#and then i want you to read the silver devil by teresa denys if you can manage to get ur hands on it

[captain-noir]

just because its 'gothic' doesnt mean abuse is required in a ship. yall like to use that to justify all the problematic stuff its so transparent

ah yes the gothic genre famously devoid of abuse or incest or 'problematic' elements. its ok to admit this isnt a genre you can stomach instead of spewing your sick all over my askbox. i dont expect murder in my serial killer show. i dont expect romance in my romcom. you catching my drift, no?

[vorchagirl]

1 and 5 for the writeblr meme

1. My writing highlight for the year:

That one's easy - after not writing much for 4 years, I found my inspiration and mojo again and started writing ME:A fic again. I had lots of reasons to take a step back from fandom and reset, I just didn't know it would take so long to find myself again. Getting inspired to write, making contact with my fandom friends, and enjoying being creative has been wonderful! So my highlight is just being excited about writing again!

5. My favourite book I read this year

The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys. I stumbled upon this in a second-hand bookshop for 50c and didn't realise what a rare book it was. It's a 70s bodice ripper, and oh my gosh ... it's hard to explain just how good this book is. The Hero is awful - genuinely unapologetic, unlikeable, and he's willing to do anything to get what he wants: murder, torture, rape. And yet, he's one of the most well written characters I've come across, and he's obviously bisexual which isn't made fun of or used to paint him as "less masculine". The heroine is thrust into a dreadful situation, and yet ... she falls for this horrible man who she genuinely can't live without because he protects her from worse things. The plot does not romanticise their relationship, and he isn't painted as a good guy or someone who will try to change. He's a bastard and she knows it, but by the end of the story she loves him anyway and realises that in his own twisted way, he can't live without her either.

It's a very difficult book to track down, but you can get a pdf version online which i recommend. It's a book full of triggers - sexual violence, rape, torture, murder - but it's a genuinely incredible story.

[forthegothicheroine]

My Top 10 Romance Novels

Goodreads says that it’s “romance week”, and who am I to argue?  I’ll be presenting my top 10 romance novels, but first I should explain my tastes: I like my romances pulpy and melodramatic.  I like my heroes dark and sneaky, but not so evil I want to throw them out of a plane.  My ideal romance novel period is in between old school and new school, where the plots are still over the top but the characters are more human.  I’m forever searching for a true gothic bodice ripper, and some day I will find one.

The big rule for this list: nothing that would be shelved as anything other than romance.  No Pride and Prejudice, no Outlander, no Kushiel’s Dart.  Just stuff that is bought and sold as romance.

So here we go!

1. The Windflower by Laura London.  This is the ultimate pirate romance, with espionage and dark backstories and danger-tinged bickering and a pet pig.  I love the characters, and the hero is just right there on the line of darkness where I still believe someone could live happily ever after with him.  There is attempted (but not completed) rape in this book, if that’s a dealbreaker for you, but I found the whole thing to be great fun.

2. For My Lady’s Heart by Laura Kinsale.  Princess Melanthe is probably my favorite romance novel heroine, in that she’s completely unexpected.  She’s the one who’s morally grey, not out of malice but simply because she’s ruthlessly trying to survive courts full of assassins, and is doing a delicate balance of protecting those she loves and staying alive.  (Melanthe could win the Game of Thrones.)  I’m a sucker for ‘knight and lady’ dynamics, too, and the hero was inspired by the Green Knight!

3. Strathgallant by Laura Black.  This is the closest thing I’ve found to a gothic bodice ripper, and also the closest thing I’ve found to a literary version of a reverse harem anime or otome game.  Perdita is about to come into a great fortune if she abides by the condition of marrying one of her foster cousins, whom she hasn’t seen since they were all children- but one of them wants her and that fortune a little too much and is prepared to kill off the competition!  It even has an ending that (possibly) implies a triad!

4. Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small.  If any item on this list is going to make people judge me, it’s this one.  Bertrice Small is the queen of the guilty pleasure, and Skye O’Malley is not your typical romance.  It’s a picaresque about a very stubborn, very lustful woman in the Elizabethan era who marries/sleeps/gets abducted/goes pirating across Europe and the Middle East, loses her memory, goes through husbands like kindling, and tells us that Robert Dudley has the longest genitalia she’s ever seen.  Nothing else in the world is like this book.  It may not be to your taste, but it must be respected.

5. Lothaire by Kresley Cole.  Now this is some dark stuff, warning you now, full of dubious consent.  A vampire lord has captured a woman for an evil goddess to possess, and she decides the only way to save her own life is to seduce her captor.  You may be shaking your head over me right now, but Cole totally drew me in with her hero-villain and self-proclaimed hillbilly heroine, and I need to read the rest of her Immortals After Dark series now.

6. The High Sheriff of Huntingdon by Anne Stuart.  I just love the audacity of this novella- Anne Stuart apparently liked Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham, so she wrote a romance story about him.  It’s great!  He’s villainous and terrible, and his unwilling bride never lets him forget that he’s terrible, and though the end kind of implies she’s going to be a Lady Godiva figure who gets him to be less terrible, the important thing to me was that she was happy.�� And I was certainly very happy.

7. Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas.  Yeah, I like villainous heroes.  This one isn’t actually so bad- he’s a rake who committed one scandal too many for society, which makes him a good target for a girl seeking a marriage of convenience. It’s often held up as one of the best regency romances, and for good reason; the protagonists defrosting towards each other is super sweet and sexy. 

8. Lord of Danger by Anne Stuart.  If Anne Stuart based The High Sheriff of Huntingdon on the Sheriff of Nottingham, I wouldn’t be surprised if this one was based on some version of Rasputin.  The hero is a court wizard, relied upon but also feared and disdained, and the heroine ends up married to him after being summoned to the court of her abusive brother.  He may be spooky, but he’s the only one she can really trust- and the same is true the other way.

9. The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys.  Forget what I said about Lothaire, THIS is as dark a hero as I’ll go for.  He’s a Renaissance Italian nobleman, and unlike Princess Melanthe, there’s no excuse for the ruthless cruelty he displays.  So why do I like this?  I feel for the heroine, trapped as a preyed upon concubine, I find the “hero” unfortunately attractive, and it contains the best grovel scene I’ve ever read.  Plus it works as a straightforward historical political thriller, as well.

10. Knights of the Round Table: Gawain and Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot by Gwen Rowley.  What can I say, I gotta support my boys.  I’m cheating by including both of these in one entry, but I just want to say I really love how well Gwen Rowley plays with Arthurian legends, making loveable characters out of these classic archetypes.  I was especially surprised by how much I liked the Lancelot entry- I’m already in love with Gawain, so it took more to win me over for Lance and Elaine.  The last book for me to read in the trilogy is Geraint, who I thought was a dillweed in the Tennyson poem, so I can’t wait to see how she pulls it off!