Kathryn Troy's Blog, page 6

Chivalry is Dead: The Travesty that is A Knight in Shining Armor

[image error] No matter what time-travel romance I read lately, I just can't seem to hit the right note. Reading A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Devereux just made me want to hit something, period.

Female readers usually come to romance for (the romance, yes), but also to see female-centric plots with confident and interesting heroines. This was an epic fail on that front. Dougless goes from pleasing one asshole (Robert, the live-in boyfriend who manipulates her for her money) to Nicholas, the ostensible romantic lead. Except she also does everything to please him, even when he treats her like the dirt beneath her shoes. Nicholas never ever forgets the class difference between them, and while they spend close to a hundred pages on a twentieth-century shopping spree, she's conducting the transactions and carrying the bags. She always walks behind him, not beside him, and multiple times she says explicitly how she's struggling to keep up with him. Towards the end, he tries to push her to be the mistress to the woman he will marry. So again- this is not love. This is a side-piece. He does indicate that he has a low opinion of adulterous women. And yet he has no qualms about his own (multiple) infidelities. So, not exactly a chemistry matchup that I was rooting her. In this book, the best case scenario would have been for Dougless to ditch not one but two chauvinistic pigs, and realize her own self-worth. There are some especially cringe-worthy lines, to the tune of "I was just pleasing the wrong person," and Nicholas (the actual love interest, not the "jerk!") saying that he "loves a woman's no, because it usually means yes." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, so. Seeing red. Now let's top that off with some utter ridiculousness, shall we? Whether it's used as a romantic plot device or not, the concept of time-travel is one of science fiction. Time after time, romance writers fail to recognize this, or at least fail to think that how this supernatural mechanism works in their universe has to make some kind of sense. Here, there's a strange and off-putting mix between it being God's will, and being activated by sexual activity. Call me stupid, but the medieval version of Jesus would not send people back and forward through time to find each other after extramarital affairs. Also, the use of the doppleganger effect to solve any lingering loneliness of the characters is trite. Apparently, it's the outside that counts. As long as the new guy looks like the old guy, I'm sure you'll fall in love with him all over again, or, really, for the first time.

What was once overwhelmingly red coating my vision is now black.

K Rating: 1/5

Holy fucking God. Can someone please do this right???

Mind-Bendingly Good Horror: The Grip of It

I go into contemporary horror fiction warily. I must, because so much horror that has been written in recent years is not horror at all, but melodrama and social commentary parading as horror. I'm not saying those elements can't be important to horror literature, but when they swallow up the main tenets of strange and distubing fiction, then what you've done is pay lip service to the genre, rather than push it forward.

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc is not in that camp. It's a short, sharp novel, where the jaunty prose keeps you on your toes. The economy of words and the superlative word choices given the sparsity of the sentences drew me in. As I got deeper into the book, I realized that that sort of voice was necessary to tell this story properly, and produced an added layer of atmosphere and mood to the narrative, a sort of menace and urgency laid throughout.

Haunted house stories are nothing new. In fact, the back copy for this book is rather generic, and doesn't at all do justice to what lays just behind the cover. But being a great fan of Burnt Offerings but not a great fan of re-reading fiction, I hoped for something that could satisfy that craving for something that went beyond the saturated tropes.

This book delivered that in spades. The haunting is something that happens both within and without the characters, in the physical realm as well as in their pysches and, in the case of Julie, their bodies. But there was also a good grounding in the contemporary world and how people would react to such phenomena. All the senses were utilized here (they always should be, but they seldom are), and the collection of strange happenings in this story gave a very robust and tense picture of the lives of this couple in their new house.

The architecture of the house could have been pushed further, but the focus was meant to be on the individuals, not on a house that's sentient (it's not), so I don't fault Jemc for that. The sometimes complete breakdown of time and space were executed perfectly. That's not an easy thing to do, and have it translate on the page in a way that a reader not inside the author's head will understand. Here's where Jemc's ability to write exactly what she means is so important, and makes the prose transcendent.

At first, I didn't appreciate the constant switching of the POV, but I realize that it was absolutely necessary to highlight how both James and Julie are experiencing the house - in ways that are sometimes the same and sometimes different, and to see how what they keep from each other vs what they share makes all the difference. It wasn't melodramatic in the slightest- it served the plot, a solid horror plot, and said something deeply resonant and important about relationships and self-realization at the same time. To all those other horror authors out there, making tons of money on books that just flat-out don't scare me (I'm looking at you, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, John Langan): this is how it's done.

K. Rating: 5/5

Great Ideas Given Short Shrift: The Atrocities

When I first picked up The Atrocities , I thought it was a novel. As the story builds from the typical governess moves into the help an old, monied family, only to realize that her charge is dead, I was intrigued by the ways in which this story cut against the grain and created something fresh from these staid stereotypes. Which of course means that the parents are mad, but in ways that are more complicated and interesting than you might think. But the good setup in the beginning and the really well-developed characters crumble apart much too quickly, because there's just not enough room for this great concept to grow. Add to that the bizarre and deeply disturbing dreamlike imagery that again, was more flashy than substantive, and I felt that this short work as a terrible, shameful waste of what could have been a really excellent story.

K Rating: 2/5

Frustrating Romance: Lady in Waiting

I can't only read Tessa Dare when I'm in the mood for historical romance. I recognize this. But that doesn't mean I've yet found a suitable alternative. I gave it my best shot with Marie Tremayne's Lady in Waiting, but although the first chapters depicting Clara Mayfield's escape from a monster of a groom were so promising, that promise went unfulfilled.

The only chemistry on the page between Clara, turned into Helen the housemaid, and William the Earl of Ashworth, was a severe case of insta-lust, which felt empty and flat, especially in the case of repetitive language and repetitive non-encounters that all start and end almost the exact same way. There's no emotional attachment between Clara and the earl, namely because they have no meaningful interactions. Any time there's a possibility of it, like when the earl is divulging his past trauma, it's overwhelmed by the return of the insta-lust in the most inappropriate places, and never moving beyond that point. So as much as I wanted to like this story, it was extremely frustrating, and I found myself dropping it in the middle of a chapter to do other things- like laundry - which should tell you all you need to know.

I also have to take umbrage with the unbelievability of the premise as it's framed here. I can't say that earls and maids don't fall in love, but the stringent class standards of this period are paid an empty lip service here without it being really addressed and organic to the plot in an authentic way. Tremayne plays loose and fast with the rules too much, to the point where it's clear they don't actually matter in this book, and it makes me question whether the the author understands at all how pervasive those divisions were. At no time do I buy that Clara passes as a maid, and at no time is she overwhelmed by her delicacy and naivete, which she absolutely would be. That should be part of this story, but it isn't. We're just supposed to swallow these loosely bound threads that put Clara and William constantly in the same room.

I also don't buy a virginal bluestocking having the same urges as a rake. Those desires can be awakened, yes, but the amount of female initiation cuts against the character that Tremayne has attempted to paint here of a sheltered heiress.

Worse still, it's made clear over time that the only way the characters' attraction would be acceptable was if she was high-born. How convenient. Except it's not, because that underlying message makes me want to pull my hair out. Should I root for the dude who would only love her if she had the right birth and blood? It turns out fine in the end, but it's too little too late, after all the mistreatment she's suffered throughout the novel.

I only realized how much I like the male POV in such stories when it was taken away. It was there, sort of, but they were few and far between, and extremely unbalanced between Clara's dominating narrative and Will's, and not in a way that progresses the plot even as you switch characters, which is something Dare is a master of. Most of the time in this case, it becomes a retread of events you've already read about, which of course added to the plodding, repetitive nature of the story.

I think I've made myself clear.
K. Rating: 2/5

Surprised Again: Gonjiam - Haunted Asylum

Every time my husband suggests watching another found-footage movie, I pull a face and make some horrible sound. Not another one! I always protest that I've seen enough found-footage to last me a lifetime, and that it's not and will never be my favorite sub-genre.

Yet every time lately, every time I give in to this impulse, I am pleasantly surprised. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum the Korean film where the characters are amateur paranormal investigators, videotaping themselves as they visit renowned haunting locations and try to transgress local legends and mysteries. In this case, it's a haunted asylum, and the dreaded room 402 where the last set of people to go in disappeared screaming.

The premise of investigating and videotaping for social media, with the motive of gaining a tremendous amount of views (and money), was something I haven't seen before in film, but again, made the method of the film make perfect, organic sense. It also justified all the recording technology that each of the characters was toting. I especially appreciated the narrative and how it interwove the scripted nature of the video as they doctored it for viewing, and the stuff that happens on-screen for which there is no script.

Room 402 was really special. It reminded me a lot of the "red room" trope that we've seen in things like Netflix's Haunting of Hill House, if that's not saying too much. But suffice it to says it's always utterly terrifying, as are the unbelievably simple effects that still have power on screen.

This was absolutely the scariest film I've seen in a good long while. My husband and I actually clutched each other while watching. We haven't done that since college, which was a lifetime and a million horror movies ago. There weren't just cheap scares. They were really effective ones.

I was scared. Not an easy feat. Bravo.

K. Rating: 5/5

Solid, Suspenseful Thriller: Watching You

I have a few of Lisa Jewell's books on my to-read list, but I picked up Watching You first. I'm glad to say that those other books will stay on my to-read list, because this title was very good and left me wanting more from this author.

This book reminded me of some of my recent British TV faves, like Broadchurch and Marcella. The characters are a small, tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone else, and there were plenty of interesting character flaws to keep me invested as the narrative moved (sometimes rather quickly) from one point-of-view to the next. It was a bit jarring at the very beginning, but the book fell into a groove where I was never disappointed to flip from one POV to another, and it kept me interested in all the different perspectives. Most successfully, all the perspectives came together as one of the main characters, Joey, obsesses over the charming local teacher Tom Fitzwilliam, just as the skeletons in his closet come creeping to the fore. You really got the sense of the deep dark undertones of the whole town, and nobody's hands are perfectly clean. I liked that. A lot. I also liked that the characters spanned the adults and their teenage children, and past actions as well as present ones, so you get a holistic picture of the town and how parents' behaviors have a profound impact on how these children navigate their own worlds and their adolescence. It's a lot of stuff to balance, but Jewell was a master juggler here, and that is hard to find.

K Rating: 5/5

Officially in Love: The Duchess Deal

Yep. I already sort of knew this, but the start of her Girl Meets Duke series confirms it: Tessa Dare is my favorite romance author, and I am so grateful for her.

There's just enough different in each of her sensual tales to keep me interested, but she's utterly consistent when it comes to characters that you can fall in love with. And The Duchess Deal  of a marriage of convenience between a scarred duke who sees himself as a monster to a vicar's daughter who struggles with her own worth was a nice way of showing that you can in fact have love grow from lust and make a premise like this really work.

I also loved the Thursday tea circle, which will presumably be the heroines of the rest of this series. There were so many echoes from her Spindle Cove set in a positive way - a bunch of women atypical for their time that makes you just want to be friends with the lot of them. I'm eager to see them get their happy endings.

In the meantime, I will relish this book for a while. The witty banter and romantic tension was perfectly paired with the sexual tension of their nighttime trysts in darkened rooms - she hit just the right note on that front. I really loved this particular title - it's gonna stick with me for a bit.

K. Rating: 5/5

A Very Fine Sequel to a Medieval Mystery: One Corpse Too Many

While I struggle to hit the right note with Medieval -period romance, I'm very glad to have found Brother Cadfael's mystery series. The age of superstition is a perfect setting for a mystery, although I was missing that otherworldly aspect in the second volume, One Corpse Too Many . I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, in which Brother Cadfael, a retired Crusader, works to unravel a murder surrounding the exhumation and reburial of a local saint. In this new book, the context is shifting to English civil war, which I'm sure is exciting for some readers and history enthusiasts, but which has never been my thing. So that did water down my enjoyment of this a bit, as the plot was more focused on vying military factions in a war of succession and the intrigues of a cadre of young people drawn into the conflict.

Despite that, Cadfael is as wily as he was in the first novel, and already in this second installment there's a strong affinity for his character, which bodes well for the rest of the series. So too is this character's approach to morality in the religious context of his position. The fact that he's a worldly man means he sees in gray, not just black and white, and that makes him infinitely more relateable and worthy of the reader's admiration and respect. The rest of the characters are also very well drawn-out, as in the first book, and from that perspective the story is compelling, if not the reasons for their actions and a secret almost-stolen treasure. Again, you can see this is probably very exciting for most people, but subjectively speaking it just wasn't my cup of tea.

What is my cup of tea, though, is murder through poisoning and a focus on Medieval herbalism, which is where we're headed for the third installment. There's also an intriguing tie-in to the woman Cadfael almost married. I am very much looking forward to that.

K. Rating: 4/5

Didn't Deliver: Relic

I'm extremely picky with my sci-fi. Anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that, because I review sci-fi very very sparingly. But  Relic by Alan Dean Foster drew me in with the premise that Earth is treated as a sort of mythological place in a cosmic future, and that the last Earthling alive might discover the clues he needs to finally go home again.

That's quite a stretch from the truth of this story where Ruslan, the last known Homo Sapiens in the universe, helps the alien population of some other distant planet so that they can study it the way we might be interested in uncovering lost civilizations in the Americas, and so that he can see a planet that he has never actually known, but has only heard about in lore as a child of human planets growing up on some other planet.

This was the main flaw with a majority of the writing - this lack of connection. It's hard to sympathize or empathize with Ruslan, who hasn't made meaningful connections with his alien neighbors/captors, or with the competing alien civilizations in a race to claim Earth-based discoveries (what the actual draw is for these other people is never made clear). There just wasn't the emotional heft or impact of a story ostensibly about the last man of Earth, if not on Earth. And then, all of the premises for the story just fall apart at the end, and we're left with a story that amounts to a useless goose chase, or just a cosmic misunderstanding. It didn't give me the "aha" moment that I'm sure was intended; it just left me thinking I'd wasted my time on a faulty premise with no real feeling to the writing.

K. Troy: 1/5

Better than Expected: Wicked and the Wallflower

I said once before on this blog that, after reading one of her novels with a jerk for a romantic lead, I was not interested in Sarah Maclean romances. Of course, nothing is ever absolute.

I decided to give it one more go with Wicked and the Wallflower , and I can say that I was pleasantly surprised. When Devil (again another ridiculous name) reluctantly falls in love with Felicity Faircloth (which had to be said in full every time, again annoying), the chemistry between them worked well. I don't understand how a prim and proper lady decides that, if she doesn't fit into high society she might as well be a criminal, but the attraction that Devil feels for her and his sense of not being good enough to be with her was compelling. The steamy scenes were better in this iteration as well, without the pretext of Devil being a total expert in women's bodies and looking to show off more than anything, which is what I got out of the last book's rake.

The lesson here: there are still some elements in Maclean's writing that make no sense, and even rise to the level of being irritating. Making a cohesive world is something I find done much more successfully in Tessa Dare's novels. But, even provided with a male character that isn't cruel, the romance can work.

I suppose I just have to be really choosy with this author. Which, honestly- when you're reading a romance novel as a quick jaunt in between epic fantasy series, who wants to have to think that hard about this?

K. Rating: 3.5/5