagree with. I'm not an expert, per se, but I have studied a bit of mythology in my time, and the two goddesses in specific are ones I've read up quite a bit on: The Morrigan and Artemis. The former is a crow goddess of death and the battlefield. She wasn't a very nice lady. She forced Cu Cuchlain into a situation where he had to choose to break one or the other of his two geases, leading to his death. Yet Nora Roberts somehow manages to portray her as some sweet, beautiful, nature-loving, vampire-hating goddess. And then there's Artemis, who's considered indifferent at best to men, if not a man-hater and/or lesbian. She was a capable huntress and was later syncretized with a fellow moon-goddess, Hecate, the goddess of crossroads, who is also often associated with magic. How do you take that and turn it into a woman who keeps a stable of incredibly sexy men as her person demon/vampire hunters? And who, when we finally actually see her in the book, spends her time ineffectively dithering about what to do to avoid upsetting the oh-so-sexy and mysterious uber-character? She comes across like a schoolgirl who's freaking out because she put a scratch on her crush's sports car. Ugh.

I understand that in many mythologies, the gods were seen merely as more powerful reflections of ourselves, with all the foibles of humanity writ large. But I'd still like to see a god or goddess written in a way that suggests that they should actually inspire awe and worship in mortals. At the very least, having lived for thousands of years should give them some level of wisdom and maturity beyond that of the average human.

2: And while we're talking about wisdom and maturity... how about men who have lived for thousands of years, entering into relationships with women in their 20s or 30s? Talk about robbing the cradle! When discussing age differences of 10 years or so, people often bring up the difficulty of differing life experiences, relationship expectations, and lifestyles. How much worse is it going to be for someone who has seen empires rise and fall, living with someone who can count the number of presidential terms they lived through on their fingers?

Then, of course, the immortal has to either accept the fact that their loved one will die after a few decades, while they live on for many centuries. Or they have to somehow give up their immortality, so they can live out a single lifetime with their lover. Let me tell you, my husband and I have had to deal with fights over the minor sacrifices we've made for each other. Can you imagine having THAT thrown in your face every time you have a fight? "Oh yeah? I gave up ETERNITY for you! I don't think asking you to do the dishes is such a big deal compared to that." Plus, what if the mortal love dies suddenly and unexpectedly, mere weeks after you've sacrificed your immortality? I doubt the gods are just going to give it back to you, because you ask nicely. Now there's a book I want to read.

Or perhaps, in some fairy tale endings, the mortal love is granted immortality. Well snap. You get to spend eternity with your lover. Hope it works out for you. Hope you don't mind watching every single other person you love grow old and die. Hope you're prepared to deal with changing your identity every few decades to avoid suspicion. Hope that your kids are immortal, too. No parent should have to outlive all of their children.

3: Three words for you: whirlwind freakin' courtships. Yes, people can know almost from the start of a relationship that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. But I have a hard time suspending my belief when, within a matter of *days* two characters go from hating each other to not just hopping into the sack, but declaring their love for each other. And then within weeks or months, they're married. Awww. How sweet. Right. That totally happens in real life.

4: Do Romans taste better than those who are not? (bonus points if you catch the song reference) Several times during the course of Seize the Night, the female lead "moans at the taste of her Roman" (or general). Does his nationality really affect his flavor? And can he really be called "her general" the first freakin' time she kisses him? Does a single kiss immediately confer ownership? Perhaps that's how vampire hunters mark their territory. I suppose it's better than my cat's method, but it has to be really weird, watching her walk through the store and smooch everything before she buys it.

5: Unquestioning acceptance of flaws and shady past. If my husband of eight years, whom I already love very much, confessed to me some dark secret from his youth, I would probably be able to forgive him. If some guy that I just met less than a week ago had done horrible things, and my family already hated him, and I didn't find out from him, but from some god who thought I should know what I was getting into, I wouldn't just shrug it all off and say "Oh, that's ok, he did the wrong things for the right reasons." I might still end up with the guy eventually, but I'd have to take at least a few days off from the relationship to think things through and ask myself if I could really live with a man who had, say, tortured people.

Then again, I suppose all of the mind-numbingly great sex that we'd been having over the past few days of knowing each other might cloud my judgement a bit (I could say more on the subject of the sex, but I told Blogger that this blog didn't have adult content, so I don't want to get too detailed).

6: Deus Ex Machina. Ok, this is something I hate about any book in any genre, or any movie for that matter, who can't just let its main characters solve their problems. But really, what is the point of having two moderately powerful characters, and making me spend an entire book watching them fall in luuuuuurve, if in the end, they have so little to do with the climax of the story that they might as well not be there? Seriously, I thought I was finally going to see some action of the non-sexual sort, but instead I get some uber-character coming in and taking care of everything with little more than a flick of the wrist. Gee. That's exciting.

I suppose the worst part of all is that whenever I read a book that I don't like, I get really paranoid about my own writing and I have to go back over it and question whether I'm doing any of the things that bothered me about what I just read. But then again, if I find that my writing is too bad, I guess I can come up with reasons for my characters to have mind-numbingly good sex, add a few lines about burning groins, market it as paranormal romance, and become a best seller.

No, I'm not bitter.