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

[joannerenaud]

Flesh and the Devil by Teresa Denys-- a rant

To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, hated this book.

It's too bad, because I've heard raves about Teresa Denys's work for years. I tried to read The Silver Devil back in 2011, but I was put off by the MMC's cruelty and violence. Last year, I started reading up on 16th century Spain, and Denys's book Flesh and the Devil was one of the few HRs set in Spain at all. So I decided to give it a try. I'd read a lot of old school romances since then, so I figured I could handle it.

So, it turned out I could handle it. However, it took me three months to read it. Three months! The only reason I finished it is so I could write this review. A lot of people do love Denys's work, and as she died tragically in a car crash in 1987, I will hold off on full snark: instead, I will make a compliment sandwich. So here goes.

First of all, the concept of this book is very cool. It's 17th century Spain, and a naive young noblewoman, Juana, who after unsuccessfully attempting to elope with the boy next door, is shipped off to marry an inbred titled monster, a duke, who lives in a terrifying palace. The palace in question drips with menace. It is peak Gothic in all the best ways-- Virginia Coffman or Victoria Holt would be proud. I wanted to luxuriate in this awful place. We do get to see quite a bit of it too, as Juana attempts to navigate it, in the first half of the book.

There's also a lot of fun historical tidbits, and I enjoyed the politics-- especially the key role the Hapsburgs played in the book-- and the depiction of an unusual time period. 17th century Spain is an unusual setting, to say the least, and I was getting excited for something dark and unusual.

But then hero starts playing a major part in this book, and that's when my interest cratered. The MMC is the inbred duke's servant/valet/man-of-all-work, and he is a redhaired English mercenary with green eyes so bright they might as well be radioactive. Literally (and I mean this) in every scene he shows up in, he's described as some synonym of cold. He's cold, he's icy, he's austere, he's clinical, he's scientific, he's sardonic, he's detached, remote, satiric, etc. etc. etc. If I drank a shot every time this happened, I would have alcohol poisoning. This happens over and over and over again, for the book's entire stretch of 170k words, so I was so done by the end. This guy was so boring. If I'm going to read about a monstrous anti-hero in my bodice-ripper, I'd want him to have an emotion or two, you know? However, even though he's cold, icy, etc., the author is eager to assure us that every woman finds him the sexiest man in the world, and he's the greatest duellist in the world too, even though his idea of fighting is lifting men over his head and chucking them at other people, like Conan the Barbarian.

Anyway, he's a monster too, like his boss. He hates Spain and Spanish people, especially noble Spanish women; he has a massive chip on his shoulder, and he is also massively entitled. Since the heroine insults him, he decides that he's going to teach her a lesson by raping her. Then he kills his inbred boss, and after they leave the Gothic castle, he kidnaps her and blackmails her into marrying him, which is somehow OK for Plot Reasons. He keeps telling her she owes him a debt, and she better be grateful. The story then devolves into a very long and very protracted mess with aimless wandering about the wilderness and last minute baddies traipsing onto the stage and then dying by accident. Anything remotely political or historical is tossed aside for the world's most boring road trip. Also, the Inquisition is, of course, brought up a whole bunch of times, but for all the blather about it, it never plays a role. After a great deal of wandering, the hero is revealed to be an aristocrat by a deus-ex-machina lawyer who is practically brought down by wires, and our Catholic main characters travel to an England which is either run by Cromwell or Charles II. Good times!

So yeah. The romantic arc just did. not. work. The hero remains a robot until 80% of the way through, and he barely thaws at the end after the heroine is all "I LOVE YOU!!!!" I didn't understand why. I will quote you the paragraph where she realizes how this guy raping her repeatedly, kidnapping her, and forcing her to marry him was really was the best thing to happen in her life:

He had taught her to fight him when she was a sheltered child who knew nothing but pampering and indulgence, and now she would use the spirit that he had roused to fight on his side against death.

And later:

But she could no longer live out her life to a pattern. She had long ago broken with her father's plans for her destiny, as perfect and regular and destructive as a spider's web. Bartolome's [the duke's] death had snapped the chief thread of it, setting her free without the sticky threads of tradition and expectation to impede her. Thanks to the man who hated her, she was free to make her own pattern, choose her own destiny. She could go anywhere in the world. . . .

In other words: "I was so pampered and sheltered, his abuse taught me how to fight and become a real woman!" This reminds me of Sansa's "arc" in the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Abuse and suffering can make you a better, stronger person! It can make you free! But even Sansa in GoT-- while somehow empowered by her abuse-- didn't fall for her abuser, Ramsay. Somehow this book is worse than GoT in its depiction of abuse. That's really something.

The characterization is not great in this book. Not only is the MMC a dull emotionless entitled robot, the FMC is all the worst tropes of early romance fiction, packaged into one character. She's feisty, but also dumb as a rock. She continually opens her mouth and says the first thing that crosses her mind, without even thinking for one second if it's a good idea. Her maid kills herself, and the FMC barely reacts, only to express how annoyed she is that people didn't tell her sooner. (This suicide is later retconned in the book to the inbred duke killing the maid instead. I told you, this book is a mess.)

The other big issue I had with this book is the way Spain and the Spanish is depicted. Our English hero is the only rational character in the entire book: whereas the Spanish are a "predominantly dark race" where everyone is impetuous, irrational and governed by scheming priests. Also, there is not one attractive locale in this entire book. The palace is place of horrors, whereas the wilderness is one brown, sand-blasted wasteland, with brackish streams and barren plains. Basically, it's all a shithole. This is a pretty typical 1950s English depiction of southern Europe, and it reminds me of midcentury authors like Henry Treece or Mary Stewart. But it's disappointing to see these tropes repeated in a book from the 1980s.

There's a lot of things I frankly hated about Flesh and the Devil. But Denys's prose is truly beautiful. Here's a quote from one of my favorite passages:

She was flying, she thought as she felt the hard thrust of his possession within her: her body moved in an instinctive response that she was not aware of, opening itself to delight, and she thought inconsequently that it was like being mounted on some great winged horse and soaring out over the whole world. Blind rapture surged inside her as passion gripped them both, and she could hear herself moaning with a new poignant, agonizing sweetness that she could neither bear, nor bear it to cease. Above her, as she opened her eyes, she could see the azure sky darkening to a fierce blend of copper and velvet blue, and the water - the water in the pool was liquid gold, the last reflection of the dying sun. No wonder, she was thinking, that Icarus flew too near the sun and melted his waxen wings.

Denys's prose is so gorgeous-- I truly wish she had lived longer to write more. After reading it, I thought of what I wanted to see here-- I would have liked the action to stay at the creepy palace, rather than leaving it. The MMC did not work as a character, but the duke's villainous uncle has an Italian henchman named Martinetti who reminded me of Allegretto from Laura Kinsale's For My Lady's Heart. In his brief scenes, he steals the show with his elegance, wit and ruthlessness. I wanted to see more of him, rather Coldy McClinical.

So there you go. I have heard The Silver Devil is a better plotted and paced book. Maybe I'll try reading that again eventually. But for now, I think I should reread some Laura Kinsale.

[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.

[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?

[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!