The Seduction Hypothesis, Delphine Dryden

May 13, 2013 by 2 Comments
The Seduction Hypothesis, Delphine Dryden

The Seduction Hypothesis, Delphine Dryden

Based just on the blurb, Delphine Dryden’s The Seduction Hypothesis, should be right up my alley.

A bunch of nerds are headed to a convention by way of a road trip and there is geekery and costumes galore and…it just did not work for me.

I’ve been trying to think about why it didn’t work for me and I think it comes down to the fact that I simply did not buy into these characters. They just…didn’t feel real. I can often suspend my disbelief when it comes to the physical perfection of romance novel characters but I just couldn’t do it here–I know too many people who go to conventions and very, very, very few of them are the perfect physical specimens described in this book.

And this is not to buy into the fake geek fallacy–obviously, all kinds of people can be geeks. That goes without saying. But there are six in the group that goes to this con and the four that the narrative interacts directly with are Hottie McHottersons.  It seems a bit unlikely, especially since other convention attendees were described in ways that made it clear that not everyone there was a Hottie McHotterson and the snideness about an unfortunate costume on a “hefty” man really rubbed me the wrong way.

But anyways, on to the specifics of the book. Lindsay and Ben had been dating but broke up, somewhat messily a few months before BeastCon–which they’d committed to roadtripping to with a few of their friends. Ben though Lindsay had a crush on their friend Ivan, newly partnered with Cami.

Lindsay doesn’t actually have a crush on Ivan. What she has a crush on, if it can be called a crush, is the relationship dynamic between Ivan and Cami. It’s something she wants for herself and when she tried talking about her needs with Ben, he basically blew her off.  Lindsay, see, is interested in exploring BDSM and when she broached the subject by way of a comic she enjoyed she was subjected to a lecture about feminism and how that stuff is degrading, etc. (Not to get too personal, but I had a very similar experience with my former fiancé nearly two decades ago and that part really rang true to me.)

Once they get to the convention, Lindsay ends up working in the booth for the comic–as Sub Red, a submissive character who wears next to nothing and the pieces start to fall into place for Ben–and after some missteps and a hilarious trip to a very pink sex toy shop, they get their freak on and things seem to be working out.  Right up to the point where Lindsay decides that Ben isn’t serious and breaks things off with him, much to Ben’s chagrin. He then–of course–has to prove to her that he is serious.

This is a very, very brief synopsis of the book–the BDSM parts were clearly well-researched and felt authentic to me (although there was a bit about “official” positions and a reference to John Norman that just made my face go all squinchy) and I did like the way the characters used their words–which is important for all kinds of relationships.

I think, ultimately, that it all comes down to voice–the book was more than competently written, the characters were interesting  and did, despite all being Hottie McHottersons, seem realistic but I just couldn’t buy into it. There was something missing from this book for me and I think that if the voice had been more compelling, I would have been more willing to suspend my disbelief than I was.

Filed Under: Romance Tagged With: , ,

Sunday Linkspam: Special Edition!

May 12, 2013 by 2 Comments
Girl's Hair-Do Reveals Love Life

Girl’s Hair-Do Reveals Love Life: A signal and a challenge.

Due to massive link overload, this week’s linkspam had to be broken into two posts! Enjoy!

As with Friday’s post, thanks again to Jessica for her assistance in collecting these links. Much appreciated!

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Linkspam, 5/10/13 Edition

May 10, 2013 by 3 Comments

First, many thanks to Jessica for her wonderful guest post yesterday as well as her contributions to this week’s linkspam!

Second, we have so many links this week that I’ve had to break this into two posts–one for today and one that will post at some point during the weekend.

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Guest Post: New Life, Bonnie Dee

May 9, 2013 by 7 Comments

Note from Natalie: Donna and I are absolutely delighted to have our very first guest post here at the Radish, by the inimitable Jessica from The Hypeless Romantic. Enjoy!

New Life, Bonnie Dee

New Life, Bonnie Dee

I had never heard of Bonnie Dee’s New Life, until a gift link appeared in my inbox, courtesy of a friend who thought I would like it. Well, she was right. New Life (Jan. 2013, self-published) is the love story of twenty-somethings Jason Reitmiller and Anna Stevens who meet in an office stairwell where new attorney Anna has taken teary refuge after a disastrous court performance. Jason, the building’s janitor, takes out his earbuds, turns off the floor buffer, and asks her if she’s ok. They have a sweet, funny, promising conversation, each aware of the other’s attractiveness. Later, they invent reasons to run into the each other — not easy, since Jason works second shift — and soon they are dating.

New Life has a somewhat unusual narrative structure: alternating first person perspectives. I happen to really enjoy first person, and this format gave me first person without the downside of never getting inside the other protagonist’ s head.  It’s not gimmicky: no replaying scenes from one point of view and then another, and I enjoyed viewing the development of the romance from two different, but complementary angles.

There’s no good romance without a good conflict or three, and you can probably guess at one of them: differing class status. Early on, Anna refers to Jason dehumanizingly as “the janitor” and fears her employers’ discovery of her growing friendship with him: “The last thing I wanted was for anyone to see me flirting with the janitor.” Although Jason works for a janitorial service, not directly for the law firm, Anna’s colleague orders Jason to do a menial chore that isn’t within his job description. And, later in the book, Anna hesitates to introduce him to her parents as her boyfriend: “Everything about him from his appearance to his job proclaimed ‘underachiever’— the biggest taboo possible in my parents’ book.”

Jason has internalized the low status of his occupation. He can’t seem to tell anyone he is dating a lawyer without seeming to brag, and, mirroring the incredulous response this apparent romantic mismatch elicits, he frequently asks himself “Why in the world would a successful career woman be interested in a janitor?” But Anna’s romantic interest in Jason has, at the same time, the opposite effect: it helps him to see himself in a more positive light, to feel good about himself. And now we’ve come to a second barrier closely connected to Jason’s class status: he experiences a host of cognitive and physical disabilities as a result of a traumatic brain injury he sustained in a car accident.

If having a hero who is a janitor isn’t unusual enough, here’s a list of the challenges Jason faces: aphasia (difficulty finding the right word), motor (stiff hip and leg), memory (both short and long term), impulse control, vomiting when anxious, depressive episodes, headache, fatigue, sensitivity to light and sound, and self-image issues due to scarring on face and torso. It’s not hard to see how these challenges generate smaller conflicts, for example, when Anna suggests a loud dance club for their first date, or when Jason is reluctant to disrobe during sex.

If this were a less ambitious book, Anna’s love would fix all of Jason’s health challenges, and his class status would amount to a temporary barrier, much like “surprise nobility” in a historical romance. But Jason’s accident occurred three years prior to the start of the novel, and his disabilities are unlikely to disappear.  Recovery is not the road his character needs to travel:

Anyway, that’s not the story I want to tell. Who really needs to hear about comas and thousands of hours of rehab? My story begins the night I was cleaning black shoe marks off the floor, which could be any night since my life became all about industrial cleaners and swabbing toilets. This particular night, I was buffing the corridor floor of the office building where I clean. I remember the Naked Farmers blasting through my headphones, when I saw a woman sitting in the stairwell, head down, shoulders hunched and shaking.

A third thing about Jason that is unusual in romance is, sadly, a potential deal breaker for many romance readers. He can behave badly. Without putting in a spoiler, I’ll just say quite badly, and you can picture both of my eyebrows raised as I do. I liked this, because the tendency to hold disabled heroes up as paragons of naive virtue is one not all romance authors have managed to avoid. Jason has little memory of his life prior to the accident (perhaps the least medically realistic feature of this portrayal of TBI, but very consistent with the literary genre), but discovers that he was not exactly a prince. One of the big challenges of recovery from TBI involves personal identity: is Jason the same person he was before the accident?  If not, which Jason is the “real” one? If he acts impulsively, is that “Jason” or “Jason’s disability”, and how would he know? Questions of personal identity, and especially the question of his moral character, preoccupy Jason:

I can admit when I’ve been a dick. I just can’t seem to stop doing crap like that. It’d be easy to call it part of the impulse control issues brain-damaged people are prone to, but my little sister, Katie, will tell you I’ve always been a douche.

Later, he wonders, “Maybe I’m a jerk at the core.” But New Life raises the question, not just for Jason but for Anna, and for the reader, what is anyone’s “core”? Is acting out of character a sign of our hidden “true self” or a deviation from it? What part of any of us are the unique circumstances, luck, and other aspects of our lives we don’t fully control?

Although Jason’s disabilities are made manifest throughout the text (and, actually, that is one criticism I would make: he rarely acts without being described in a way that brings to light the challenges he faces), the novel consistently normalizes them, or at least places them on a continuum with the challenges anyone without a disability might face. For example, in their first meeting, Jason evidences his halting speech pattern, while Anna describes how she lost track of what she was saying in court and babbles. Jason has his lists (“repatterning”), but Anna engages in “life mapping”.  Jason was only a 21 year old college student who had yet to shed his adolescent selfishness and lack of empathy when his life became focused on mere survival, then recovery. And although New Life is not marketed as “new adult”, the protagonists are younger than I tend to see in recent contemporary romance. They are both just starting out, experiencing their first intense adult romantic relationship, finding a career, and dealing with new financial and emotional independence from their parents. Although in some ways Jason’s journey is very unusual, in other ways his challenges are similar to Anna’s (especially apparent as Anna herself makes some impulsive and hurtful choices) and to any other 24 year old.

Eventually, the question of what part is core personality versus what part is brain injury becomes moot. Jason has to adapt, grow, and change if he wants to live a fully human life, which in a romance novel means developing a deep, meaningful romantic relationship. Many survivors of trauma would object to the way I framed the identity question in the last paragraph, insisting that identity is fundamentally relational, and that therefore rebuilding a self after trauma requires others to bear witness and to actively co-construct  a new narrative.  The way Jason’s relationship with Anna helps him grow in his other relationships — family, friends — is a testament to that idea.

Although there is a fairly high amount of conflict compared to happy moments in New Life, I think the author does a good job showing the attraction Anna feels to Jason.  If the development of her romantic feelings aren’t portrayed as fully as I might have liked, that may be because in general the character of Anna takes a back seat to Jason. The first chapter gives hints of some of Anna’s solo struggles: imposter syndrome, the worry that she’s become a lawyer merely to get to the next rung on the ladder of her parents’ expectations, etc., but none of these bear fruit, and as a result, her character was developed almost entirely in terms of her relationship with Jason. Because I didn’t have as clear a sense as I wanted of who Anna is, I did feel that the HEA while believable, was not, as Jo Beverley once put it at a conference, triumphant.

But New Life was a very rewarding read, with interesting facets I have not even touched upon in this already too long review. True, New Life is not a light fluffy romance. And although the bedroom door stays open, those who seek a lot of sex scenes in their romance should look elsewhere. I often think there is a line of “realism” romances just can’t cross and still work as romances. New Life pushed this line further than I would have thought possible.

Filed Under: Guest Post, Romance Tagged With: , , , ,

Women to Read: Romance & Speculative Fiction

May 8, 2013 by 15 Comments

One of the best things I discovered last month amongst all the various conversations is #womentoread on Twitter –I added lots of new writers to my completely unruly list of books to read (someday). Then I got to thinking: some people might be interested in reading outside their usual genres. So I thought I’d put together a couple of lists of romance that I think speculative fiction readers will enjoy along with explanations as to why and vice versa. The only limit I put on my recommendations was that the author needed to be someone who identified as a woman since what got me thinking about this was #womentoread.

Romance for Speculative Fiction Readers

Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta ChaseA Lady Awakened, Cecilia GrantThe Duchess War, Courtney Milan

I’m sticking with historical authors for this batch of recommendations because I think historical romance has a certain affinity for speculative fiction. Historical romances are, in my opinion, very much like fantasy novels and much like fantasy novels, the setting can and does inform the plot and characterization.

As in speculative fiction, historical romance relies upon an interlocking sequence of research and extrapolation that the story must rest upon–a strong foundation can hold up just about any kind of story. There are so many fantastic books in the subgenre that I had a difficult time picking just three writers to recommend!.

Loretta Chase: Chase is probably my absolute favorite romance author and I’m always recommending her–her books are smart, well-constructed, and thoroughly researched. I’d recommend either Lord of Scoundrels or Mr. Impossible–or both, if you want an idea of Chase’s range as a writer.

Lord of Scoundrels is one of her earlier novels–it was published in 1995–and yet it still feels fresh and revolutionary in so many ways. I can’t even imagine reading it when it was first published.  It must have been mind-blowing.

Jessica Trent is an intelligent and thoroughly self-possessed young woman and Sebastian Ballister, Marquess of Dain is a dissolute blackguard who has never been loved or loved anyone in his life. They have boatloads of chemistry together and it’s just fun to read their interactions. One of the key things about this book is that Dain is, on the surface, a stereotypical “alpha-hole” hero–but because the reader is given his backstory right at the beginning on the book, his alpha-hole-ness is subverted and the reader’s sympathy is gained. It’s a clever bit of storytelling and while it is a bit leaden, it’s also essential because otherwise Dain is essentially irredeemable. I’ve often been tempted to buy a copy of this book, remove the prologue, and hand it to someone who has never read it and see what they think. So much of the book’s success rests on the beginning.

Mr. Impossible is nearly the opposite: it’s funny and features a male protagonist who is basically a lovable and happy-go-lucky guy. Rupert Carsington is not book-smart, but he is emotionally intelligent and he basically falls in love with Daphne from the first moment he meets her. He is absolutely besotted with her intellect and he lets her take the lead on that front as they attempt to locate her kidnapped brother–the entire book is basically an extended rumination on how smart Daphne is and how very, very excellent that quality in her is. The villain of this book is, more or less, a standard issue British imperialist, but rest assured he does get his comeuppance in the end. There is also a completely ridiculous and over the top sex scene in a pyramid during a sand storm. It’s awesome. It’s also my very favorite romance novel of all time.

Cecilia Grant: A Lady Awakened was one of the best romances I read last year. There are many reasons for this but my favorite one is the truly epic bad sex and how it was absolutely right for the story and how, as the two protagonists came to care for each other their physical relationship transformed as well.

Martha is newly widowed and unless she is able to produce a boy child within the next 8 to 9 months, she will lose her home and become a poor relation. Theo is her new neighbor–the son of a minor nobleman, he’s been sent to the country to learn responsibility. Martha sees him as a possible solution to her problem and proposes that she pay him to try to get her pregnant in the next month–she knows this is unethical and it’s not what she wants to do but it is, literally, the only choice available to her. Watching Martha make this choice and still try to remain true to herself and her ideals is really something.

And Grant’s writing is simply gorgeous:

Her hands fell at random places on his back and stayed there, passively riding his rhythm like a pair of dead fish tossed by the sea. Or rather, one dead fish. The other still curled tight, like a brittle seashell with its soft sensate creature shrunk all the way inside.

That’s a sex scene. With dead fish. It’s wonderful. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of Martha at that point in the book–she is trying to be active but not being particularly successful at it–she hasn’t been taught how to be active in her own life: she’s all repressed and brittle and curled in upon herself. And the way she slowly, so slowly opens up is so very powerful. The ending is a bit rushed and didn’t quite work for me–there were too many coincidences–but for a debut novel, this was one hell of a book.

I also just love Grant’s take on romance as a whole, too.

Courtney Milan: I’m going to recommend the first two volumes in her current series, the Brothers Sinister. The first volume, “The Governess Affair” is a prequel novella that sets up the rest of the series–it’s not essential reading but it is useful background knowledge. The Duchess War is the first full-length book in the series and it’s fantastic. Milan is well aware of all the tropes in romance and she is explicitly playing with and exploding them while telling a compelling and moving story about people who feel so, so real.

Min is acutely conscious of her place in society–which is quite marginal, for reasons which are thoroughly explored within the text and which I don’t want to spoil here–and Clermont has bucketloads of unearned privilege that he’s very uncomfortable with. Milan is one of the few writers of historical fiction who is actively working within the restrictions on both women and those not of the upper classes–so often, characters in historical romances are able to move between social classes through the power of love (and buckets of money)–Milan’s body of work makes it evident that this oh-so-common genre convention is a fantasy and that while love is a powerful force, it cannot conquer all.

As for the trope-exploding, there are two very common things that occur in romance that drive a lot of readers up the wall. That would be the evil mother and the baby epilogue–Milan explodes both of them in The Duchess War, right down to the hushed dark room with a terrific amount of tension. And then when it becomes apparent what’s actually going on, it’s just a great ending to the book. And as for the evil mother–she has real motivations and isn’t just a cardboard character there for the purpose of causing trauma to her son.

There’s also a second novella in this series, “A Kiss for Midwinter” and it’s also wonderful–it’s about a couple of secondary characters and the theme of that one is knowledge and anger and horrifying Victorian medical practices. Good stuff. Can’t wait for the next one!

Speculative Fiction for Romance Readers

Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette KowalThe Sharking Knife: Beguilement, Lois McMaster BujoldIn the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker

My recommendations here have a certain something in common with my romance recommendations–these all have a strong thread of romance and they also have fully realized settings that the characters move within.

All three of these writers are firmly grounded in speculative fiction and it is mostly from these tropes these series spring–the romantic elements are essential but the stories wouldn’t be what they are without the speculative elements.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Her fantasy novels are Regency novels but with magic–they’re set during the Napoleonic Wars, a setting that should be very familiar to romance readers In the first book, Shades of Milk and Honey, Jane Ellsworth has a rare talent with glamour–the manipulation of which is considered essential for any well-bred young lady. Along with her sister, Melody, Jane’s life revolves around eligible young men and hopes of marriage. Naturally, Jane’s skill with glamour plays an important role in this book–one thing I found very interesting was the way Kowal subverts the use of magic in her book. Typically, in fantasy novels, magic is a prestigious or desirable activity and yet, in this book it’s an activity fit only for women and men on the fringes of society.

These books are an explicit exploration of women’s roles in society both in and out of marriage and how, even when entering into a marriage that both partners have agreed will be egalitarian, there is still a lot of internalized expectations that need to be overcome.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Bujold is a favorite around these parts, but I’m going to be recommending a series we haven’t covered here and that’s the Sharing Knife quartet. These were written explicitly as an exploration of romance and, as such, the romantic element is explicitly foregrounded while the fantastical elements are much more subtle. There’s a lot going on in these books and I enjoyed them for what they were but many of Bujold’s core audience did not (warning: link contains a lot of “ew, girl cooties”) and wrote the series off after the first volume, Beguilement.

The heart of this book is the relationship between Fawn and Dag and how it develops while they are dealing with magical creatures called “malices”. These books take place in a society that’s trying to rebuild after some sort of magical apocalypse–the malices are a remnant of the catastrophe and the Lakewalkers, Dag’s people, are charged with dispatching them. Fawn comes from people who are more settled and there is a tremendous amount of tension and misinformation between the two groups–most of the tension and conflict in these books comes from the clash of these two (very essential) cultures, not from the fantastic elements.. These books are definitely an experiment on Bujold’s part and while I’m not sure they’re a completely successful experiment even a bad book from Bujold is head and shoulders above a good book from other authors.

Kage Baker: Baker’s Company series is about immortal time travelling cyborgs. Specifically, one named Mendoza who is bitter, prickly, and hates humanity (and for very good reason, i.e., the Spanish Inquisition). And yet they’re also gloriously romantic although it takes many books before Mendoza gets a happy ending. I will note here that the last few books do not work for everyone and even though they worked for me I can absolutely see how the ending is deeply unsatisfying and problematic for other readers. I’ll also note that Baker passed away in 2010 after a short and brutal battle with uterine cancer. She is, still, missed.

In the Garden of Iden is the first book and it’s wonderful–it’s a science fiction historical romance which ends badly (possible understatement of the year) but it’s such a compelling story and the way Baker writes a thoroughly unpleasant character like Mendoza in such a sympathetic way is incredible. Mendoza is made into a cyborg at the beginning of this book and she trains as a botanist–her hope is to be sent someplace far away from people for her first assignment but instead she’s sent to Elizabethan England where she meets Nicholas Harpole and falls in love. Note: things end badly here. There isn’t even a happy-for-now ending.

There is wonk and angst galore in these books and I can’t recommend them highly enough. There’s also a deep and evident authorial love for all the characters and the setting–these are books about California and secret histories and pop culture and nightmare dystopian futures. With immortal time traveling cyborgs.

So to summarize: there are awesome books in lots of different genres. It can’t hurt to try something new–at worst, it’s a DNF and at best you have a new favorite. I’m hoping to make this a regular feature here, so any and all suggestions will be considered for the future.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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