Reading While Black

Book three in her Charmed and Dangerous series, Sin and Scandal in England suffers from the same ailment as the previous installment, though the suspense is even more tautly developed.

From the blurb: Succumbing to Sin…

Bethany Munro was once madly in love with dashing Ian Rockwell. Then Ian left on a mission for the crown, and Bethany was forced to put her heart aside…until one glittering night when she spies him across a crowded ballroom, and the feelings she once felt come rushing back. But she has her secrets…

…and so does he. Sir Ian Rockwell has led a dangerous life and is now a suspect in a crime he did not commit. He never imagined the naive girl he knew so long ago could be the beauty standing before him now or that she could help prove his innocence. But in a world of glamor and intrigue where nothing is as it seems, their perilous game of seduction soon turns into a night of sin, a night where they both discover the only thing more dangerous than passion is falling love.

Bethany Munro proved to be most interesting character I’ve read in a long time. A scientist and a teacher, she is firmly planted in the middle class. Sir Ian Rockwell himself isn’t the typical titled spy his family being on the wrong side of every conflict in English history, as he informs Bethany near the beginning of the story. The two reunite at a house party, a setting inherently rife with clandestine connotations. Bethany is there to discover what happened to her fellow teacher and Ian, apparently retired from his spy duties, has come on the arm of a promiscuous countess–the sister of the host–with his own agenda. An interesting set-up and one I enjoyed, but as was apparent in Wild and Wicked in Scotland, the relationship between Ian and Bethany took second place to their sleuthing–at least a solid relationship. Most of what they did when together was lust and kiss.

Ian has come to discover the link between the assassination of the Prime Minister and his family and the host, Lord Whitely, who is the head of an organization rumored to be an anarchist one. Bethany happens to be a member of the group, and Thomas deftly paints the picture of an idealistic young woman whose hero reveals himself to be false. Thomas strews a few believable red herrings along the paths of Ian and Bethany, red herrings that kept me guessing and turning the page. She also tosses in a surprise and a credible barrier to the relationship between our protagonists.

After closing the book I was left amazed with the amount of action Thomas packed into 370+ pages. After a tragic death and betrayal mars the house party, the setting moves to an inn in Yorkshire, then to Ian’s own seat in the country and then to Bethany’s school, where they reach their denouement with the true enemy. What really impressed me was that Thomas held no punches. The spy business was a dirty one and Bethany found herself forced to make a few sordid decisions in order to save her own life and that of Ian’s.

This book borders on B- range because of the twists, but a ultimately garners a C because it’s supposed to be a romance but never develops one. The Charmed and Dangerous series is a good one and one to watch for. Now if only Thomas would work on the romantic relationship instead of the lusting between the hero and heroine!

I’ve followed Thomas’ career since being blown away by her 2004 release Must Have Been the Moonlight, but none of her follow-up novels have ever repeated that experience. Unfortunately Wild and Wicked in Scotland was not the book to repeat it. Book two in Thomas’ Charmed and Dangerous series, which she describes as “Mission Impossible in Victorian England”, it is full of action and adventure. But it’s short on romance.

From the blurb: When Cassandra Sheridan agreed to an arranged marriage to the Earl of Hampstead, she never dreamed the cad wouldn’t even bother to appear for their betrothal ball. It seems her intended cares more for gallivanting than meeting his bride to be! So Cassie decides to enjoy an adventure of her own and sets off across Scotland … and meets a dashing stranger who has elevated dueling and deception to an art form.

A dedicated spy on a mission, the Earl of Hampstead has more on his mind than a silly party. Now fate has thrown him together with a vivacious lady whom he must protect from harm, and whose sensuous beauty is proving most distracting. Worse
still, Devlyn is horrified to discover she’s the very woman he’s engaged to marry!

With their lives and reputations in equal peril, do they dare surrender to their irresistible desires?

Basically what the blurb says is what the story is. Nothing more or further is to be found in the book. Cassandra Sheridan is 5′10, a bit of a bluestocking and plays the cello. Devlyn St. Clair is one of England’s master spies. And that’s about it as far as character development. Over at AAR my description of feeling that Devlyn and Cassie were like two unyielding lumps of clay is correct. Thomas presented a few characteristics that make them “Cassie” and “Devlyn”, but there was little to no character development–and seeing that their internal angst was pretty much useless in the context of the plot, I saw WaWiS more of a historical thriller than a romance.

Taken as a thriller it was pretty well done. I don’t know about the complete accuracy of it, but it felt believable and Thomas kept the pace speeding along. In a nutshell, Devlyn has made an enemy of a Russian statesman and has killed the man’s son in a duel to the death over his wife. Devlyn’s twin brother Dominick was rumored to have committed treason and Devlyn has committed himself to clearing his brother’s name. After Cassie’s appearance and a bit of bumbling around Scotland, she finds herself at the heart of the conspiracy and her loyalties torn between the man she loves and her American heritage. It sounds a bit convoluted on paper but in the story it makes sense.

The book earns a solid C because Thomas kept up the suspense thread despite faltering on the romance. If she can flesh out her characters more and develop a romance alongside the action, this spy series will be well on its way to elevating the typical “Spy Historical Romance” we’ve come to know and love.

Claiming the Courtesan was one of the most controversial romances released this year. I was enticed by Campbell’s writing but put off reading the book because of the perceived subject matter (at this point in my reading career, I’m rather bored of sex-based plots) but boy am I glad I read this.

Campbell’s writing is exquisite. Beautifully-wrought and emotion-packed, she plucks the strings of tension with the aplomb of a master wordsmith.

He would marry her, and possess her in every way possible.

The Duke of Kylemore knows her as Soraya, London’s most celebrated courtesan. Men fight duels to spend an hour in her company. And only he comes close to taming her. Flying in the face of society, he decides to make her his bride; then, she vanishes, seemingly into thin air.

Dire circumstances have forced Verity Ashton to barter her innocence and change her name for the sake of her family. But Kylemore destroys her plans for a respectable life when he discovers her safe haven. He kidnaps her, sweeping her away to his isolated hunting lodge in Scotland, where he vows to bend her to his will.There he seduces her anew. Verity spends night after night in his bed… and though she still plans her escape, she knows she can never flee the unexpected, unwelcome love for the proud, powerful lover who claims her both body and soul.

Two books instantly came to mind when I read the blurb: Anne Stuart’s A Rose at Midnight and Lydia Joyce’s The Veil of Night. But where Stuart falters in creating a credible heroine and a believably reckless hero, and where Joyce failed to write sex scenes that meant something, Campbell excels.

One thing that struck me while reading the many sex scenes was that those of forced seduction and/or rape were used to progress the characters and the plot. Kylemore’s first rape of Verity was brutal and passionless, the sort of physical response you’d receive from a monster. Basically, he ravaged her, and not in a titillating way. I’d heard so much conjecture about the forced seduction/rape scenes that I expected to feel outraged and angry with the character of Kylemore, but as written, Campbell made them what they were: the expression of a man attempting to assert power. She made Kylemore be what he is: a selfish, self-serving duke. The most powerful man in the realm. Many times I feel we as readers dislike forced seduction because the author has not gone there, she hasn’t taken the hero to that dark place. They toss in a few “alpha” characteristics alongside “soothing” scenes to keep us placated that yes, this is the hero. So when the hero forces himself onto the heroine, it just feels like a betrayal of the “soothing” scenes they tossed into the book. Kylemore started off dark and tortured without fail, so the progression of his character felt realistic and at the end he seemed changed, even “lightened”.

The character of Verity was an interesting one. Campbell didn’t shy away with her profession: she was a courtesan, a woman who slept with men for money. Granted her experience wasn’t all that great, but she’d suffered from the effects of her position not only mentally but socially. Interestingly enough, she still fell under the “heroine as savior” despite her bad girl past. Which raises the question: who says the heroine of a tortured hero have to be that innocent virginal miss? Verity did have her own demons to face but on the whole, she was pretty well-adjusted.

What knocked this book down from an A to a B was the Duchess of Kylemore. Typical soap opera mother. She was seen at the beginning of the book and at the end, which weakened both parts considerably.

However, despite my enjoyment of this book and the wonderful writing, there was a sort of empty quality. The characters never truly touched me. CTC was glossy and emotional, but the depths never felt plumbed, I never felt the gut-wrenching sensation I’ve experienced with my favorite dark historicals. But by starting off so strong, Campbell does remain an author to watch and I look forward to reading Untouched.

The mark of an excellent, or A grade, novel is when it leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling and I immediately want to read it again.

Which is what I experienced when I read the last page of Eloisa James’ Desperate Duchesses.

James was an auto-buy author who tumbled from the list after being disappointed by her Essex Sisters Quartet. With a fall that monumental it was a given I’d be leery or even eschew anything James writes.Afraid to even look at this book due to past experience and bad press from readers online, it was only when I grew fed up with my reading slump that I did the smart thing and borrowed the book from the library. *g*

And geez did I make a mistake. Desperate Duchesses was delightful, hilarious, sexy and witty, filled with James’ trademark sharp dialogue and literary references. James once again starts a new intersecting series with a large cast of characters and POVs, but it has that magic she possessed with her wonderful Duchess Quartet.

The blurb states: A marquess’s sheltered only daughter, Lady Roberta St. Giles falls in love with a man she glimpses across a crowded ballroom: a duke, a chess player of consummate skill, a notorious rake who shows no interest in marriage — until he lays eyes on Roberta.

Yet the Earl of Gryffyn knows too well that the price required to gain a coronet is often too high. Damon Reeve, the earl, is determined to protect the exquisite Roberta from chasing after the wrong destiny.

Can Damon entice her into a high-stakes game of his own, even if his heart is likely to be lost in the venture?.”

Of course Roberta and Damon end up together, but James shines with this type of plot–no doubt due to her love of Shakespeare. Dominating the series is Jemma, the 28 yr old Duchess of Beaumont, who has just returned from Paris to be as dutiful a wife as she can since the duke’s collapse in the House. Jemma is Damon’s sister, Roberta’s distant cousin, and the best chess player in France. She’s also chums with a bunch of other English duchesses. The reasons for the failure of the Beaumont marriage are mentioned a few times, but what I enjoyed was that the duke wasn’t anxious to grovel at Jemma’s feet for his past transgressions. In fact, Jemma and Elijah seem to have never been in love, and don’t appear to have any plans to fall for one another. The object of Roberta’s affections, the Duke of Villiers, is suitably rakish, dissolute and jaded, but with a catch–he’s a dandy! I got a kick out of the descriptions of his clothing:

“His valet eased a coat of saturated rose over his shoulders; he rejected it as clashing with the [yellow] breeches…he settled on a full-cut frock coat with his trademark exuberant embroidery: a tracing of leaves and yellow roses…finally he placed a patch high, just below his eye where it would emphasize his lashes.“

It was refreshing to read about the most jaded rake in England being the most in line with current fashions since it is common for a historical romance rake to disregard sartorial cares.

Finally we have Roberta’s father, the poetry-spouting Mad Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury. A more lovable and well-drawn father can’t be found in a work of fiction. The relationship between Roberta and her father was touching, realistic and very funny.

In fact, there were many scenes and bits of dialogue that had me snorting with laughter. Particularly the exchanges between Jemma and Elijah:

–in response to he forcing from her the terms for her chess match with Villiers; “‘Dear me,’ Jemma said. ‘It seems to me I’ve heard that before. Yes! It must have been in church. How unusual to find a politician quoting the catechism. Perhaps you missed your calling.’”

Which brings me to another thing I loved: the chess. I love, love, love the way James is able to weave symbolism into her dialogue depending on what object she’s focused on in each book. In the case of this new series, chess symbolizes the relationships between all of the characters–Jemma and Elijah, Roberta and Damon, Elijah and Villiers, Villiers and Harriet Berrow, etc–and the games both on the board and off are breathtaking.

But enough gushing, I’m off to pick up the next book in the series.

(Edited to add: I just noticed that James gets around the current reader dislike for long separations quite sneakily by writing these quartets. Just an observation…)

JMC asked about the “Sapphire” stereotype and it reminded me of the anti-Aunt Jemima stance I took a few months ago. A short search led me to this highly informative website about Jim Crow imagery and the following essay:

In addition to the negative stereotypes scholars associate with all women who complain about sexual harassment and other types of sexual abuse, there are three common stereotypes ascribed particularly to African American women. First, Mammy, everyone’s favorite aunt or grandmother, sometimes referred to as “Aunt Jemima,” is ready to soothe everyone’s hurt, envelop them in her always ample bosom, and wipe away their tears. She is often even more nurturing to her white charges than to her own children. Next, there is Jezebel, the bad-black-girl, who is depicted as alluring and seductive as she either indiscriminately mesmerizes men and lures them into her bed, or very deliberately lures into her snares those who have something of value to offer her. Finally, Sapphire, the wise-cracking, balls-crushing, emasculating woman, is usually shown with her hands on her hips and her head thrown back as she lets everyone know she is in charge. Besides the three common stereotypes listed above, there are other, more contemporary ones. According to Professor Ammons, the “matriarch”symbolizes the black mother in her home. The matriarch is the mammy gone bad, a failed mammy, because she has spent too much time away from home, has not properly supervised her children, is overly aggressive, and emasculates the men in her life. The matriarch was the centerpiece of the Moynihan Report of the mid-1960’s. Professor Ammons goes on to describe the “welfare queen”:

[w]hile the problem with the matriarch is that she is too aggressive, the welfare mother is not aggressive enough. She shuns work and passes bad values onto her children. Unlike the breeder slave woman who was most valuable when she bore children, the welfare mother must be discouraged from producing because her offspring are a threat to economic stability. Another, mostly abandoned stereotype, once common in motion pictures that predated the appearance even of Mammy, was that of the “tragic mulatta,” depicted as alluring, sexually arousing, seductive, and tainted (by one drop of African blood).

The image of Mammy as a symbol of African American womanhood is inextricably integrated into the folklore of American culture. The evolution of the Mammy image can be attributed to female slaves performing domestic duties for the family of the slave owner. Historically, the media has portrayed her as having characteristics that suggest submissiveness towards her owner (during slavery) or employer (following Emancipation). Moreover, her behavior connotes satisfaction and comfort with her station in life, wherein she is consigned to performing domestic duties.

Mammy is first and foremost asexual, and accordingly, in this society she had to be fat. Most portrayals of Mammy depict her as an “obese African American woman, of dark complexion, with extremely large breasts and buttocks . . . .” By doing this, male slave-owners could disavow their sexual interests in African American women. By characterizing Mammy as an asexual, maternal and deeply religious woman whose main task was caring for the master’s children and running his household, the slave-owner found in her the perfect slave. She was a loyal, faithful, but still untrustworthy member of the family who always knew her place.

The second stereotype of African American women is that of Jezebel. Jezebel “is the promiscuous female with an insatiable sexual appetite.” In Biblical history, Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab of Israel. Jezebel’s actions came to exemplify lust. Subsequently, the name Jezebel has become synonymous with women who engage in lewd sexual acts and who take advantage of men through sex. Jezebel is depicted as erotically appealing and openly seductive. Her easy ways excused slave owners’ abuse of their slaves and gave an explanation for Jezebel’s mulatto offspring. This inability to be perceived as chaste brought about the stereotype of dishonesty. In other words, African American women were not, and often are not, portrayed as being truthful and, therefore, they could not be trusted. Throughout history, our court system has also exploited the myth of Jezebel. The courts have used this image to make racism and sexism appear natural. The sexual myth of Jezebel functions as a tool for controlling African American women. Consequently, sexual promiscuity is imputed to them even absent specific evidence of their individual sexual histories. This imputation ensures that their credibility is doubted when any issue of sexual exploitation is involved.

Finally, in the stereotype of Sapphire, African American women are portrayed as evil, bitchy, stubborn and hateful. In other words, Sapphire is everything that Mammy is not. “The Sapphire image has no specific physical features other than the fact that her complexion is usually brown or dark brown.” Unlike other images that symbolize African American women, Sapphire necessitates the presence of an African American male. The African American male and female are engaged in an ongoing verbal duel. Sapphire was created to battle the corrupt African American male whose “lack of integrity, and use of cunning and trickery provides her with an opportunity to emasculate him through her use of verbal put-downs.”

Ernestine Ward popularized the Sapphire image in the Amos and Andy television series. Ward played a character known as Sapphire, and her husband, Kingfish, was played by Tim Moore. Sapphire’s spiteful personality was primarily used to create sympathy in viewers for Kingfish specifically and African American males in general. As a result, many African American women suppress these feelings of bitterness and rage for fear of being regarded as a Sapphire.

The myths of Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire “have their roots in negative anti- woman mythology.” Moreover, at any time, each of these images is used to characterize African American women in a monolithic image. Consequently, many people find it difficult to appreciate the diversity of African American women and instead impose identities based on negative stereotypes.

While the Jezebel stereotype most clearly supports the sexual exploitation of African American women, the other two stereotypes also promote this subjugation. Mammy’s harassment claims would go unheard because no one would believe that a man would desire an asexual woman. Similarly, Sapphire’s claims of sexual abuse would be overshadowed by her “reputation for deception, lying and lack of loyalty.”

The characterizations of African American women as asexual Mammys, promiscuous Jezebels, and antagonistic Sapphires reaffirm society’s belief that African American women are less individualistic than white women. These stereotypes, which evolved during slavery, continued to exist after the end of slavery and still contribute to the unique harassment experiences of African American women today.

[Source]

Mad Black Woman
Black Jezebel’s Nothing New
Do Black Women Have Attitude?