Romance and accounting
Jan. 10th, 2006 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI’ve decided to dip my toes into romance books. Yes, I know, I know. But I can’t imagine any literary field is devoid of good books. My rate of success with it has never been good. If you don’t count Georgette Heyer, because she wrote comedies of manners well before romance genre was invented, the only bona fide romance novelist I’ve ever liked is Patricia Veryan, because her books are heavy on adventure (she clearly liked Jefferey Farnol) and have romance in measured dozes. Also, they are heavily male-centric.
I just find the main concept of a romance novel not too appealing. It’s sort of like chocolate. Love it, makes for a great dessert. But wouldn’t just want to eat only chocolate all day. I love for a book to have an amazing, passionate romance, but when it’s the only thing in the book it leaves me bored. If a cool character falls in love, it makes for a great story. But I can’t find any character cool whose sole thoughts are on mush. I love what used to be termed “romances” at the turn of the century: Dumas, Younge, Farnol (Farnol’s Definite Object is, for some reason, a book I could reread ad nauseam, as it involves a bored young NY millionaire Geoff something or other who one day stops a young house-breaker and on an impulse decides to go and live in the kid’s slum because he just might be interested in his sister, Hermione. And there he meets all sorts of people and gets involved in all sorts of stories. Plus he is all manly and can fight well and tries to bust up a gang and he and Hermione have angst etc etc. And since it was published before WWI, it has that interesting quality of a lost age).
Anyway, this is a rather long preamble to saying that I decided to give another romance novelist a try: Jo Beverley. Mainly because she is on a Dorothy Dunnett list I am on and if she likes Dunnett, she can’t have too bad a taste. So I picked up a copy of “Devilish” and started reading over the weekend. Hmmmm. For a romance novel, it’s not too bad, but it suffers from the same problems most romance novels do: there is such an exclusive focus on romance that these people don’t feel like three-dimensional beings. Also, the author keeps pointing out how intelligent and powerful they are, but while they are not powerless dummies, her claims don’t really bear out. Also, I find both the hero and the heroine nice but a bit dull. Sparkle of wit or a shade of nastiness would have served either better. And of course, the problem that 99% of romance novels have: they feel like modern people playing dress-up, not 18th century beings. There is also a bit of plot that is an homage to Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, but while it is perfect, organic and heart-breaking in Dunnett, here I am just “come on!” Apparently, I am being a bit skewed in my views as this is the last book of a loosely connected series and the main character of this one is someone who was a secondary character in all four (and the heroine was in another book as well), so I might be missing prior coolness and the sheer fun of “at last, X gets a book about him/herself.” After all, I don’t know if I’d have liked Veryan’s last volume of Jewelled Men or Gold Chronicles if I haven’t been waiting 5 books for Roland or August to get their own novels.
But so far, Rothgar something or other is rather boring, and considering I am 3/4 in, he is unlikely to improve. However, I am kinda interested in two of his brothers, one of whom is completely absent from the book and is only mentioned (absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess), but who apparently ended up cross-dressing as a girl, travelling with this girl cross-dressing as a boy (shades of Heyer’s “The Masqueraders”) in a prior book, and one of whom appears briefly and is someone who loves accounting, freely confesses to not even being the best (or second best) swordsman in his family, is uber-gorgeous, and seems to be remarkably fine with being married to a woman named Portia. So I ditched “Devilish” (because it really wasn’t) and bought the two books with the other boys.
Me being me, I started with the later one with the sexy accountant with a Saxon name (I would like to know why everyone in that family has Saxon names. Was their father mad? On the plus side, none of them are named Storm, Dirk, or Cloud McManly, on the minus side, I am a bit at a loss as to how to pronounce the hero’s name). So far so good as I only finished chapater 1 but am already enjoying it about 10 times as much as the other one. Probably because the Unpronounceable One just broke into a house to steal some letter or other (for reasons explained in a book I haven’t read) and ended up being confronted by the future Mrs and the scene ended up being rather funny and a bit hot and they were being Heyerish and the whole thing reminded me a bit of a Heyer short story (only there the girl broke in) whose name I don’t remember. Also, he doesn’t seem boring and neither does she. He also seems to be an intelligent bored rich guy, not someone suffering from a Deep Dark Secret (tm) which, when implausbly cured will instantly make him ideal husband material. Also, the plot of the novel (at least as described on the back) reminds me of my favorite Heyer short story, “Hazard.” So I’ll see how it goes but for now it’s surprisingly not bad.
I just find the main concept of a romance novel not too appealing. It’s sort of like chocolate. Love it, makes for a great dessert. But wouldn’t just want to eat only chocolate all day. I love for a book to have an amazing, passionate romance, but when it’s the only thing in the book it leaves me bored. If a cool character falls in love, it makes for a great story. But I can’t find any character cool whose sole thoughts are on mush. I love what used to be termed “romances” at the turn of the century: Dumas, Younge, Farnol (Farnol’s Definite Object is, for some reason, a book I could reread ad nauseam, as it involves a bored young NY millionaire Geoff something or other who one day stops a young house-breaker and on an impulse decides to go and live in the kid’s slum because he just might be interested in his sister, Hermione. And there he meets all sorts of people and gets involved in all sorts of stories. Plus he is all manly and can fight well and tries to bust up a gang and he and Hermione have angst etc etc. And since it was published before WWI, it has that interesting quality of a lost age).
Anyway, this is a rather long preamble to saying that I decided to give another romance novelist a try: Jo Beverley. Mainly because she is on a Dorothy Dunnett list I am on and if she likes Dunnett, she can’t have too bad a taste. So I picked up a copy of “Devilish” and started reading over the weekend. Hmmmm. For a romance novel, it’s not too bad, but it suffers from the same problems most romance novels do: there is such an exclusive focus on romance that these people don’t feel like three-dimensional beings. Also, the author keeps pointing out how intelligent and powerful they are, but while they are not powerless dummies, her claims don’t really bear out. Also, I find both the hero and the heroine nice but a bit dull. Sparkle of wit or a shade of nastiness would have served either better. And of course, the problem that 99% of romance novels have: they feel like modern people playing dress-up, not 18th century beings. There is also a bit of plot that is an homage to Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, but while it is perfect, organic and heart-breaking in Dunnett, here I am just “come on!” Apparently, I am being a bit skewed in my views as this is the last book of a loosely connected series and the main character of this one is someone who was a secondary character in all four (and the heroine was in another book as well), so I might be missing prior coolness and the sheer fun of “at last, X gets a book about him/herself.” After all, I don’t know if I’d have liked Veryan’s last volume of Jewelled Men or Gold Chronicles if I haven’t been waiting 5 books for Roland or August to get their own novels.
But so far, Rothgar something or other is rather boring, and considering I am 3/4 in, he is unlikely to improve. However, I am kinda interested in two of his brothers, one of whom is completely absent from the book and is only mentioned (absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess), but who apparently ended up cross-dressing as a girl, travelling with this girl cross-dressing as a boy (shades of Heyer’s “The Masqueraders”) in a prior book, and one of whom appears briefly and is someone who loves accounting, freely confesses to not even being the best (or second best) swordsman in his family, is uber-gorgeous, and seems to be remarkably fine with being married to a woman named Portia. So I ditched “Devilish” (because it really wasn’t) and bought the two books with the other boys.
Me being me, I started with the later one with the sexy accountant with a Saxon name (I would like to know why everyone in that family has Saxon names. Was their father mad? On the plus side, none of them are named Storm, Dirk, or Cloud McManly, on the minus side, I am a bit at a loss as to how to pronounce the hero’s name). So far so good as I only finished chapater 1 but am already enjoying it about 10 times as much as the other one. Probably because the Unpronounceable One just broke into a house to steal some letter or other (for reasons explained in a book I haven’t read) and ended up being confronted by the future Mrs and the scene ended up being rather funny and a bit hot and they were being Heyerish and the whole thing reminded me a bit of a Heyer short story (only there the girl broke in) whose name I don’t remember. Also, he doesn’t seem boring and neither does she. He also seems to be an intelligent bored rich guy, not someone suffering from a Deep Dark Secret (tm) which, when implausbly cured will instantly make him ideal husband material. Also, the plot of the novel (at least as described on the back) reminds me of my favorite Heyer short story, “Hazard.” So I’ll see how it goes but for now it’s surprisingly not bad.
