Wherein Kinsale makes me cry. Again.
My take in brief: Another great from the great. In intensity and sense of rollicking adventure, it reminded me of Outlander.
Setting: 1820s England, Madeira (Portugal), Falkland Islands, Saudi Arabia
Series?: I don’t think so.
Heroine and Hero: Sir Sheridan Drake, recently retired Royal Navy captain. Although celebrated for his heroic service to the King, Sheridan is a selfish — and quite destitute — lout who suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome. Her Serene Highness Olympia St. Ledger of Oriens (a tiny country between France and Savoy) is a naive, sometimes foolish, but goodhearted princess, raised in exile in England, who hopes to enlist Sir Sheridan’s help to return to Oriens to lead a revolution, paving the way for democratic rule.
Plot: Like a wolf asked to guard a sheep, Sheridan agrees to help Olympia travel to Oriens, all the while hoping to gain something for himself — either through theft or ransom — in the process. Things go awry, and the book follows the pair on a series of incredible high seas adventures.
Fun facts: Originally published in 1989, this is one of three Kinsale reissues from Sourcebooks Casablanca, a small independent publisher who sent me this copy. Initial hopes that the reissues signaled a new Kinsale (her most recent work, Shadowheart, was published in 2004) appear to have been unfounded. If you are wondering what all the fuss is about Laura Kinsale, read Janine’s “If You Like” article at Dear Author or Keishon’s retrospective at Avid Book Reader.
Seize the Fire was a finalist for the Golden Choice Award for Best Romance of 1989, Romance Writers of America, and a Finalist for the 1990 Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Historical (the latter award went to Silver Noose by Patricia Gardner).
Word on the Web (How can there be so few reviews of this book??)
Musings of a Blbiophile (Brie), A
Amazon.com: 4.5 stars after 18 reviews
The Racy Romance Review:
Seize the Fire is my fourth Kinsale. I began with Flowers From the Storm, which still ranks as my most memorably intense romance reading experience. FFTS fixed my impression, still unshaken, that Kinsale is among the best writers in the genre. I then read The Shadow and the Star and The Hidden Heart, both terrific, although I enjoyed STF even more than either of those.
I almost hate having to let readers know that Sheridan suffers from PTSD, because so many romance readers are sick unto death of that “trope”. But wait. Have you ever liked a song or a movie, and then found out it’s a cover or a remake? And then experienced the original? And then wondered how you could ever have been satisfied with the copy? That’s how I feel about Sheridan. I don’t know whether Sheridan was the first romance hero with PTSD, but I would bet he was one of the first, and he’s a true original.
Some romance authors seem to think, falsely, that experiencing war automatically causes PTSD. With Sheridan, Kinsale gives us a convincing combination of temperament (self-interested, wry, charming, and witty, yet wise, honorable, and deeply sensitive), childhood neglect, truly horrific wartime atrocities for which he bears responsibility, and undeserved lionization, that together serve to explain why this character acquires PTSD.
The scene when Olympia and Sheridan meet — she arrives as a humble supplicant at his crumbling manor home with a dying potted plant and a copy of Rousseau (The Social Contract, I’m guessing) — sets up the dynamic of the first half of the book: Olympia’s naive but noble determination to save her countrymen from tyranny, and her admiration and puppy love for Sheridan, butting up against the reality that he’s a dissolute cynical rake who plans to take full advantage of her.
There’s something very Rousseauian in the whole text, actually, and someone ought to write a paper on it. Olympia is described as having “the kind of face that looked out of burrows and tree-knots and hedgerows, unblinking innocent and as old as time.” From the start, Kinsale signals that while Olympia may be dangerously hopeful, there’s a wisdom and necessity in her optimistic view of human nature.
Sheridan, corrupted by the horrors of civilization, has a visceral response (and this is classic dreamy-psychological Kinsale, a style I love. But then, Mrs. Dalloway is one of my favorite books):
As he observed her in musing silence, a novel thought occurred to him. It slipped through his mind so subtly that it seemed to mingle like smoke with his physical perceptions, with the way the dim light through the stained-glass window fell across her hair in little iridescent rainbows, and the scent of old tobacco and dust lingered in the room. He wondered — absurdly — if this was what she had come for — simply to sit in the stillness and be alive and share it with him.
Something inside, something tiny he hadn’t even known was there, seemed to unfold, to spread tentative petals open like a desert flower sensing rain.
She turned and looked up at him, her great unblinking eyes full of forest wisdom. He thought foolishly: Let me stay here. I need this.
The first half of the book is a lot like other rake/virgin dynamics, only way better, and is almost light in comparison to the second. Here’s a typical Sheridan reflection from the first half of the book:
It was the first and last occasion, Sheridan thought, that he would attempt to be a felon. Being a natural-born bastard was quite stimulating enough. He didn’t need this kind of excitement.
And here’s Sheridan sizing up the competition, another captain with an eye for Olympia:
Captain Fitzhugh was hardly older than Princess Olympia herself — not a complete fool but managing to conceal the fact, torn between the dignity of his first command and eagerness to impress Captain Sir Sheridan Drake and his sister. He talked too loud and gave his opinion on every possible subject. His only redeeming quality was a modicum of sense: his opinions weren’t hopelessly stupid as long as he kept off religion, which he generally didn’t.
As their adventures unfold, they both change and grow. Olympia becomes stronger, wiser, and more pragmatic as she begins to see the real Sheridan, warts and all, and, through him, the harsh truths of the world. Sheridan, who is, like all romance rakes, truly good underneath it all, slowly begins to make himself vulnerable to Olympia, revealing his deepest, most shameful secrets.
Much of their reassessment of each other and themselves takes place when they are stranded on an island in the middle of the book. Their interlude on the island is probably the best 100 pages of romance I have ever read, with one of the most loving, adult, and frank virginal seductions and one of the most heartbreaking unrequited declarations of love in all of romance.
Because this is a Kinsale, just when you think things are as bad as they could possibly be, they get much much worse. Thus, in the last 2/5 of the book, Olympia and Sheridan find themselves at odds again, and Sheridan descends into a bitter, distant, suicidal funk.
I loved this book, but I don’t think it’s perfect. Here are a few things that didn’t work for me:
1. Frequent references to Olympia as pudgy or plump. Her weight was used as a shorthand for her character in a way I found appalling.
2. The back stories of Olympia as a princess and Sheridan as a frustrated musician.
3. Sheridan pushes Olympia away late in the novel, and she buys it.
4. The reversal at the end.
Seize the Fire asks us to think about some very difficult questions, as you might expect with a book that begins with Rousseau and ends with Plato (the Laches of all things!). The meaning of loyalty, courage, love and war. The purpose of life in the face of tragic contingency. Sheridan and Olympia both come to see that there was no fork in the road where they could have chosen to live life unscathed, without the crushing burden of responsibility for their fellow humans. “We’re dominoes” Sheridan says, “We fall one way or we fall another.”
When I read Kinsale, I’m deeply moved — and not just by negative emotions, like fear or sadness or heartbreak, but by positive ones, like relief and happiness and joy.
It’s a paradox that fictional characters can move us in this way. We know they are not real. Yet the emotions we feel for them are. Professionally, paradoxes like this bother me. But personally, they make me glad to be a human being who can experience the gift of literature. And that probably sums up my review of this book.
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#1 by Sarah Frantz on November 24, 2008 - 11:22 pm
This is the book that drew me into Kinsale (it was the lacy cover on the original with the peekaboo sex behind it), and OMG, I fell in love. I adore Sheridan and love the ending–although I’m an epilogue whore and wanted just the slightest bit beyond what we see.
As for PTSD, Susan Elizabeth’s Phillips’ new re-release, Glitter Baby, has a hero with PTSD. It was originally published in the early 80s, I think (checks: nope. 1987). The hero’s amazing. The heroine is usually TSTL and does NOT deserve him. It’s more her book than his, done in the Judith Krantz style from the 80s Glitz and Glamour style. But totally worth reading for the hero. So brilliantly done. Not sure how much she revised with re-issue. It’ll be interesting to read it.
#2 by Violet on November 25, 2008 - 12:49 am
I have been wanting to read this book since i read the blurb on the Source books site. Great review.
#3 by Robin on November 25, 2008 - 1:40 am
This is probably my favorite Kinsale, even though I cannot read it all the way through in one shot. Unlike you, Jessica, Olympia’s weight worked for me, especially in the way Sheridan associates her body with the gracious plenty he so needs. Unlike Crusie, where I sometimes feel the rounded heroines are mother substitutes, I never felt that with Sheridan and Olympia, and I adored it when Sheridan got angry that Olympia had lost weight (and when that idiot captain wants her to be thinner).
In any case, there are scenes in this book that will stay with me forever: the moment in the study where Sheridan looks into Olympia’s green eyes and recognizes his own freedom; Olympia’s goodbye letter; Sheridan and the penguin; the moment at the end of the novel where Sheridan simply sits in the rain, defeated and yet settled in some way.
And although I usually HATE epilogues, for a long time I wanted to see Olympia and Sheridan in Vienna (oh, yeah, that’s another one of those unforgettable moments). Now I accept that the novel had to end where it did, but I would not have been averse to an epilogue offered elsewhere well after the novel’s publication, lol. I think Judith Ivory did that with some of her books, IIRC, although who knows now that her website has disappeared (excuse me while I go weep at the absence of any new Ivory novels).
#4 by Janine on November 25, 2008 - 3:10 am
SPOILERS in my post
What a thoughtful review. For me it highlights the differences between the way different people read.
It’s been a long, long time since I read this book in its entirety, but I don’t remember any part of it feeling light. Though a brilliant, brilliant book, it’s also quite possibly the heaviest romance I’ve ever read, and for that reason it’s not my favorite Kinsale (My favorites are The Shadow and the Star, For My Lady’s Heart, and The Dream Hunter).
As in many rake and virgin romances, the gap between Olympia’s idealism and Sheridan’s cynicism is the engine of the story, but what I’ve always loved in this book is that unlike most rake and virgin stories, where the heroine’s idealism is upheld as the virtue by which she awakens the hero’s dormant goodness, strips away his cynical veneer and heals him, so that they then meet on equal ground, in Seize the Fire the heroine’s innocence is shattered by the hero, and it is her disillusionment that brings them together.
I didn’t feel that Olympia became stronger. I suppose one could say she became wiser in the sense that she became less blindly naive, and was forced to wake up to a brutal reality. That’s a lot of what I admire about the book, actually — that it doesn’t sugarcoat the passage from blind naivete to awareness, doesn’t try to make it anything less than a rude awakening, and doesn’t portray idealism as a virtue.
But I feel that at the end of the book Olympia is broken, as broken as Sheridan is, which is where she would have ended up with or without him, and where he needed her to end up in order to be able to open up to her as he does. Before that, she is not that trustworthy — her idealism is dangerous.
But even though I see her that way, I felt an awful lot of empathy for Olympia when I read this book. I could see where the story was heading from very early on, that her idealism and his cynicism were on a collision course, and I dreaded what would happen with each page I turned. This was why the first half was nowhere near light for me.
I feel that what makes the book so wonderful and memorable is the character of Sheridan. I loved his sarcastic perspective, as well as his selfishness — the way that he was always watching out for his own skin first. I’ve never come across another hero like him in the romance genre, someone who is always looking out for number one.
When I saw that Olympia was in his path, and that she looked up to him and trusted him — well, my stomach was clenched the entire time I read.
As much as I love the book, I think I would have loved even more to see Sheridan paired up with someone who was more his equal, someone more sophisticated and pragmatic. I don’t think the book would have been as potent then, but it also would not have been as painful and gut-wrenching to read. I consider it Kinsale’s darkest work, by far.
The only respite for me, the lightest portion of the story, was the time on the island. That was the only place where Sheridan and Olympia were free while she still had her title.
Which brings me to the backstory. I think Olympia had to be a princess for the book to work, because the revolution had to happen. I don’t think she would have been free to love Sheridan without that, nor do I think he would have opened up to her completely otherwise. Also, had she not been a princess, he would have treated her differently, and we’d have had a different relationship all along the way.
The ending is my favorite part of the book. I’ve read it over and over umpteen times, and it makes me cry every time. It’s probably Kinsale’s most powerful ending, and she is a writer who writes incredible endings. I would never, ever, want to see an epilogue or any kind of change made to it.
Also, I don’t think I would buy a happier ending — not even if Kinsale wrote it. To me, it’s a very bittersweet ending, and I can’t really picture Olympia and Sheridan having a blissful life with two kids and the proverbial white picket fence. These characters have been through too much — if they can wake up the next morning and go through the motions of the day without contemplating suicide, that’s the best I can hope for for them.
The book leaves me glad they have each other, but worried for them (esp. Olympia). But I also feel that that’s as it should be, because it’s a book about war, and if war doesn’t leave heroes shattered, what does? The characters can’t be heroes in the idealized sense of that word; the only heroism that is left to them in a disordered world is to put one foot in front of the other, one word in front of another, to hold each other knowing that that is all they have and all they can offer one another. And that is absolutely fitting, because that is truth.
#5 by Jessica on November 25, 2008 - 7:41 am
Sarah,
I have read most SEPs, or rather, my uncontrollable id has — my conscious self refuses to take responsibility for it — but not Glitter Baby. I will have to get hold of it. I wonder if editing is common in re-issues? I know McNaught did it, and Putney. Anyway, I’m glad we agree on this book.
Violet — you will not regret read this one.
Robin — I love that Olympia is heavy, and I would have had no problem with the weight signifying “gracious plenty”, but he uses it when he wants to pity her and belittle her (telling her to “toddle up on deck”, for example), and, just on a literary level, it is overused.
Janine — I agree, it is not “light”, but I think I qualified it with “almost” in my review. Maybe I should have said, “comparatively”. Think of Olympia’s wet feathers covering her face, for example, when she is in Sheridan’s doorway. To me that was an almost light moment.
I do think Olympia becomes stronger — not strong, but stronger. Think of her decision to go after Sheridan when he steals her jewels. Or her catching the goose on the island. Or her dangling from a rope to rescue their lost knife. Or her kicking that guy off the camel. I don’t think the Olympia who stammered in Sheridan’s drawing room would have been able to do those things.
I agree with both sides on the epilogue. I wanted it, but I know it’s not right.
And I love how you put this:
I hate having to use stock romance terms to describe this book because I feel it doesn’t give a sense of how unique it is. I feel very not up to the challenge in reviewing a book like this.
I still don’t agree with you on this [SPOILER below]:
I guess I feel that Olympia had her trust in her hero and her mentor shattered, survived near starvation and freezing to death on a desert island, shipwrecks, near murder, near slavery, bloody battles, in which she killed a man, you name it. Why did she need more?
#6 by Victoria Janssen on November 25, 2008 - 9:31 am
If I could be like any other romance writer, it would be Laura Kinsale. I adore her books beyond all imagining.
#7 by Victoria Janssen on November 25, 2008 - 9:32 am
Oh, wow, there are some great comments to this post.
*is filled with love for fellow Kinsale fans*
#8 by RfP on November 25, 2008 - 1:31 pm
This book is way far down my list to read, so I have nothing meaningful to say. But how is “toddle up on deck” derogatory about O’s weight? I could see it as infantilizing, perhaps, but coming from an adult Englishman I’d more likely take it as a silly word for “stroll”. Is there a context in which it implies fat? Enquiring minds must learn new insults.
#9 by Robin on November 25, 2008 - 2:21 pm
One IMO very real function of Olympia’s princess status is the way it makes Sheridan feel he is *purposed*, for the first time in a long time (perhaps in his life), in trying to save her, and I found that key to his ultimate re-humanization. While he chides her for it, while he tries to break her confidence at times, and while he clearly feels even less worthy than he already did (and feels manipulated by Julia), I always felt that the scene in which Sheridan dresses up and proposes to Olympia revealed an authentic desire in Sheridan that he spends the rest of the novel trying to sublimate, but that sets up the way Sheridan both idealizes Olympia (even on an unconscious level) and attempts to denigrate her before she can disappoint him. So I’d actually take some streamlined plotting in the middle sections of the novel (where Olympia has many of her achievements) over the stripping of her princess status.
As for the tone of the first part of the novel, IMO it’s got this dark humor, a strange slapstick in the feathers and in, for example, the booby trapped house. So while it’s not necessarily “lighter,” I can see how Jessica would see it that way, even though I agree with Janine that it’s not a light book in any way (despite a few lighter moments here and there).
But I feel that at the end of the book Olympia is broken, as broken as Sheridan is, which is where she would have ended up with or without him, and where he needed her to end up in order to be able to open up to her as he does. Before that, she is not that trustworthy — her idealism is dangerous.
This point makes me think of Kinsale’s dedication to the Vietnam vets, because in a sense America lost its innocence during the Vietnam War, too, although we weren’t completely broken by it (in many ways that shock really catalyzed a lot of social progress), and perhaps our idealism wasn’t a bad thing, per se, but certainly our national arrogance took a beating, and perhaps that was good and necessary, too. Maybe that’s why I think Olympia and Sheridan will make it, that their innate resilience will allow hope to grow and healing to occur.
#10 by Janine on November 25, 2008 - 3:28 pm
More SPOILERS in my post
Jessica-
Yes, there was more humor in the first half, but for me the island portion was actually lighter. It was the only part of the story where I wasn’t dreading what was coming, although I did worry that they’d have to get off the island eventually.
Yeah, that is a good point. But is the Olympia at the end of the book able to do these things still? I wasn’t sure.
I think you wrote a thoughtful review. It is not always easy to do justice to books in reviews, esp. when one doesn’t want to reveal spoilers.
Because of the way the character of Olympia is contructed, and because she was still clinging to the illusion that she could be a heroine to her people and bring them democracy in a bloodless way. I feel that in a big way that’s what the theme of the book was, idealism vs. cynicism. It’s a book that points to the dangers of both. Both are destructive.
What Olympia wants to do may be right, but it can get a lot of people killed. And Sheridan knows that, which is why he wants no part of it, and why he leaves right after they make love so that she will marry the other guy.
IMO Olympia is somewhat delusional where heroism is concerned. She wants to be a heroine to her people, and she wants Sheridan to be a hero. She doesn’t understand the ugly side of war until she sees it first hand, because she needs too badly to cling to the belief that she can do something heroic for the people of Oriens. Even after she sees that Sheridan isn’t a hero in the way she imagined him to be, she still needs to believe that she can be a hero herself.
IMO this has something to do with Olympia’s sense of self-worth, and with her loveless upbringing. I think she couldn’t completely accept the reality of being so politically valuable that others would always try to use her (a scenario Kinsale later returned to in For My Lady’s Heart and Shadowheart, but with very different heroines who coped differently).
Olympia could never know if she was loved, or if someone was just using her for another purpose. I think that from childhood, she had to believe in something, in a better world than the one she occupied, so she invented dreams and illusions for herself, of a world where she could be a hero to her people and find some heroic man… a world that was free of these mixed motives, a better place.
But the world Kinsale constructed in Seize the Fire wasn’t a fairy tale of a better place. It was a place where it was very hard to survive, a place filled with chaos and violence and betrayals. Sheridan knows that, and Olympia could know it too, but she doesn’t want to believe the evidence that points in that direction. She wants to believe in something better, so she clings to her illusions willfully.
I feel that it had to take something as horrible as what happened in Oriens — she had to see her lifelong dream come to pass in a way that she never would have imagined for herself — for her to let go of those illusions.
Also, I feel that a lot of the conflict between her and Sheridan was around her princess status. I agree with Robin that it was the reason he saw her as he did and treated her as he did, and I think Sheridan had enough experience of the world to know they couldn’t be together in any kind of permanent way while she was still a princess. He wanted a little bit of peace in his life, and if he had married this girl whom everybody wanted to use as a political pawn, his life would have been full of potentially lethal intrigue.
Here’s something I wrote about STF once, in another discussion.
I really don’t feel that these themes could have been so fully explored had Olympia been something other than a princess, had what happened in Oriens not happened, and had the ending been different than it was.
#11 by carolyn jean on November 25, 2008 - 11:41 pm
Those excerpts are just breathtaking. I must read this! I have never read Kinsale. As you see, I’m sort of a newby. Thanks for this long and thoughtful review.
Oh, look you got preview.
#12 by admin on November 26, 2008 - 7:11 am
Carolyn Jean,
Everyone should read this book! And yes, I got preview, and some other stuff, and then messed up a bunch of other stuff. Ugh.
Janine,
You’ve convinced me that Olympia needed more — Olympia WAS still clinging to her idealism, and probably nothing would have shaken it other than a bloodbath in Oriens, because its root was her in large part her faith in shiny happy regime change.
I agree with what you put so beautifully, that this book is about idealism vs. cynicism, trust, and the existential question of the meaning of life when you have to make it for yourself (essence and purpose cannot be provided by god, ethics, or nature, at least not unless you give them authority by choosing to organize your life around them).
Actually, I think thinking about STF in terms of existentialism has unlocked the book for me. So thank you!
This is very Beauvoirian rather than Sartrean in the way the existential crisis is linked so tightly to the question of our human relationships. In that sense, Sherridan is the “sub man” and Olympia is the “serious man”: both are in what existentialists call “bad faith”, rejection of their existential freedom and responsibility, but in very different ways.
From an existential point of view, cynicism and idealism are the same problematic thing.
#13 by Kristie(J) on November 26, 2008 - 7:33 am
I don’t know exactly what the story is – why we aren’t getting any new books from Laura Kinsale – but it really is a loss to the romance reading world that we aren’t. I read all her books years ago and have since done rereads of Flowers From the Storm and The Shadow and the Star. But I haven’t read this once since I first read it many, many years ago. I am going to have to fix that! I didn’t appreciate it as much at the time, but now that I’ve matured as a reader and a person, I think I would enjoy it ever so much more now.
#14 by Brie on November 29, 2008 - 12:33 am
Ever since I read Flowers From the Storm I’ve been a huge fan of LK. I just love the depth of her writing. She is not afraid to push the boundaries with her characters. Luckily for me I’m an angst whore. I think you kinda have to be to really appreciate Kinsale’s writing, because it’s not easy. She throws everything PLUS the kitchen sink at her characters, and then some.
I really adored this STF. Like a great lover, it touched me in all the right places. I didn’t find the book light, but it had a dry, cynical humor, that could come off as “light” depending on where it showed up.
I really wish that Laura Kinsale was still writing.
#15 by Jessica on November 29, 2008 - 7:41 am
Kristie,
The funny thing about Kinsale, as you know, is how different each of her books is from the others. Although all her heroes (that I have read so far) are angsty and tortured, for example, they are unique. So it makes sense that you might have enjoyed this one less than the others…although I hope you will try it again.
Brie,
Yes, that’s the way to put it: dry cynical humor. Not joyful, but the kind of dark humor that comes out of a very bleak situation.
And no, her books are not easy. I am sure I am not the only one who doesn’t do much in the way of Kinsale rereads.
As for her not writing, I did check out the website. She has written that she wants a one book contract but publishers are insisting on more. From what I read, I gathered Kinsale feels a multi book contract will put too much pressure on her. There’s a bit about how her relationship to writing changed… that it became a chore, a negative.
Personally, I find it puzzling that a bestselling author cannot negotiate this. I would think publishers would want a new Kinsale no matter what.
#16 by Janine on December 1, 2008 - 8:11 pm
Jessica, I have to admit I’m a lot less well-versed in philosophy than you are. When I used the word existentialist (that part of the post was composed years ago), I think was thinking in the general sense of what Wikipedia terms “‘the existential attitude,’ or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.”
I find the worlds Kinsale creates for her characters almost as interesting as the characters themselves. The world of Seize the Fire is very different from the world of The Shadow and the Star, for example.
The world of The Shadow and the Star, while it has its dangers and its cruelties, also has compassionate and caring people, and beautiful settings that act as a kind of balm, both for the characters and for the reader. The title is symbolic, since it is about a book about emereging from the shadows into the light. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I find that book so enjoyable to reread.
In Seize the Fire, by contrast, the world that surrounds the characters is full of cruel people, war, chaos, fire. There’s very little soothing about it. The most peaceful place, which Olympia tries to recreate for herself at the end of the book, is the island in the Falklands, but even there, the struggle to survive is omnipresent. I think it’s as much a book about how people cope (or fail to cope) with such a world, as it is a romance.
That gallows humor was quite possibly my favorite aspect of Sheridan’s character. I agree it was quite funny at times, and I don’t want to imagine how much darker the book might have been without it.
I think she’s taken her site down at the moment and I don’t want to speculate too much, but I remember that one of the issues she mentioned was that the book she’s finished, The Lucky One, was a lighter work, and publishers were interested in something darker and more like the rest of her body of work. I think that may have been why they wanted a second, darker book before purchasing The Lucky One.