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Fic rec

December 21, 2012, 6:43 am
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I an currently binging on sabaceanbabe's amazing Treading Water fic. It's in the Hunger Games universe, set during the Quarter Quell and is Finnick/Annie. And is also making me totally obsessed. I am way behind and the fic is massive (300+ pages when I put it in word)so hours of bliss are ahead.

I cannot rec it highly enough! You can find it at her LJ or at the Archive Of Our Own.
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A romance novel hitting that sweet spot - yay!

December 21, 2012, 6:27 pm
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After reading a bunch of thoroughly mediocre romance novels, which aren't even worth bothering to savage, I have finally stumbled on one I utterly adore - Lisa Kleypas'Love In the Afternoon.

I am so so so in love with it and its protagonists and the set-up and the setting.

Set in the 1850s, the premise would normally not be my thing - Beatrix Hathaway did not like the arrogant, proper Christopher Phelan, but that changed when Christopher's regiment was sent to the Crimea, and Beatrix's shallow friend Prudence, who Christopher was sort-of courting before the war, showed Beatrix his letters. Shallow friend has no desire to write back, but Beatrix feels both pity and a sense of connection and so she writes back, pretending to be Prudence. And Christopher, who merely wrote to Prudence so he could write to somebody, ends up falling in love with the writer of those letters, by the end of the war his only link to sanity. I really dislike Cyrano de Bergerac set-ups, but gave this a chance because I love Victorian romances, especially ones that deal with the Crimean War, plus the one Kleypas book I read before, I adored.

I am so glad I took a chance! Very little of the book is spent on the 'she pretends to be Prudence' thing - that is merely a set-up for a wonderful, moving story about a pretty incredible woman who is actually wounded, and a really wounded man who is actually pretty incredible. I am seriously so in love with both Beatrix and Christopher.

Plus, mmmmm, the amount of h/c in this book is out of this world. I love it to bits!

I really must read more Kleypas.
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I find myself obsessed with this one. Hmmm....

December 23, 2012, 1:25 pm
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No, this hasn't turned into a book-centric LJ, for those wondering - we have been traveling and thus no opportunity to watch anything (Cheonamdong Alice! I need you in my life!) but plenty of time for reading.

And the book I want to blab and recommend and gush about is Meredith Duran's At Your Pleasure. (Yes, I realize, it's a truly dreadful title). Duran is an odd duck for me - her books either elicit a 'wtf why did I waste my time?' or 'OMFG this is the best thing ever, I must tell everyone' reaction, with nothing in between. Luckily, AYP is very much the latter. I think it's going into my Top 10 romances pile.

Six years ago, Adrian Ferrers and Leonora Colville were young, innocent, and very much in love. To say that it ended badly would be an understatement of the century. They haven't spoken since, but that's about to change in a massive way. Because now Adrian, who is no longer a second son and a despised Catholic, but a powerful and publicly converted to Protestantism Earl of Rivenham, and Nora, now the widowed Countess of Towe, are about to meet again. The year is 1715, there are rumors of rebellion against the newly-installed George I by the Catholic James Stewart, and Rivenham and his troops have come to find Nora's brother, who has been accused of plotting treason - the overthrow of the new King. (Yes, the irony of sending a former Catholic to root out the good Protestant who is supporting a Catholic monarch, is not lost on anyone).

You guys, this is so so so so SO freaking good! I just want to roll in it, like a dog. First, a disclaimer - this is angst central, so if you want fluffy cuteness, you should probably look elsewhere. But if you like really damaged but really strong protagonists, angst that actually makes sense, and 'hero in love with heroine beyond reason, better judgement and possible beheading for treason,' this is for you. (Don't worry, heroine loves him back just as much). I especially loved that heroine's preoccupation for most of the book was honor and loyalty to her family, and that these are two very scarred, even bitter people with severely unhappy pasts and problematic family lives who don't magically become happy fluffy bunnies due to love, but do all sorts of complex, sometimes questionable things, and fight like the devil every step of the way (both each other and themselves), but they do ultimately make each other better and happier and heal each other and make each other whole. And you just know they'd brave hell for each other and I love that sort of utter, hard-won devotion.

Basically, argh, I am totally failing at conveying the awesomeness of this book, but you should read it anyway!
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Another bunch of romance novels

December 25, 2012, 6:51 pm
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We are still on vacation, so no dramas for me until the new year. But I have been reading more romance novels. This one is a mixed batch...

A Beginner's Guide to Rakes, Suzanne Enoch - heroine plans to open a gambling club and blackmails the hero into helping (they have some past history). Wow, an Enoch I did not love, this is a first. I disliked the heroine and didn't love the hero, but what really got to me was that they didn't really get on for most of the book. I don't require love from page 1, but liking would be good. (Compare it to her earlier effort, The Rake, where the heroine and the hero seemingly dislike each other but you can tell they are totally into each other under the pretense - here you get the sense of genuine dislike). And, tbh, I never bought they loved each other.

Claiming the Courtesan, Anna Campbell - underneath the seemingly icy exterior of the Duke of Kylemore lies one all-encompassing obsession - that for his exotic, expensive mistress Soraya. Too bad then that Soraya is really Verity Ashton, who has finally earned enough money through her courtesan lifestyle to retire to the life of respectability and leave the Duke behind. Only once 'Soraya' vanishes into thin air, the Duke goes a bit mad and hunts her down. Ummmm. Ummmmm. Oh, Anna Campbell, what am I going to do with you? You wrote one boring book (the name of which escapes me) and two books I adored with every fiber of my soul (Captive of Sin and Untouched) but nothing in any of the three would have led me to expect this! 'This' being hero-on-heroine rape. Repeated hero-on-heroine rape. I thought that went out of fashion in the romance world with the 1980s! The book is well-written and character-consistent (as in, I can buy someone like the hero, with his background and character, doing what he does in terms of rape, obsession, etc and someone like the heroine, with her background and character, forgiving him and falling for him) but that's like saying 'and other than the shooting, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?' Just wtf wtf wtf I want to scrub my brain!!!!! The irritating thing, if she left the idiotic rape part out, she would have had a wonderful book and the story wouldn't have suffered. Grrrrrrrr. WTF!!!!! Seriously, WTF!!!!!

The Devil You Know, Liz Carlyle - I LOVED THIS ONE!!!! Frederica d'Avillez is young, high-tempered and upset that her long-time beau ditched her. Still, there were perhaps wiser courses of actions open to her than an impulsive one-night stand with Bentley Rutledge, a family friend, a gorgeous charmer, and a totally unpredictable, carefree rake. To his credit, Bentley writes her a proper proposal of marriage before he leaves, but it's misplaced and Frederica never gets it, assuming the one-night stand was the beginning and the end. Only she finds herself pregnant and she and Bentley are hitched in an arrangement where, if either party doesn't think the marriage is working, they can live separately after six months. For their honeymoon, the newlyweds go to visit Bentley's family and family home but it's not a happy visit and Frederica discovers there is something seriously amiss with her new husband - he wears the carefree attitude as a mask over darker issues and the secrets of his past can destroy the fragile new relationship. I really need to read more of Liz Carlyle because it's the second book of hers I read and I adored both. I like Freddy, who is pragmatic and plucky, but it's one of those rare books where I was all about the hero. I got it as part of my 'books where hero has a massive past trauma' kick but I pretty much forgot that this was part of that stack, so the reveal of the cause of Bentley's issues, which was pretty late in the book (though hints are sprinkled throughout) was a bit of a shock and pretty damn horrifying (this is a rare book where I seriously felt bad there was no therapy back in 1820s or whenever this book is set in, because a loving wife and a loving and guilt-feeling brother are seriously not a good enough coping/healing mechanism for his past and the issues that stem from it). But I confess to loving him from long before that - his adorable, haphazard, and earnest attempts to be a good husband and good (future) father were ridiculously endearing, and the way he was rather desperate to not realize what he felt for Freddie or his family or his life made me want to send him a time-traveling hug.

The Duchess War, Courtney Milan - I am currently reading this one and loving it. The heroine is a former chess prodigy who used to dress as a boy but now trying to live quietly and the hero is a Duke who feels guilty about his title and tries to get Unions to organize. They are both just lovely lovely people, who are scarred by their parents and childhoods but are still awesome and I need them to hook up so badly.
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December 26, 2012, 6:21 pm
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First off, is anyone else as psyched for IRIS 2 as I am? EEEE!



In romance novel news, the latest batch included:

Addicted, Charlotte Featherstone - get a proofreader! Please! If this book did have a proofreader, he or she should not be allowed near any writing again. Whole sentences make no sense and the way the text scrimps on commas, you'd think there was a giant comma shortage about to befall us. I could probably be gentler about this, except that I loathed both the hero and heroine and never was convinced they felt anything but lust for each other. Yeah, about the plot - he is an opium addict, she is his one true love, together they irritate the hell out of me. It's quite a pity, because the other Featherstone title I read a few months ago, Sinful, I adored.

Mine Till Midnight, Lisa Kleypas - this is the first in the Hathaways series, the same series that gave me Love in the Afternoon, which I was so obsessed about recently. I wasn't obsessed about MTM, but it was a fun read. This book involves Amelia Hathaway, the oldest sister who holds her eccentric family together and Cam Rohan, the half-Gypsy manager of an infamous gambling club. This is a story where nothing much happens plot-wise but it involves lovely people so I didn't mind one bit. Though I confess much as I liked Amelia and Cam, I was all about Winifred and Merripen - she is the fragile upper-class beauty and he is the gypsy the family took in as a kid. It hit every single one of my kinks - childhood loves, hero who adores the ground the heroine walks on, the class difference where he is lower class than she is and they both think it can't be, h/c, everything. I pretty much wished the book was about them. Luckily for me, there is a book about them, and I will get to it pronto.

Unclaimed, Courtney Milan - This is the second Milan book I read and the second to feature a virgin hero. Methinks Ms. Milan has a kink :) Joking aside, I adored this book to bits - the hero is someone who wrote a tract on male chastity and is viewed as something of a paragon by the Victorian society. Heroine is a courtesan fallen on hard times who has been hired to seduce him and ruin his reputation. That's highly unusual as a set-up but it really really works. I adored both Mark and Jessica to bits - somehow Milan manages to make him incredibly moral and upstanding and lovely and battling the demons of his childhood without a bit of saintliness or sanctimony, and Jessica is convincingly scarred, strong, and despite everything I loved her because you can sense her desperation and her hurt. It's one of those really rare romances where the woman falls for the man because he is a genuinely good person and this was so wonderful to read. I really must read more of Milan.
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Yup, more romance novel reads

December 27, 2012, 7:01 pm
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Both of these are by Courtney Milan and are the part of the same series that the awesome Unclaimed was part of.

Unveiled - involves Ash Turner, a man who rose from poverty to immense wealth and now is about to inherit a Dukedom from the Duke of Parford (as the Duke's current children have been declared illegitimate) and Margaret Dalrymple, the daughter of the current Duke who knows she should dislike the new heir but finds herself drawn to his goodness. I loved this book to bits because Milan seems to do this rare of rarities - have heroes who are not rakes or bad boys but genuinely good men who the heroines end up loving for their morals, hard work, strength of character, respect towards them, and genuine goodness. You have NO idea how freakishly rare this is in any novel, let alone a romance one. Lady Margaret loves Ash because he makes her be a better person and makes her be more. And I love that.

Unraveled - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! I've just finished this one and I think I have a new book to add to my list of all-time faves. This one involves Miranda Darling, a daughter of actors who has now fallen on hard times, lives in the slums and makes some of her living by being a paid (sort-of, long story) witness for people who need to get out of their criminal charges and Smite* Turner, the incorruptible magistrate in Miranda's jurisdiction. This hits ALL my kinks! I confess I was pretty interested by Smite's brief appearances in Unveiled and Unclaimed, but this book exceeded my expectations. I am a total sucker for heroes who are severely screwed up but functional despite it all and heroines who are pragmatic and cheerful and with a very good head on their shoulders. I adore Miranda, with her hard-won optimism and matter-of-fact approach to life (and OMFG heroine with sense at last - when the bad guy tries to blackmail her, she does the sensible thing and refuses and tells Smite about it) but I confess I was all about Smite, who is very logical, very bad at emotional interactions (and not even sure he can allow himself any), incredibly damaged but able to fashion a useful existence despite that damage - making sure what happened to him won't happen to others and trying to cope in the world which has many internal limitations due to the horrors of his past. Basically, short version is he has an appalling background but he doesn't use it as an excuse to wallow or fall apart but as the motivation to save others. And what could be more awesome than that? Oh, and I also love that he doesn't get miraculously fixed by love - he gets better and happier but there is no magic cure - he is still justice-driven, people-averse and cannot bear to have his face touched. I love that Milan realizes some scars don't go away, just diminish. Oh, and my fave scene in this book - when Miranda takes Smite's hand and touches it to her face, showing him how she would like to touch him if he could bear to be touched - would alone pretty much make the whole book worthwhile if it wasn't already.

* The Turners' lunatic mother named all her kids after Bible verses, puritan-style and names like Ash, Mark or Smite are the abbreviations the brothers came up with - basically a word from the Biblical sentences she named them after.
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Latest book tally

December 28, 2012, 6:43 pm
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From worst to best...

Lust, Charlotte Featherstone - time to accept Sinful was a fluke as other CF books don't do it for me at all. This one is all about the cursed fey who represent various sins who can undo the curse if they find a female soulmate representing their opposite virtues. Since this is an erotic romance, you can imagine the route this takes (hint: heroine's name 'Chastity' is quite a misnomer). It's not awful or anything but 'blah' pretty much sums it up.

Sin and Sensibility, Suzanne Enoch - heroine wants to flaunt propriety a little, hero is a rakish friend of the family who her brothers ask to keep her in check. Much less sex than in Lust but the resulting feeling is the same - not bad or anything but I couldn't say I cared if any of these people got struck by a meteorite.

But then perhaps I am being unfair to the above, because they had the misfortune to be read the same day I read Seduce Me At Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas, which is going into my Top 10 Romances of all time. SMAS follows Winifred and Merripen, two characters who I got obsessed by in the previous book in the series. It pretty much hit every single one of my kinks. They first meet as teens and love each other ever after. She is the treasured, ethereal upper-class invalid with a will of steel and he is the abused gypsy bare-knuckle fighter whom her family rescued when he was half-dead and all the way feral. And then he stayed with them, taking care of the family. Because of her. And they have loved each other since childhood but he refuses to do anything about it because he doesn't think he is good enough for her but she won't give up and he can't live without her and guuuuuuh. Seriously, I am WAAAAAAAAY obsessed about this book. If you are fond of passionate angst or heroes who are beyond devoted to the heroine, this is the book for you. I mean, any time hero declares things like "I am not good enough for you. But no one is. And most men, good or bad, have limits to what they would do, even for someone they love. I have none. No God, no moral code, no faith in anything. Except you. You're my religion. I would do anything you asked. I would fight, steal, kill for you. I would -" I am a goner. Mmmmmmmm. I already want a reread. Oh, did I mention that she is the first person since his childhood he ever told his first name to? This book = obsession.

Btw, no, I haven't given up on dramas. However when you are on a beach vacation on an island that is not in the United States, it's a bit impossible to get to watch any :)
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Yup, another book list

December 31, 2012, 4:49 am
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This time it's not all romance novels though mostly it still is (what can I say, on a beach vacation, my brain is on a downtime as well).

Secrets of a Summer Night, Lisa Kleypas - first in her Wallflower series, I really really liked this one. Annabelle is a very very impoverished aristocrat who desperately needs to marry into money - her time is running out and soon it's mistress opportunities at best. And then she meets Simon Hunt, the self-made man, blunt, not in the least refined, who is drawn to her. This book is pretty much pure delight from beginning to end and I adored both Simon and Annabelle.

It Happened One Autumn, Lisa Kleypas - second in the Wallflower series. Hero is a rather stuffy Earl and heroine is a brash American heiress. They fight, sparks fly, it's all enjoyable, but I was a lot more interested in the kinda-bad guy St. Vincent.

The Devil In Winter, Lisa Kleypas - third in the Wallflower series. Lucky me, Kleypas seems to have liked St. Vincent as much as I did as she made him the hero of this one. I looooooved that book! St. Vincent is gorgeous, slutty, amoral, blue-blooded, and incredibly broke. Now that kidnapping the American heiress into marriage did not work out (and cost him his only friend to boot), he's utterly desperate. So when the shy, stammering, mistreated Evie Jenner shows up on his doorstep with a proposal of marriage - he can take her to Gretna, marry her, have her considerable fortune (her father is a gambling hall proprietor) and do what he pleases with himself, as long as he protects her from her grasping abusive family and lets her spend her father's last days at his side, St. Vincent leaps at the offer. Ummmm, I loved this book! I don't even normally go for the 'rake with a deeply hidden heart whose dream is to have a sweet woman he has to win the heart of' thing, but I was dying here. It's swoony and romantic and Evie and St. Vincent just sparkle together and I love how he is utterly bewildered by his feelings and has no idea how to behave and she is both super-feminine and sweet and yet totally steely and the whole sequence where he saved her from being shot by covering her with his body and then was horribly injured and she had to nurse him was pretty much h/c dream come true and the scene where she made him lose their bet was the hottest thing ever and and and and OK, screw it, just read this book. I adored it to ridiculous extremes.

Scandalous Desires, Elizabeth Hoyt - thanks for the rec, oh awesome flistie, this was a great deal of fun. Heroine is a widow and hero is a river pirate, there is angst, murders, and the most unusual setting I've seen in a romance novel in a while, as it's set in 1730s in the slums of St. Giles. This is pretty dark for a romance novel but a delightful read any way.

Wicked Intentions, Elizabeth Hoyt - this is actually the first in the series that SD is part of, but I am only now reading it. I got it because the hero and heroine of this had cameos in SD and I was bemused by the hero having white hair - I was curious whether he was elderly, albino, obsessed with hair powder, what? Anyway, my curiosity paid off (short answers to the above: no, no, no). Because I am totally loving this one. If you like fucked up heroes who have never loved a woman before the heroine, this is the book for you! Temperance Dews is a young widow who is helping her brother run a home for orphan children in St. Giles. Lord Caire is an aristocrat looking for the murderer of his mistress. He strikes a bargain with Temperance - in exchange for her being a guide to the nooks and crannies of St. Giles, he will help her find sponsors for the orphanage which is in danger of closing. Temperance has her issues - she is a woman of strong feeling and passion who views the same as a sin and tamps them down. But it's nothing compared to our hero who has no friends, no family, is incapable of feeling strong emotion and thus is fascinated by the same and has a head that is so screwed up that being touched by anyone (well, if the other person initiates the touch - he can touch others) causes him acute pain. So basically he has major issues going through life and can only have sex if it's some sort of bondage for his partner so he doesn't have to worry about them touching him. Ummm. Yeah. Just how I like them - ready for a shrink. At the point of the book I am at, heroine is currently treating his stab wounds to prevent putrefaction. Ms. Hoyt knows my kinks :)

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold - aha, finally a non-romance novel on my list. Years ago, I was quite obsessed with Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series - a bunch of smart space-opera adventures featuring an super-intelligent hunchback dwarf protagonist. I've moved on to other things and so (largely) did Bujold. But I always wondered about Miles' cousin Ivan - the good-natured, deliberately shallow officer Miles would occasionally involve in his adventures. Surely nobody could really be as out of it as Ivan was without doing it on purpose. Lucky me, Bujold wrote an Ivan book at last, and I couldn't resist. I had some trepidation, as the few Miles books she did after A Civil Campaign did not work for me at all, but so far I am loving it. Ivan is ridiculously entertaining to read about (it is no spoiler to say that while Ivan is not the genius Miles is, he is not dim, just knows how he likes his life to be), the story is twisty and cool and there is even a romance, as the plot is set in motion as Ivan is asked by By Vorrutier (guh, reading all these names brings back memories of college!) to guard a mysterious woman. Oh, and btw, I love Tej, the heroine, who is ridiculously awesome. I never did warm up to Miles' eventual OTP Ekaterin, who annoyed me from beginning to end, but I am glad that Bujold's creation of Cordelia in Cordelia's Honor was not a fluke. Basically, I have no idea how much a total newbie to Miles books would like it (though it is pretty fun), but as a long-term afficionado, this is a treat.
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At last, a Kleypas book I didn't like

January 1, 2013, 5:28 am
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Tempt Me At Twilight, third in the Hathaways' series. It's well-written as per usual and I loved all the Hathaways, also as per usual we got to see more Winifred/Merripen yes yes yes but the book was spoiled for me by the hero, who I started out loathing. By the end of the book, the loathing dwindled to strong dislike, which is not something I want from a romance novel hero.

Our lovely hero decides he wants to marry Poppy Hathaway. Oops, she is in love with someone else. So he sabotages her relationship and then deliberately compromises her in public so she'd have to marry him. That's what I call a real charmer! UGH! Also, a total aberration from the rest of the Hathaways series. I haven't read Leo's book so no idea how that went down, but he seems much too lazy to blackmail anyone, Amelia and Cam had a lovely playful relationship throughout, Merripen was prepared to tear his heart out and have Win go to another if it was better for her (the whole angst of their book was that they loved each other madly but he was terrified of being with her and harming her/being unworthy), and Christopher had all sorts of 'I have battle PTSD and am not good enough for you, am I really what you want?' conversations with Beatrix. But nooooo, poor Poppy ended up with a guy who should have been smacked on the head with a 2-by-4 repeatedly. I couldn't escape the sense that she eventually fell for him because she was a kind woman married to him and so what other choice did she have?

Kleypas tries to justify Psycho Harry's actions by giving him a horrid, emotionally brutal childhood which leaves him unable to cope with feeling in a normal fashion, but while that explains, it doesn't excuse. Actually, Harry's childhood is another issue, instead - Poppy herself realizes after finding out about it that this is something that can't be fixed through conversation or even a year of living together happily but then kablam, two pages later, all Harry needed was a hug and some good boinking and he's somehow turned into a mostly normal, very affectionate person. Are you kidding me?

Anyway, WTF, Kleypas! I am just going to reread my favorite Win/Merripen and Beatrix/Christopher bits and pretend this book doesn't exist.
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I am finally back home

January 1, 2013, 6:49 pm
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Which, of course, means dramas! Yet, instead of watching my considerable backlog, I am rewatching this trailer again and again and again:



Jo In Sung Jo In Sung Jo In Sung Jo In Sung!!!!!!

You have NO idea how hyped up I am for this.
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One of the things I must catch up on is Can We Get Married

January 1, 2013, 7:02 pm
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Because screwed up yet sweet rich kids FTW!!!



Heeee, it's the church from Baker King and Gloria :) Clearly it has a long and illustrious tradition for rich people with evil families marriage-related activities.
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So, another book list

January 2, 2013, 6:13 pm
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From least liked to most.

Liz Carlyle, Never Lie to a Lady - I honestly don't feel like bothering to recap the plot. I've really liked the other two Carlyle books I read but this was just a boring slog, since I cared for neither Xanthia nor Nash (neither of whom was in the least loveable or convinced me they were in love instead of in lust) and the smuggling plot was blaaaaaaaah. If you want to read a book from that particular Carlyle series, read Never Deceive a Duke instead.

Suzanne Enoch, Stolen Kisses - I've come to the conclusion that I like later Enochs better than her earlier ones. This is a fun read but it didn't particularly involve me and was a bit precious. Hero is a rake who is annoyed heroine (who is an 'Ice Queen' hunting for a proper husband) snubs him and sets out to teach her a lesson but of course they fall in love. There are murders, bad guys, and verbal duels. This being an Enoch book, both leads are actually quite likeable, but I can't say I was very involved.

Suzanne Enoch, Before the Scandal - ah, here is an Enoch book I liked very much! Colonel Phin Bromley takes leave from the military and returns to visit his family because his younger sister lies to him his older brother is on his deathbed. But while that may be a lie, someone is targeting his family, and Phin is determined to find out who. And then there is Alyse, his childhood love, with whom he rekindles a romance. This was fun and entertaining and, while more plotty than romantic, very satisfying (minus the initial sex scene which occurs in wildly improbable circumstances).

Lisa Kleypas, Again the Magic - ahhh, reverse slumming, how I love thee! Heroine was an Earl's daughter and hero a lowly stableboy, but they loved each other. But she had to lie to him to save him and he left hating her. Now a dozen years have passed and he is back from America as a super rich industrialist and wanting revenge. I LOVED IT!!!!! Hero and heroine were both pretty awesome and also decent people, and the secondary romance (heroine's younger sister, tarnished by scandal, and an American blue blood with a drinking problem) appealed to me even more than the main one.

Courtney Milan, A Kiss for Midwinter and Unlocked - I normally don't mention novellas or short stories in this but I loved these (and Mina's story below) too much not to. The former follows two minor characters from The Duchess War and the latter a minor character from the Turner series and her OTP, and as per usual Milan, gives us a hard-working, smart hero, a complex heroine, and emotional beauty.

Meljean Brook, Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City - !!!! EEEEE!!!! And other incoherent exclamations. To say I adored The Iron Duke would be a huge understatement - part romance, part steampunk adventure, this book is in my Top 10 romances of all time, and a very rare romance I'd rec to non-romance lovers. So the chance to see Mina and Rhys again = heaven. There is a murder investigation and other good things but I confess I read to see glimpses into Mina and Rhys' married life and it's every bit as interesting and intense and complicated as I expected. Though I could pretty much read about them eating lunch and reading mail and be happy with that so I am a biased biased fan.
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Kenshin Kenshin Kenshin!!!!

January 3, 2013, 7:41 pm
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I have just started on the Rurouni Kenshin movie and I adore it to bits! I used to be obsessed with the anime years ago and it's bringing all the memories back. More importantly, the actors just feel right as the characters!

Kenshin (during the Bakumatsu):



Satou (I love Satou SFM. He is my favorite non-Kenshin or Kaoru character. Even more than Aoshi. And we get him in this movie!):



Kenshin and Kaoru (one of my biggest and best anime OTPs. I used to be obsessed with them, see icon):




In the unlikely event you do not know the set-up of RK, it is about Kenshin, who used to be a legendary killer during the civil wars in the 19th century, but gave it all up to wander Japan anonymously and find peace. His wanderings end when he meets Kaoru, a young woman running a dojo. And from then on, he and Kaoru and the rest of their make-shift family deal with various criminals and threats, some of them from his past. And throughout it all, Kenshin refuses to kill.
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Computer woes!

January 4, 2013, 6:15 am
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My laptop's power cord is dead and won't charge anything, which makes my computer unusable. While we have 4 laptops in the household of two adults and a munchkin (long story), my laptop is the only Sony Vaio one, this no cord cross-pollination is possible.

I've ordered a new cord and am also going to be taking the laptop to a repair shop but the problem is - until it's fixed, I can't watch anything! I back up my stuff regularly, but with our recent travel, I haven't had a chance to back up recent stuff. This means everything I want to watch (Kenshin!!! Latest I Miss You) is unavailable.

!!!!!! Woe. Not a happy camper.


Posted via m.livejournal.com.

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OMFG so good!

January 4, 2013, 10:16 am
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I was going to post about something else but I've just started reading The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt and EEEEEEE!!!!! So good! I simply had to share!!!! cleobulle, you were so right!!!!!


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Yet more romance books

January 4, 2013, 7:07 pm
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Am typing this on reserve laptop with the keyboard I am not used to any more. Ugh.

So, even more time to read as my usual laptop needs to be fixed and until that happens, my dramas are unavailable...

Suzanne Enoch, Angel's Devil - a pleasant novella about a headstrong young lady and a former rake but nothing to write home about. The more Enoch I read, the more I realize how uneven she is, and how lucky I was that the first 5-6 books of hers that I read were in the 'good' pile, by sheer chance.

Suzanne Enoch, Sins of a Duke - hero a politician, heroine supposedly princess of some obscure made-up Central American country. LOATHING!!!! I hated the heroine which is pretty extraordinary for an Enoch book - whatever I think of her plots, I always, always like her heroes and heroines. But in this book, Enoch commits the mistake of believing that violent shrew and charmingly feisty are the same thing. They are not. I ended up the book feeling pity for the hero, who was a hard-working, scrupulous man who ended up saddled with a selfish, immature, violent woman (who he trusted to bring up his daughter who is supposedly the light of his life but who barely met her new Mama). Oh, and I am convinced he was still in love with his dead wife and was only moved to his insane actions by pure lust. No other interpretation is possible as they barely have any conversations, nothing in common, and she behaves like a lunatic - if a woman publicly slaps a man she has not said a word to for an utterly made-up reason and he courts her, I am left with the conclusion that the man is either a closet masochist or so stupid as to let his little head rule his big one. Basically, this is thoroughly awful.

Lisa Kleypas, A Scandal in the Spring - the fourth in the Wallflower series. So good! Daisy Bowman has two months to find an aristocratic suitor or else her father wants to marry her off to his protege Matthew Swift. Except dreamy, poetic Daisy finds herself falling for pragmatic, workaholic Matthew...This is wonderful, and the whole 'he has hopelessly loved her for years' thing is a trope I never tire of. Plus, seeing the glimpses of other Wallflowers is fun.

Lisa Kleypas, Wallflower Christmas this novella about Lillian and Daisy's brother Rafe's coming for a suitable arranged match with a noblewoman but falling for her companion instead has a lovely central romance, but I confess I read for the other Wallflowers. Kleypas seems unaccountably fond of Lillian, by far my least favorite of the Wallflowers, seeing the prominent role she had in Spring and now here, but we also get to see Annabelle and Evie. I spent pretty much the whole book being a pathetic and satisfied Evie/St Vincent shipper - the scene where he finds her after he had to be away for a few days and he covers her with ropes of pearls and they pretty much lock themselves in the bedroom for days and and and...Yup, still ship them like mad.

Elizabeth Hoyt, Notorious Pleasures - the more I read of Hoyt's stuff, the more I love her. She has the audacity to set her novels in the 1730s and have heroes who wear bag wigs, stories set in the slums, gin distilleries, etc. After the never-ending cookie-cutter Regency world, this is wonderful. This novel's heroine, Lady Hero, is a Duke's daughter, a Duke sister and a very properly-behaved young lady who has just entered into a very proper and arranged engagement. Only the sparks fly not with her dull betrothed but with said betrothed younger brother - who manages the family finances, quotes Greek, sleeps around, and runs an illicit gin distillery. I loved it to bits! Lady Hero is a great heroine - not the seemingly unconventional (only, of course, very conventional in the 21st century way, to confirm to our ideals) and anachronistic heroine too many books are fond of, but a well-behaved woman with understanding of her status and duties. I love the hero, who actually is hard-working and dangerous and a bit fucked up but in a realistic way. The sex scenes are universally hot, the setting is great, and supporting characters colorful.

Now back to The Serpent Prince...
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Article 5

January 4, 2013, 8:27 pm
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Umm, the marriage proposal in The Serpent Prince totally made me cry. And the hero is so fucked up - the heroine pretty much enables him to breathe, I think he'd end up in the loony bin without her. He is so desperate for her and it is totally hitting all my kinks.

Am about 1/3 through the book and it's going on my all time faves list...


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The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

January 5, 2013, 4:06 pm
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My Top 10 Romance Novels list is getting modified - there is a new arrival, and that arrival is Elizabeth Hoyt's The Serpent Prince.

I've enjoyed all of Hoyt's books that I've read, but none came close to the sheer obsession I entered into with TSP. I loved the characters, the intensity, the prose and the fact that this book hit every single one of my kinks. I've just finished it and I already want a reread. I can't remember the last time I loved the characters so desperately.

The book is set in the 1730s (I think) and the set-up is as follows - Lucy Craddock-Hayes was returning from various visits in her small village when she came across an almost dead man in the lane. The man is Simon Iddesleigh, and has almost been murdered as a result of his single-minded pursuit of vengeance against his brother's killers. Lucy takes him in and nurses him back to health, but can even their newly-developing feelings stop Simon from his course?

Written up like this, it sounds entertaining enough, but it doesn't convey in the least the awesomeness of this novel. I love love love Lucy, who is composed (even a little grave), strong and sane. And I love Simon, who has been driven into desperation and borderline insanity by the exigencies of revenge and who sees Lucy as his sole hope of salvation and redemption. (It's pretty clear that if he loses Lucy, he will not be able to bear living, not in a melodramatic but a matter-of-fact way). There are no love rivals, no misunderstandings, no evil families - just two complicated, strong-willed people trying to make things work and fight off darkness the best they can.

There are a lot of sequences I love (the one where she discovers him coming home after the duel with Quincy is just - wow) and a lot of quotes, but I will just leave you with this one:

"You won't speak, won't tell me," he said huskily. "Are you taunting me? You taunt me in my dreams sometimes, sweet angel, when I am not dreaming of..." He sank to his knees before her. "You don't know me, don't know what I am. Save yourself. Throw me from your house. Now. While you still can, because I've lost my determination, my will, my very honor - what little of it I had left. I cannot remove myself from your presence."

Well, I'd like to quote that whole section, but it's a few pages long...

So basically, go read it!
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Les Miserables (2012)

January 5, 2013, 11:26 pm
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I just got back from watching Les Miserables and I loved it. Which, seeing that I have loved both the book and the musical based on it forever, is quite a compliment. It was colorful, emotional (I cried at the end!) and, just like the musical, managed to keep the spirit of Hugo's work despite the necessary compressions of the story (though I am always bemused that the compression results in Marius and Cosette's wedding to occur at the same day as Jean Valjean's death. Talk about the worst wedding night ever! And can you imagine future wedding anniversary celebrations? But then they do compress Marius and Cosette's courtship to one day so...)

They added some things (which I loved) and cut some (but not so much that I minded).

I had a great deal of trepidation about the cast living up to the original Broadway cast, but I was mostly pleased. My favorites were Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Eddie Redmayne as Marius - I could rewatch 'I Dreamed a Dream' and 'Empty Chairs at Empty Tables' on an eternal loop (people in the theater were sniffling at both songs, and I can totally see why). I also loved Russell Crowe as Javert (which puts me in the minority, I know) - he is not as good a singer as the theater ones, of course, but his sheer screen presence makes me not care. Ironically, the weak link for me was Hugh Jackman as Valjean. I just kept hearing Colm Wilkinson in my head and Jackman simply couldn't compare (and thus the difference between him and Crowe is apparent - Jackman is a better singer than Crowe but he doesn't have the presence to overwhelm any objective weaknesses in his singing and make any comparisons impossible).

Basically, it was great and now I want to reread the novel. It's funny, despite its interesting take on society and poverty and other things, what stands out the most in my memory are its romantic passages because I have found few other books that convey so vividly the all-consuming feeling of those first days in love. I am going to leave you with this quote from the book, because it's one of my favorite romantic passages...

“He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
One kiss, and that was all.

Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes.

They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp ground, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it.

She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there.

From time to time Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s. A touch that thrilled.
At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

Gradually, they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They had confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already, nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hearts poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other.

When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him: "What is your name?"

My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?"
My name is Cosette.”

Oh, and this:

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.
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Medieval peasants (?) in love - I am so so sold!

January 6, 2013, 1:28 pm
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Les Miserables left me with a wicked crush on Eddie Redmayne, who I have never watched in anything before but who totally stole my heart as Marius. So I went looking for what else I could watch him in and discovered Pillars of the Earth (thanks, hope_fuleigh!)

!!!!! You all are remiss for not mentioning it before because I don't even care who is in it - it's set in the Middle Ages, a period that gets used so rarely in movies/shows and which I am obsessed about. I think it's all about building a Cathedral and various people involved but we all know I am in it for Marius Eddie Redmayne as some sort of mason and his romance with Hayley Atwell. I think at some point he plans to become a monk or something but changes his mind due to love, giving me a bit of a medieval Thornbirds vibe :P Oh, and she is supposed to marry his evil stepbrother and...guys, it's all like a kdrama with sex scenes and kirtles and Eddie Redmayne. How can I lose?

I am getting this ASAP. Have a gorgeous shippy MV:



I am also getting my paws on Birdsong (World War I and all the joy that entails)






And I just realized he was in the recent Tess of the d'Urbervilles adaptation which I own but haven't gotten to (I am a big fan of the 1998 adaptation with Justice Waddell but never did get around to this one. Ahhh, new obsessions are fun!
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