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dangermousieSo, finished Foley's Lord of Fire because I almost always finish any book I start (look, I got through The Klansman, the novel on which Birth of a Nation is based, this is nothing in comparison).
If you think the author managed to successfully make me like the hero by the end, you would be sorely mistaken. Surely, romance novel fails when bare few pages away from the end, when the hero's non-evil-lunatic bother offers heroine protection of his name because he feels responsible for what hero put her through, I keep chanting "go for it go for it go for it!" I am willing to believe hero loves her - he's a needy mess, and I am sure hero and heroine will have a happy marriage - she is a Stockholm Syndrome doormat, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Anyway, after this charming experience, I would have been happy to never read Gaelen Foley again, but unfortunately, I bought two books of hers - Lord of Ice in addition to the above-mentioned atrocity that was LoF (hey, they were $5 each and I liked the first novel of hers I read before them so I was willing to take the chance).
So, I gingerly started LoI and, shock of shocks I really like it! I don't think it's the best novel ever written or anything but the heroine is spunky, full of independence and initiative, and the hero actually behaves like a decent human being! Not to mention the meet-cute of 'walking away after taking no for an answer, then seeing her attacked by four murderers and killing the guys' is a lot more up my alley than 'dragging her off for molestation during an orgy and then kidnapping her.'
Hero suffers from awful PTSD after the Napoleonic Wars but still somehow manages not to rape/kidnap/molest anyone. Shocking! I was especially amused when he considered visiting a hooker and then was all "I have bad episodes, what if I hurt her? Oh...right. I'll give her a gun so she can shoot me if I go out of my mind." See, that I can get behind.
If you think the author managed to successfully make me like the hero by the end, you would be sorely mistaken. Surely, romance novel fails when bare few pages away from the end, when the hero's non-evil-lunatic bother offers heroine protection of his name because he feels responsible for what hero put her through, I keep chanting "go for it go for it go for it!" I am willing to believe hero loves her - he's a needy mess, and I am sure hero and heroine will have a happy marriage - she is a Stockholm Syndrome doormat, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Anyway, after this charming experience, I would have been happy to never read Gaelen Foley again, but unfortunately, I bought two books of hers - Lord of Ice in addition to the above-mentioned atrocity that was LoF (hey, they were $5 each and I liked the first novel of hers I read before them so I was willing to take the chance).
So, I gingerly started LoI and, shock of shocks I really like it! I don't think it's the best novel ever written or anything but the heroine is spunky, full of independence and initiative, and the hero actually behaves like a decent human being! Not to mention the meet-cute of 'walking away after taking no for an answer, then seeing her attacked by four murderers and killing the guys' is a lot more up my alley than 'dragging her off for molestation during an orgy and then kidnapping her.'
Hero suffers from awful PTSD after the Napoleonic Wars but still somehow manages not to rape/kidnap/molest anyone. Shocking! I was especially amused when he considered visiting a hooker and then was all "I have bad episodes, what if I hurt her? Oh...right. I'll give her a gun so she can shoot me if I go out of my mind." See, that I can get behind.
