I have just come up with a genius new term for a romance novel you don't finish: Codex Interruptus*. I know, I know, codex isn't that kind of book but it is a kind of book and therefore I am brilliant. This is the third brilliant thing I've done today, the others being putting fresh raspberries in my cottage cheese, and giving up on One Night For Love.

I may roll my eyes at those irrepressible bad boys who co-star in most of these novels, but I sure do miss 'em when they're gone. Neville Wyatt is so, so earnest and pure-hearted that he's almost transparent. A beautiful blond major fighting Napoleon in Portugal, he finds himself drawn to his commanding officer's winsome daughter, Lily Doyle. When commanding-officer is wounded and dying, Neville nobly volunteers to marry her, to protect her from Rape at the hands (erm) of the French. He is as good as his word: the next day he marries her, they admit they've been in love all along, and they have One Night For (remarkable, transcendental) Love. Why only One Night? Because the next day Lily is shot, Neville rushes to her side, gets shot himself, and falls unconscious knowing that Lily is dead. Or is she...?

She's not, and she shows up soon enough, right as Neville is about to remarry, and he of course does the honorable thing and stops everything and reinstates Lily as his wife. If he had had her kicked out of the church and married the bride-in-waiting I might have been able to finish this book, but he didn't, so I couldn't. I must shake my head and sigh in unison with Roger Daltrey, "Lily, oh, Lily," for I thought this kind of heroine had come, none too soon, to extinction half a century ago. Lily is what Little Eva from Uncle Tom's Cabin would be if Little Eva had grown up and got laid. She's whimsical and philosophical and she's always doing eccentric things like running barefoot on the beach and befriending peasants.

You see, Lily doesn't come from this stilted English class system. They're so insular they can't recognize their unnaturalness, their rigidity! This illiterate army brat charms the pants off the populace with her impulsivity and homespun wisdom. Her life has been so hard (more later) that she is filled with insight beyond her years, a veritable Chicken Soup for the Regency Soul. She flits around being charmingly astonished at things like servants and parasols, and in general devotes herself to spreading sunshine where'er she goes. But don't by any means get the impression that she is one-dimensional. For between the time of her supposed death and the time of her reappearance, Lily was...Raped.

I think romance writers are trying to atone for the years in which heroes routinely raped heroines into falling in love with them. Now every other one you pick up has a heroine who has been raped and a hero who must fix her. It goes something like this: Hero is passionately embracing Rapee. Rapee suddenly snaps and begins sobbing and clawing like a wild animal. Hero stops immediately and says, "My darling! Someone...has hurt you! Tell me who it was and I'll kill him!" Rapee demurs and sobs in Hero's arms. Hero reflects sagely that whoever is planning on loving Rapee will have to do it right gingerly for a while. Rapee confides that what would really make her feel better is to have sex with Hero. Hero obliges, reminding Rapee through gritted teeth that he will willingly pull out at any time. Rapee assures him that it is not necessary and presently orgasms. Hero orgasms too. Hooray! Rapee has been cured! Now she's up for anything!

This asininity has been regurgitated for Neville and Lily, and spread as far as it could go. I don't know how many times we heard Neville say, "Would it help to talk about it?" and watched Lily bite her lip and shake her head. But even Rape can only take you so far with a Boy Scout and a Pollyanna, and 200 pages in, when Ms. Balogh divulged that there was a plot against Lily's life, I curtsied and murmured, "Uncle."

*Yeah, so I googled it and unfortunately it's been done. But I didn't know that when I made it up!

Labels: codex interruptus, Mary Balogh, rapee

I cut my pearly white teeth on Teresa Medeiros' Breath of Magic and Touch of Enchantment. I read them both in the same afternoon, slack-jawed at the euphemistic (but thorough) sex scenes, and confused by the all the morality: The heroine was a virgin? They got married before they had sex? They got married, period? Where was the unrepentant sleaze I had been led to expect? I took comfort in the other romance novel truism: they were crappy, so crappy as to exceed all expectations. Not only was the natural order of the universe therefore undisturbed, but I was now freed to read any romance novel bearing the Sword of Irony and the Shield of Self-Deprecation.

From that day my triumphant strides have led me to Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey, Lisa Kleypas, Lisa Jackson, Christina Dodd, Jo Beverly, Amanda Quick, and many other standard-bearers of the romance genre, but I had yet to reencounter Mme. Medeiros.

Imagine, then, my disappointment as I curled up with Shadows and Lace: it wasn't that bad. The only genuine snicker was prompted by the cover art, and that's always a freebie anyway. Oh, there was the occasional "'tis" and a few French phrases, but not enough to make one lose one's place casting one's eyes up to the heavens.

So, you know the drill: cowardly father gambles away virgin daughter to mysterious peer/pirate/riverboat gambler, virgin daughter's lashes tremble with unshed tears, erstwhile untameable hero reforms just enough to return her (but not enough to take the edge off that sex appeal), she comes back like a starry-eyed boomerang, he discovers he can't imagine life without her, near-mortal injury or illness recommended but not required.

The dark and brooding Sir Gareth of Caerleon wins the use of Lady Rowena Fordyce for a year. Don't worry--he won't use her in that way; he's too busy bedding everything else in a skirt. Little does Rowena know that his heart is enclosed in a wall of guilt and pain. Just a hint: it involves statutory rape, near-incest, and murder. Who can soften (and then harden) such a man? Perhaps a petite, kittenish blonde, who is given to falling asleep in the cutest places, getting into scrapes, and looking just adorable when she's angry.

But what's this little innocent to make of his seedy past? Rowena muses, "God does not fight on behalf of the guilty." Since Gareth is so powerful and successful, does that not mean he is innocent? And he's so masterful... Gareth, jaded (but of course!) by all the hot lovin' he's been getting, finds himself yearning for an inexperienced coquette (read: cocktease), and he sure can pick 'em. During their first encounter? "'Fill me,' she whispered. 'Now.'" This in spite of an established and belabored disparity in their sizes--like, on the lines of lion and pussycat.

Rowena's remarkable facility is enough to keep Gareth saving her charming rump [sic] for 300-odd pages, but they pass readily enough. A jealous lesbian and a soupçon of BDSM, a cultivated tolerance for heroines who stamp their feet and pout, and a steady trickle of incredulity that someone would write a romance novel with such a dark subplot, allowed me to come--at last--full circle, and achieve closure with Teresa Medeiros.

Labels: medieval, Teresa Medeiros, wager

SHE had always longed to write her doctoral thesis on the romance-novel archetype, for indeed, there were no novel romances, and neither did she desire them.

HER FAMILY mocked her cherished dreams, cruelly forcing her to read the classics, or books of cultural signigicance--but they could not break her spirit.

HER SISTER, in the fullness of time, blossomed into appreciation or rakes, rogues, and roués; of spears, swords, and shafts; of waves, whirlpools, and waterfalls of ecstasy; of raised purple-gilt lettering.

TOGETHER, they could not deny their destiny. In the end, nothing could keep them from...THE BLOG.