Welcome to my first attempt at discussing a book here on this blog. I’m interested in what you think. Did you like it? hate it? Keeper shelf?
Please, have your say. Thread is open indefinitely.
No rules, other than the basic rules of civility. Respond to others’ comments as they interest you.
I am interested, personally, in the first sexual encounter between Bastien and Chloe, in Bastien’s amorality, in the balance of suspense to romance, and the development of their relationship under stressful conditions.
And if anyone can provide a long view of Stuart’s career and where Black Ice fits in, I would love it.
Thank you!
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#1 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 6:16 pm
Hello,
My mind has been wandering over one of your previous questions:
“Can we cheer for an amoral hero, and if so, why didn’t we cheer for the hero in Linda Howard’s Death Angel?”
I found this a bit shocking – I actually cheered for the hero in Death Angel (whose name is escaping me at the moment) and I still have an aversion to Bastien in Black Ice. I think its because Bastien is always forcing Chloe – drugging her, leaving her, forcing her to leave, tying her up. Whereas in DA, the hero tries to stay out of the heroine’s way while he tries to protect her. When he finally steps in to intervene, he gets her promise to stay put for 24 hours. Bastien would have drugged her, tied her up and sent someone else in to free her when it was over. What’s to cheer about in that?
#2 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 6:20 pm
Okay, just give me a minute to get myself together. Just got back from a lovely European Sipping Chocolate with @cjewel and @SonomaLass and need to catch up on a few things first…
#3 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 6:21 pm
@Jeanne: Jeanne! (((hugs))) Thank you for commenting.
I am not going to jump in immediately with my opinion on your question, except to apologize for the way I framed it, which assumed, wrongly that “we” all think the same thing about Bastien and the hero in Death Angle. Clearly, we do not.
did the romance not work for you, then? did you want to see Chloe with someone else?
#4 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 6:25 pm
Hi!!
Okay, I did not read Death Angel yet. However, I read Black Ice last year and greatly enjoyed it. Reviewing some of the sections yesterday and today, I was reminded of how much I really loved this book. However, I have an extremely high tolerance for amoral heroes. It’s interesting, because I think this hero puts his own survival over heroism. I think that garners him a mixed bag of respect. By which I mean, there’s something to respect and something to disrespect about it.
#5 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 6:28 pm
Well, there wasn’t anyone else for Chloe to be with. The romance didn’t work for me because it seemed to me that Bastien didn’t really change because of his love for Chloe. He needed her to stay innocent of the world he lived in and who he saw himself as so that he could make her innocence as part of his life. That’s why he had to have physical control over her so that she wouldn’t change. In DA, the hero changes himself because he loves the heroine (I gotta go look up their names.)
#6 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 6:33 pm
@Robin: Great! Take your time.
@Carolyn Crane: Carolyn! You visited! ((((clings)))
This conversation is really showing me the limits of the word “hero” for “male partner” in romance. It just fails for this book.
@Jeanne: The question of B’s character arc is an interesting one. I guess it wasn’t that dramatic, which you ‘d think would be called for in his case. There is a line between lovers complementing each other and using each other, and it sounds like you think Bastien crossed it.
#7 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 6:35 pm
I love Black Ice, although it isn’t my favorite Anne Stuart book (that position is firmly held by The Devil’s Waltz).
On the amorality of heroes, with the caveat that I have never read Death Angel: I am pro-amorality, in general. Within the context of this book I think it works because Bastien is a super-secret spy, like James Bond on crack. If he were a BMW mechanic I would have found the amorality unnecessary (although, as everyone knows, BMW mechanics are notoriously amoral. Something to do with “German engineering”). The question I have isn’t if Chloe should be with someone else, but rather what it is about Chloe that makes Bastien rescue her at all? Because regardless of how moral that rescue ultimately is, I think we can all agree that the book sets it up to be an action that is totally out of character for him. So why Chloe? Or more importantly, what is it about Chloe that make Bastien want to be heroic or moral?
I also have an answer to where this book fits in Stuart’s other work, but I’ll save that for later.
#8 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 6:37 pm
Re Stuart’s career, the amoral hero has been her main shtick for quite a while–you will find them in her historicals from the 90s as well as her more recent books. In fact, I was interested to see whether on this reread of BI, I would enjoy it less because I’ve encountered the same type in so many of her other books. But I find he is still a standout, though I can’t pinpoint why. I’m not that far in, though.
#9 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 6:40 pm
Jeanne: I think that’s a good point: does he change? I think he doesn’t change internally too much, but then again, he sort of changes principles. He goes from being willing to let her die to save thousands of lives, to throwing over the whole mission to save hers.
But, he was tired and heading that way, heading toward leaving the spy life, likely feet first, so I guess the question is how convinced we are that Chloe effected that change in him.
And Angela, I did have that same question. Why her? There were times when I felt like Chloe was more a representation of innocence than a heroine who was an equal to him. However, I didn’t get to reviewing the second half of the book, so I’m going off a general remembered impression.
#10 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 6:43 pm
Angela – is it something specifically about Chloe that changes things, or is it that he was just needing things to change without entirely realizing it? Because you can see the seeds of discontent (see page 56 for example.)
#11 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 6:44 pm
Well, I had the impression that he rescued her because he found out that he was wrong about her – that she was an innocent bystander after all. And that rescuing her would be one small thing that he could do to prove to himself that he hadn’t totally lost his soul.
#12 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 6:46 pm
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: Angela! Hello!
You know, something that I noticed on a re-skim was that Chloe, even from the first pages, is much stronger than she seems. First, she goes to the chateau, which means she is a risk taker. Then, Hakim wanted her to leave immediately? and she refuses, showing she is stubborn. Then, she pretends she doesn’t know Italian, meaning she’s intuitive, realizing something is off. And she is so observant. she knows immediately that Bastien isn’t trying to seduce her for normal lustful reasons. I guess, rereading it, I realized they were not as far apart as I thought.
Willaful, hello!! and thanks for your POV on Stuart’s use of the amoral hero.
#13 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 6:49 pm
Carolyn, you’ve said it better than I did. Chloe isn’t a real person, she’s a representation of innocence.
My next question would be: does Chloe change because of her love for Bastien?
#14 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 6:50 pm
willaful: yeah. I go back and forth on that question. Because on the one hand the discontent could suggest that any semi-attractive innocent would have resulted in the same character arc or that Chloe specifically acted as a catalyst on that part of his person.
Carolyn: What you said about Chloe is why Black Ice is not my #1 Anne Stuart. Annelise has more personality, imho, but that may be just my memory of Chloe and not necessarily true.
#15 by Marianne McA on October 25, 2009 - 6:51 pm
I didn’t really like it, but I would generally avoid assassins in romances because the amoral romance hero(ine) doesn’t work for me. I haven’t read Death Angel, but I did read Cry No More, and the romance elements of the story didn’t work for me for that reason.
The balance of suspense to romance seemed about right to me, for that kind of story. However, the suspense part of the book just seemed stupid. I didn’t believe in the ‘Committee’, or that the illegal international arms trade is run in that way, or – no matter how many times it was said – that it is impossible for an American to be killed abroad without the incident creating huge international ramifications. (Japanese, Germans – anyone else, you can apparently slaughter with impunity.) And on a personal level, I found the characters actions odd: I don’t see why Chloe wouldn’t go to the police, or the American Embassy, for example.
The first sexual encounter – I did accept the idea that it wasn’t a sexual encounter in any normal sense, so the normal rules don’t apply. You don’t ask, or get, permission to forcibly interrogate people. (I don’t believe, for one second, it’s the efficient method of divining the truth that Bastien supposes.)
As for the relationship – I bought into the idea that Bastien, for whatever reason, falls suddenly and almost obsessively for Chloe. Chloe seemed to have an almost teenage mindset. She *knows* Bastien has these hidden depths and that she can trust him, all evidence to the contrary. I can’t imagine it works, longterm, because I can’t imagine how that relationship would look.
#16 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 6:55 pm
I may be talking out my ass here, but I remember someone writing about Stuart deliberately choosing to make all the women in this series very “ordinary.” (Though that wouldn’t apply to supposedly super-smart Jilly — except that she didn’t come out very well, IMO.) They certainly don’t have the strength, wit or charisma we see in some of her historical heroines. Perhaps that’s because they’re supposed to personify innocence/goodness/the life the amoral hero has given up?
#17 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 6:57 pm
Jessica: That’s an interesting view. I wonder if Chloe is drawn so well as a normal girl who is more clever than most, that Bastien’s wiles just totally outshine her. But I like the idea that she’s somewhat like Bastien, though I need to think if I agree. I’d love it if she had some relationship to his moral dilemma: Save the one in front of you or potential others later?
Willaful and Angela: On the bit about why Chloe, there’s also this: on 130, “She opened her eyes for that, staring straight at him through the shadowy room. He looked back into her brown eyes, and saw himself clearly for the first time. Who he was, and what he had become.” As though she’s serving as a mirror. I wonder if it’s just really mixed motivation.
Jeanne: that’s a great question to ask. Does she get tougher? I wish I’d read the end more recently.
#18 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 6:57 pm
Come to think of it, that couldn’t apply to Isobel from Ice Storm either, so maybe the whole thing was bogus.
#19 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 6:59 pm
Carolyn – nice! I’m a few pages from that scene. And of course, blathering here instead of reading.
#20 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:00 pm
@Marianne McA:
I am so glad you wrote that. I had a LOT of problems with it, too. For one thing, how is it possible that these international high fliers would not have their own interpreters? Why on earth would the contract with an agency? They’re not IBM!
And why on earth would they even need one? Are you telling me these highly educated successful people do not all speak both French and English?
#21 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 7:01 pm
Hey Jessica. This is exactly why I go back and forth on this question. When I first read the book, I really liked Chloe. But then when I re-read it, I wasn’t so certain of her. However, for exactly the reasons you just pointed out, I am very easily persuaded to go back to my initial attitude.
Of course, my question isn’t entirely Chloe/Bastien centric but sort of an off-shoot of this continuing metaphysical question I have about the nature of love. Why? Why him/her? Why now? Why not some other dude?
#22 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 7:02 pm
oooo – contrast that quote to p118: “He held her up for a moment, and he could see his face in the mirrored wall, dark and ruthless. He looked like the bastard he was, and there was nothing he could do about it. He’d accepted the fact long ago.”
#23 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:02 pm
LOL. Right.
#24 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:03 pm
Oh, interesting! on the quotes! (LOL was on Jessica’s thing)
#25 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 7:05 pm
Why do James Bond villains always have super-secret lairs under-volcanoes? Or on uncharted islands? And why do they always reveal their nefarious plans? I blame the super-villain education system and this whole “No-Villain-Left-Behind” policy. It is a traveshamockery, I tell you.
#26 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:12 pm
@Marianne McA:
I found this so, so interesting. But how is it not sex? Can you say more?
I read a really good book once by Page Dubois, called Torture and Truth, about how the body is supposed to be a repository of essential truths, and torture, among other things, is necessary to extract them. I kept hearing echoes of that in Bastien’s superficially ridiculous notion that if he could get Chloe to climax he could get the truth out of her.
Here’s something from a review of the book: [It] “attempts to prove and explain why slave evidence given under torture was considered more trustworthy than hat of free men compelled only by law. Two fourth-century orators actually claim that while witnesses have been found to lie in court, no evidence given under torture has ever been proved false.(2) Arguing from these and other passages that deal with competing evidentiary claims and from Aristotle’s master/ slave, mind/body duality, duBois concludes that “common wisdom attributed a superior value to the evidence of a tortured slave…The free man, the citizen, because he possesses reason, can lie freely…The slave, incapable of reasoning, can only produce truth under coercion, can produce only truth under coercion” (p.68).”
#27 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:19 pm
Oh, so you think it was Bastien’s thinking that she wouldn’t be able to reason while in the throes of sexual desire? And that he might not apply that to men? I’d apply it to men over women.
But that’s interesting. I was more thinking that he felt he’d really “know” her, like, who she really is, during sex. But then, there was that whole thing where he withdrew, and asked ‘who are you?’ Like she was SO on the verge that she’d tell. And then he’s like, what do you want? And she goes, YOU. Which, to me, wasn’t telling considering the circumstance.
#28 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 7:23 pm
@Jessica: Wait, is Dubois confirming the essentialism or critiquing it? I am so very wary of essentializing arguments, which is why I often find these innocent woman = salvation for jaded man portrayals we often see in Romance, especially historical and Rom suspense.
#29 by Nicola O. on October 25, 2009 - 7:27 pm
Great conversation!
I blasted through the book yesterday afternoon so I could sit in on this discussion.
Suspense is probably my least favorite subgenre, in no small part because I’m squeamish about torture, especially the torture of the protagonists. And while I enjoyed Black Ice for the most part, I won’t go out of my way for other similar stories.
Upon analysis, I’d have to agree with Marianne that premise around the arms dealing was fairly unbelievable but it didn’t bother me much in the moment. The one thing I DIDN’T believe was that she’d be perfectly fine once she got to the USA. That didn’t fit at all with the… I’ll call it world-building.
Regarding the first sex scene – I rather liked it. Certainly an unusual spin on the “I hate him but he makes me melt” trope. Bastien was protective in spite of the dastardliness – he kept her out of the cameras and gave her a number of opportunities to say “no.” And afterward, Chloe’s reaction was interesting. Though I didn’t quite get how she’d both want to throw up and do it again.
The thing I really didn’t understand was why he betrayed her to Hakim. I didn’t see that he needed to do that for his cover or any other reason.
I didn’t hate the book or Bastien, but I did find him to be not quite satisfying as a hero. I know many authors go to great lengths these days to show us how damaged our hero is at the beginning and Bastien is certainly at the extreme end of the spectrum. It’s hard to like him or empathize with him. And while I thought that the way Chloe fell in love with him was fairly well done– bit by bit, with resistance all along the way, I just didn’t see that happen on his side.
And just mechanically, I thought the Committee coup at the end was too sudden and too pat.
#30 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 7:29 pm
I have this long held belief that a large percentage of the romance hero population is born under the sign of Scorpio (October 24 to November 21, you could be dating one right now!). Please regard this sentence taken from the book Sextrology:
That reflection in Chloe’s eyes that Carolyn quoted goes along with this idea of the attraction being less about beauty than the fact that Chloe is an ordinary woman, but one who sees Bastien in a way he has not been seen before. That she some how sees through him.
That the body is the place of truth is an interesting one, considering that we have inherited such a strong opposing idea, both from certain interpretations of Christianity and from the Enlightenment: namely, that the flesh is to be mistrusted . . . especially female flesh.
#31 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 7:32 pm
Hi,
Sorry I had to drop out for a phone call. Give me a minute to catch up.
#32 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:34 pm
Nicola: You mean when he betrayed her at the computer? When he didnt’ erase her history? I thought it was because he thought Hakim knew already.
#33 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 7:36 pm
Oh, that’s what I liked! Chloe is actually one of my favorite Stuart heroines, and this kind of thing is why.
As I work my way through this big glass of wine, my argument might wane, but here goes:
So many Stuart (and Rom Susp) heroines seem to be genetically predisposed to anger and resentment, which functions as an artificial barrier to their growing love for hero. They reluctantly allow sexual attraction (Am thinking of Ice Storm, I think — is that the one with the lawyer heroine?), but have this core of resentment that the hero slowly wears away, blahblahblah.
But Chloe didn’t have that boundary, which made her ambivalence to Bastien so much more believable to me. Instead it’s like she had great sex with this guy who is despicable, and she enjoyed it but is also kind of sickened by her reaction. It actually lent the scene and the budding connection some authenticity for me.
With all of Stuart’s heroines I expect some sort of masochistic impulse (the chick from Into the Fire takes the cake for me), and I haven’t read Death Angel, so can’t compare there, but I found Chloe to be an interesting take on the naive heroine. IMO she’s not taken in immediately by Bastien, but she also doesn’t have that false shell of toughness so many Rom Susp heroines do. And I felt she was actually less shallow than a lot of those who are supposed to be much deeper as characters. I think sometimes toughness passes as depth in these heroines who are basically just wearing brittle shells of fake independence, aka resentment and anger. Chloe, for me, was a nice break from that.
#34 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:37 pm
@Robin: She’s critiquing it. She ends up linking it historically to phallocentrism, logocentrism, etc.
#35 by Nicola O. on October 25, 2009 - 7:37 pm
Carolyn: yes, there. I had the impression that he made the choice. If you’re right, that would be better.
– Upon re-read, you might be right. He either didn’t know if Hakim was testing him, or he was sure that H already knew. OK.
#36 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 7:39 pm
There’s no clear reason in the text for the betrayal. It could be read as he sees it as too late and possibly risky not to betray her. Or you could see it as him fighting to preserve his self-image as heartless.
#37 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:43 pm
@Carolyn Crane:
Well, I think both — to “know her/know who she is” is to “extract the truth”. And yeah, I can see men also losing it during orgasm, but he’s a pro, so he can control it.
@Nicola O.: Nicola!! Hello!!
Yeah, I agree.
I did not think he gave her any opportunity to say no. She said “get away from me” and he said “no.” “She was going to cry, going to push him away form her, and he wasn’t going ot let that happen.”
#38 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:43 pm
Robin said:
There’s a way where Chloe is so authentic, so reasonable and everywoman, that she feels like a reader stand-in to me, a little bit – in a good way, but it feels like being pulled into a sexy spy fantasy.
This also relates, for me, to Wilaful’s memory of what Anne Stuart said about ordinary heroines, that she makes them ordinary on purpose.
#39 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 7:43 pm
Oh yes! I hate that “tough” act thing in RomSup heroines. I consider myself a feminist and as independent as graduate school income can make me, but let me tell you if I was in uber-danger from a serial killer or ultra-violent conglomerate of evil warlords or even if there was some kind of plumbing disaster, I would not consider it a weakness to call and/or rely on someone who was armed or expert. I don’t know why this “toughness” is some kind of literary shorthand for “feminist” but it is. You are right, Robin, Chloe is a nice break from that trope.
#40 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:46 pm
Jessica said:
Actually, I felt like he’d strongly established, in the car, that if she said no he would stop, and I did feel like she had a chance. Though the question there is, if she’d said it, WOULD he have stopped?
#41 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:49 pm
@Robin:
that’s interesting. See, here is an example of liking something about a book because it doesn’t fall into a trap. A reader like me, with little experience with this subgenre (I share some of Nicola’s squeamishness, if that’s the right word) wouldn’t give props to Stuart on these grounds.
I find that the more romance I read, the more I half expect some really bad thing that has happened in another book. I have started to call it “Post Dramatic Stress Syndrome”.
Oh, I agree. When bitchiness counts as strength. Chloe read to me as very authentic. I never thought of her as thinking or doing anything just because the author needed it.
#42 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 7:49 pm
Robin:
Angela:
LOL, Totally agree, too!
#43 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:52 pm
@Carolyn Crane:
You’re right. That takes the edge off it.
#44 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 7:57 pm
@Angela/Lazaraspaste:
I think sometimes, it’s the conservative nature of the much of the genre at work. If toughness is shorthand for feminism, and if being with the hero teaches the heroine to get softer, then it’s like rejecting feminism.
#45 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 7:59 pm
My vision of Stuart suspense novels is the inverse. She creates heroes who are amoral with superior skills and knowledge to those of the heroine. They take control of the heroine’s behaviour and the heroine’s natural resentment and anger appears naive and almost childish as a result. The heroines eventually “mature” when they acknowledge – through love and lust – the hero’s superiority in all but matters of the heart. Even in the case of love, in Black Ice at least, the hero uses his physicality to convince her of his love:
Page 349: “He pulled her back, off balance,…’I love you Chloe.’ “
#46 by Nicola O. on October 25, 2009 - 8:00 pm
Sing it. The one TSTL moment here was when Chloe left the hotel or penthouse or whatever it was and went back to her garret. I don’t love Suz Brockmann the way so many do, but of the couple I read, I really liked that the heroines knew when to shut up and do what they’re told.
And there’s nothing anti-feminist about that.
#47 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 8:02 pm
Jessica:
Wow, yes. gosh.
#48 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 8:03 pm
@Carolyn Crane, @Angela/Lazaraspaste, and @Jessica: The irony, of course, is that these women are hardly independent and almost never self-affirming. I think one of the reasons I like Eve Dallas so much is that she really is independent, almost too much so for a functional relationship. But it works because Roarke is more wife-identified, and the role reversal facilitates the balance.
@Carolyn Crane: I remember that comment from Stuart, and I think the reason it doesn’t make me feel that Chloe is a stand-in is that she is, IMO, motivated relatively well in the story. She goes reluctantly to the gathering after measuring the pros and cons; she has believable responses to the first sexual encounter with Bastien; she is reasonably wary of him but also not so naive or stupid that she ignores all reason.
I don’t know what this means relative to Stuart’s remark, but I guess it means that a) I’d insert the word “apparently” before ordinary, because I don’t want to think of Stuart’s heroines as ordinary in the sense of being like real women. I see them as bad approximations of real. I think she’s saying nicely that she doesn’t make her women stand out as *strong* and *exemplary* types, and in that sense I agree. But in the books of hers I’ve read and in the subgenre of Rom Susp, IMO Chloe’s kind of an exception, so I’m not sure exactly how I’d classify her relative to the category of ordinary.
#49 by Marianne McA on October 25, 2009 - 8:07 pm
I didn’t mean anything deep – just that interrogation isn’t a consensual activity, so the question as to whether she consented is irrelevant. The fact that this interrogation took the form of a sexual encounter doesn’t mean that I would apply the normal rules of sexual morality to that encounter. I just didn’t read it as a sex scene.
The argument then is whether the interrogation was a necessary evil, and I could be persuaded that it was.
Did you find it odd that Bastien believed that he himself was immune to being discovered through his sexuality, whilst at the same time as believing that Chloe must, beyond question, be discoverable through hers? Surely if the body is always truthful, it’s always truthful irrespective of gender?
#50 by Marianne McA on October 25, 2009 - 8:13 pm
Yes, I think she thinks something like the Embassy is a mile away, and that’s a bit far to go… And when she didn’t turn the lights on, I knew her flat-mate’s body had to be there somewhere.
#51 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 8:14 pm
Marianne,
That is really a great point!! Because in a way, doesn’t Chloe sort of bust him on those grounds, or originally distrust him because she distrusts the authenticity of his advances?
#52 by Magdalen on October 25, 2009 - 8:14 pm
I’m late to the party (oddly not my MO in real life, but still). Just a couple thoughts. My problem with Black Ice was the oxymoron inherent in having two people fall in love in the midst of extreme stress/danger/anger/fear. Anyone remember the sequel to Speed (great Sandra Bullock/Keanu Reeves thriller), where Sandra Bullock’s character has to explain how it is that she’s now in love with Jason Patrick, and not Keanu? She says something about how romances born in stress never last.
Specifically, I wanted Chloe to be smarter. She didn’t need to harder, but am I asking for too much when I want heroines to be a bit more logical and comprehensive when reviewing the facts and coming to some plan of action, particularly when the plan is to save her own life?
And Bastien — well, if he’s a Jason Bourne-type character, we know from the movies how damaged these guys are and how hard it is for them to find their own humanity, a necessary element for an emotionally intimate relationship.
I suppose, ultimately, I’m a cynic — I think relationships are really special amalgams of parity, generosity, love, integrity, and a degree of emotional wholeness. No, we don’t have to have all our £$%&@# together in order to have an HEA, but it’s a bit like a teeter-totter: if the two people are roughly in balance, there’s a dynamic there. But if one’s doing all the giving, all the loving, all the needing — I don’t see it working long-term.
A romance novel can be fun to read without touching me emotionally. I think Black Ice fell into that category for me.
By contrast, I loved Death Angel. I can believe a contract killer deciding he’s ready to take a different path (morally, etc.) and having that decision interwoven with a degree of sexual attraction that leads to emotional investment and love. DA’s hero seemed still to be in control of his choices. Now, that’s a double-edged sword: if he can choose to stop being a killer, then he’s on the moral hook for having killed people. And I think he was; their HEA might well have to accommodate some jail time!
But if he’s in control of his choices, then he can choose to love. And I like a hero who chooses to love the heroine. (And vice versa, but I’ll be a tad sexist and say I like the hero thinking about why he’s choosing the heroine in addition to his overwhelming attraction to her. I suspect that may be to counteract the role that superficial considerations play for men: looks, figure, etc.)
But I do get it that there is a sub-genre of contemporary romances that include some violence, danger, etc. Not my particular thing, but that’s why there are so many choices on the bookshelves!
#53 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 8:15 pm
I read this book on DA Janine’s recommendation. I read it very quickly, in one day’s time, I think, which speaks highly of the book’s readability and suck-you-in-it-ness.
Alas, this book did not sit well with me after I finished reading it.
My main problem was Chloe. Perhaps it was my general lack of familiarity with Stuart’s work, but in the books I’d read of hers before this, Midnight Rose (is that the name?) and a category romance about an ex soldier, a not-quite-nun, and a baby traveling through the jungles or some such, the heroines seemed fine.
Chloe, however, in anything but a romance, would have died and died and died.
And I’m not talking about at the castle/chateau where the arms dealing conference was taking place–where her action was entirely inappropriate too (if you aren’t going to run for your life, then stay put quietly, don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t google for dangerous information on the chateau’s own computers).
No, after they’d left the chateau and gone back to Paris, she runs away from him and goes back to her own apartment.
ARGH! Where, of course, there was a dead body in her bed or something. Has she never heard of “better the evil you know?”
And then, after a pretty okay stretch of the book managed to soften my opinion, at the very end of the book, when the villains come to her house, she could not remain still in her hiding, make sounds and get busted. Which put her in the hands of the villains and then get Bastien in danger too.
And the author basically pulls a deux ex machina to get them out of their deep doodoo so we can close the book with both of them still alive.
Because I don’t believe Chloe can remain alive for long when Bastien’s list of enemies is as long as the Amazon River and when she cannot protect herself at all, even when everybody’s life is on the line. And I most certainly do not get, at all, what Bastien sees in her.
Because of all my problems with Chloe, I don’t remember much about Bastien, other than he is a smoker. I know Janine is gaga about him, but I can never get it up, so to speak, for heroes who go for heroines who make me pull my hair out.
(And perhaps my general lack of familiarity with romantic suspense also colored my expectations going in.)
What I want to know is why, Stuart, a fearless, accomplished, outspoken woman, a pretty darn cool role model from what I know of her, would want to make her heroines “ordinary?”
#54 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 8:15 pm
Just got home from a day of brunching and shopping. Give me a little time to catch up on posts and I’ll join in.
#55 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 8:18 pm
Perhaps it is not so much a question of gender as of experience. Not necessarily sexual but . . . I don’t know what you’d call it, job skill? . . . as if somehow the nature of Bastien’s work has inured him to the truth of his body. That he is in total control of his body at all times, speaks to this. He can manipulate his face, his hands, his penis to react the way that he wishes his physical person to react regardless of the natural or truthful response his body wishes to give.
#56 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 8:22 pm
@Jeanne:
This is such an interesting reading! Although, I still want to say that while Bastien is more skilled, in terms of character, Chloe is just a strong.
One of the things I really liked about Black Ice is that Chloe has the kind of reactions one would expect to the horror unfolding around her, yet she makes wise choices, for the most part.
The decision to go back to her apartment may not have been a smart one, but I can tell you that the suspense part of the novel really picked up for me at that point, and didn’t let go. when it came to the big picture, I was not convinced, but when it was down to “2 people running from bad guys”, I thought Stuart did an amazing job.
@Marianne McA:
I never thought of it that way, I guess because, hey this is a romance, and these are the two main people falling in love.
#57 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 8:22 pm
I agree that Chloe’s one real TSTL move was going back to her place. I wish Stuart had allowed her to be smarter there.
As for Bastien, what really irritated me was how he went from hardened assassin to domesticated hubby and pappa over the series. I know that’s standard Rom Susp fare, but it still had me rolling my eyes. Definite overdose of the heroine’s magic hoo-haw.
#58 by Robin on October 25, 2009 - 8:24 pm
Yes, this is how I felt about Chloe, too. She’s my favorite Stuart heroine, although I have not, by a long shot, read all of her books.
#59 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 8:29 pm
I agree that in extreme situations, the heroine ought to just go along with whomever seems to have her best interests in mind and is capable of successfully protecting her. But I don’t see anything very romantic about that situation. I don’t see how, unless she’s going to be in danger for the rest of her life, there’s much to recommend about this fellow for an HEA. Is he always going to hem her in like this? Tell her what to do, when to speak and restrain her when she disagrees with him? What else has he done to recommend himself as a lover and lifelong companion?
#60 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 8:33 pm
@Robin:
No, the one with the lawyer heroine was Cold as Ice. Peter and Genevieve. Ice Storm was the one with Isobel and Serafin.
#61 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 8:33 pm
Hello Magdalen, Sherry and Janine. Were you out shopping together by any chance? LOL.
@Magdalen:
this is a major problem I have with rom suspense. As you say, there can be a kind of intense short term bonding, but do they have what it takes for the long term?
It’s funny, because that’s exactly how I would describe Black Ice.
I love this point. You are right — he cannot start his life anew and wipe the slate clean. He has to revision everything that’s happened in light of his new outlook.
@Sherry Thomas:
These are problems, to be sure. I guess, if Bastien’s attraction is, as other said upthread, merely her generic innocence, that’s not enough. And if it merely that they have weathered a tough storm, that’s not enough. and if it’s merely that he was ready to change and she was there, that’s not enough. But how about all three?
#62 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 8:37 pm
Sherry, this is totally why I hate the ingenue heroines. Seriously, after ten minutes wouldn’t you want to kill said person? Especially, if you were already comfortable with murder?
Anne Stuart tends to throw the same two people over and over again. I have this theory that there’s a perfect story every author is trying to tell and often, because of this, they tell the same story in some variation, over and over again. To me, Stuart’s perfect story of the amoral hero and the ordinary woman is The Devil’s Waltz where, yes, the heroine does doing something silly at the end but the context is entirely different (she thinks she’s saving him). Thematically, there are many similarities between that book and this one. However, I think the disparity between hero and heroine is better bridged in that book.
Perhaps it is a problem of time, in the sense that the timeline for romantic suspense novels aren’t just short but operate in a period of hours rather than weeks.
I also want to point out that the idea of Stockholm Syndrome keeps cropping up as an explanation for their emotional connection. Chloe even says something along the lines of that’s all it is and he replies that there is no such thing as Stockholm Syndrome. I’m not sure what I think about that but I’ve always thought it was interesting.
#63 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 8:40 pm
ROTFL!!! Wait until you’ve been reading in this genre as long as I have.
#64 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 8:40 pm
@Angela/Lazaraspaste
It was eye-popping for me to read your posts because I’d read your open letter to Bastien on your blog (great blog, by the way, I should have commented.)
Remember the thing about how a piece of communication is always what the author thinks s/he has written versus what the reader believes s/he has read? Given my own strong opinions on Black Ice, I totally thought your letter was anti-Bastien. (I’m actually anti-Chloe, but in the absence of Chloe, Bastien would do.)
And then I went back just now and reread it. Ha. Turns out that upon more careful reading, you’d said fairly clearly that you thought his happy ending would work, despite the ex-boyfriend he reminded you of.
Good thing, now that I think about it, that I did not comment. And a good thing, given my dismal reading skills, that I comment as little as I do in general.
#65 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 8:50 pm
@Marianne McA:
Not in Anne Stuart’s universe. Have you read Ice Storm? Isobel, who is also supposed to have been a Committee super-spy, has been unable to enjoy sex all that time, and also, never had to have sex as part of her work for the Committee. While every single one of the male agents has used sex.
Gosh, that book really made me want to write about a female spy/assassin antiheroine where sex is part of the job description. I don’t know if I ever will, but if I ever do, I’ll have Stuart to credit for that impulse.
#66 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 8:51 pm
Umm, not enough for me, in this case.
Maybe because I wasn’t enough attracted to Bastien.
Because I’ve been there–I who stand ready to shag the sheik, as in, Goddess forgive me, EM Hull’s THE SHEIK. I totally, absolutely, graciously, and conveniently overlooked every flaw in that book because I wanted to shag him so much.
Bastien didn’t do it for me enough to overlook my problems with Chloe and my problems with the pat resolution at the end.
#67 by SonomaLass on October 25, 2009 - 8:56 pm
Wow, I cannot read this comment thread, because I only just started the book and don’t want to spoil it. But I can’t wait to come back and read it when I do finish! Looks like an excellent discussion.
#68 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on October 25, 2009 - 8:59 pm
@Sherry Thomas
Thanks! I, of course, was exaggerating somewhat about the ex-boyfriend connection.
As for the happy ending, I think the reason it works for me is because I believe that the person with the “tough shell” in this book is Bastien, not Chloe. There’s seems to be strong, if unarticulated desire, for normalcy there. The flashbacks to his strange upbringing, his total lack of family but the fact that he chooses Chloe isn’t just that she’s innocent, but that she’s normal. She’s a normal girl with a normal family. I can see how that could be extremely desirable for someone who is trapped in a kind of hell. I don’t know why, but my memory of the book suggests to me that there’s something in Bastien that wants to be just a regular dude. As Kumar once said, just because you are hung like a donkey doesn’t mean you have to be a porn star. Similarly, just because you are damaged and an awesome spy doesn’t mean that you can’t be a good father or a decent husband.
I think, ultimately, romance is genre about redemption: that people can change, that charity, hope and love can affect people’s lives in positive ways. And also, that no matter how dark the past was, the future can be better. That this aspect of romance can be twisted to support staying in abusive marriages/relationships, etc. sucks, but I think these extreme characters (Chloe in her innocence, Bastien in his amorality) are a way of questioning what it is to love somebody unconditionally? What it means to be worthy of love? And what it means to choose to be better than you are now.
So maybe I believe in the HEA of this book because I believe in the principle it is upholding and not necessarily the specific relationship. Although, there is something about both these people that is very compelling to me.
#69 by Carolyn Crane on October 25, 2009 - 8:59 pm
I’m signing off, but as this is the first Anne Stuart I have read, and I really loved this hero (and would’ve totally shagged him! I couldn’t believe she was thinking Stockholm syndrome!) I would be very interested in other Anne Stuart gems of the amoral hero, if anyone has favorites. I shall thank you in advance. Oh, Jessica, this was so fun.
#70 by Magdalen on October 25, 2009 - 9:01 pm
Yes! An awesome book — bad, but still really satisfying in all respects. I even (and this is truly embarrassing) enjoyed Barbara Cartland’s brazen rip-off of The Sheik. It’s this difficulty in romance fiction that’s hard to explain to outsiders: it may be a bad book, but it has the magic woo-woo. We forgive a lot when it has the magic woo-woo.
#71 by Jeanne on October 25, 2009 - 9:02 pm
Hi,
I immediately had second thoughts about that “stock characters” remark and have tried twice but failed to edit it out.
I actually liked Black Ice – it’s well written and fun to read (except for the torture part.) Just like the Bourne movies are fun to watch. But I read a second book in the series and quit. The violence is too graphic and extreme for me.
But I have re-read Death Angel many times even though the plot of Death Angel may be even more “stock” and cliched and unbelievable than Black Ice. But, as Magdelan said so well, the hero in DA chooses to change because he loves the heroine. And he respects her intelligence and savvy and loves her for it even as he works against her.
#72 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:03 pm
No, was shopping with my husband, but as Sherry is responsible for my pre-RWA shopping spree at White House Black Market, I would happily shop with her anytime! Magdalen is welcome to join us of course. The more the merrier.
#73 by Jill D. on October 25, 2009 - 9:06 pm
Jeezus!! Jessica, I think with 64 comments you can consider this discussion a success, LOL! Ummm.. I didn’t read through all the comments, so please excuse me if I am repeating anything said in the previous comments. I just thought I would chime in with my two cents.
It’s been a couple of years since I read Black Ice, so my memory might be faulty
I did want to answer your question on where Black Ice falls in comparison to her other books. The first book I read by Anne Stuart was Nightfall. I believe it won a RITA award (I am not positive on this), anyway, that book blew me away. It was my first experience reading the hero as the anti-hero. In Nightfall the hero is essentially the “bad-guy” but the heroine is attracted to him and his mysterious ways. She doesn’t believe that he is bad. There must be good in him and something is forcing him to do bad things. In essence, she is right and they fall in love and live happily ever after – of course after a long and ardorous journey.
I have to admit, I ate it up and rushed out to read other books by Anne Stuart. As a matter of fact, I tried to read everything I could get my hands on. But I quickly burned out, because every book had this type of hero and it quickly became repetitive. Stuart is an expert at penning a hero shrouded in mystery. I find that very appealing.
One of the draw back to Stuart’s writing is her heroines. I personally have felt that they have declined over the years. They make really dumb decisions that I have to roll my eyes at. I am not sure if my expectations as a reader have changed, or if it’s her writing. It’s probably the former.
I read Black Ice and then Cold as Ice, which I didn’t like. The heroine did me in. I couldn’t stand her stupidity. I really think Anne Stuart is a very talented author, but I haven’t read anything more recent than that.
#74 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 9:09 pm
@Angela/Lazaraspaste
Funny, we wrote each other at the same time.
I don’t write ingenue heroines myself, and I’ve been known to deplore the preponderance of baked-potato heroines.
But I think my problem with Chloe isn’t that she is a ingenue, but that she is, actually, for the case at hand, not enough of one.
For someone of such terribly damaged soul like Bastien, I would have paired him with someone equally damaged, i.e. a demon/demon pairing. But if an author does an angel/demon pairing, then I’d expect a true angel, a woman of ideals and compassion and deep, deep goodness, and not in the naive see-no-evil way, but a goodness that is all the stronger for the evil it has seen, and for the wisdom she brings to the pairing to counter his cynicism.
Chloe doesn’t bring enough to this pairing for me to believe her viability as Bastien’s partner. I really can’t see him with her for longer than 3-6 months.
#75 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:15 pm
@Carolyn Crane:
Bye Carolyn! I have read or tried to read a bunch of Anne Stuart books, let’s see:
Prince of Swords
A Rose at Midnight
To Love a Dark Lord
Heat Lightning
Rafe’s Revenge
Shadow Lover
Nightfall
Moonrise
Ritual Sins
Black Ice
Cold as Ice
Ice Blue
Ice Storm
Fire and Ice
Silver Falls
And probably one or two others I am forgetting.
Black Ice is by far my favorite. My second favorite is Rafe’s Revenge, a category. However, if you’re looking for the ultimate in amorality, you can’t beat the heroes of Moonrise and Ritual Sins.
In terms of complexity, depth and nuance, I just haven’t seen another hero to equal Bastien from Stuart.
#76 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 9:21 pm
See what I mean, Janine has it bad for Bastien.
I will think of you, Janine darling, as I whisper sweet nothings into my sheik’s ear while he calls me Cherie and exhort me to submit to him–all while we are on a horse, of course.
#77 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 9:24 pm
Not sex in the same way that it’s said rape is not about sex? But I’m not sure that’s entirely true in this case, given that both parties already have strong attraction, even feelings towards each other.
#78 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:27 pm
Question: Was anyone else reminded of Gaffney’s superlative To Have and to Hold when you read this book? The two books are so different in so many ways (the prose styles and the settings could not be more different, to begin with), and yet, the central internal conflicts were the same. For both “heroes” (if we can call them that) the conflict was “Should I save her or destroy her/allow others to destroy her?” and for the heroines it was “Is this Stockholm Syndrome or is this love?”
Bastien’s responses to Hakim’s interrogation of Chloe reminded me very much of Sebastian’s responses to his friends’ interrogation of Rachel, too.
#79 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 9:28 pm
Lol, so glad to know I’m not alone in my shag-me-already reaction to THE SHEIK.
I don’t usually argue with people about reaction to books precisely because of the magic woo-woo factor. We can talk logically all we want, but in the end, the magic woo-woo sweeps all before it and you either feel it or you don’t.
(And I really hope magic woo-woo is not a synonym for magic hoo-hoo, because the woo-woo, hoo-hoo kind of informal English is where I’m weakest.)
#80 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:32 pm
@Sherry Thomas: You and your sheikh and your horse can ride into the sunset together. I’ll happily take Bastien and his field of flowers and starry skies “where there is no death or pain or sorrow.”
#81 by Magdalen on October 25, 2009 - 9:33 pm
@Janine — I’ll go shopping with anyone, anytime, but be warned: I shop for odd things: Yarn, quilting fabric, and of course books. Not shoes, unless there’s a gun to my head.
@Jessica, @Jeanne — Here’s the distinction I make between Bastien and the assassin/hero of Death Angel. Bastien is engineered in some way (I skimmed the details; the Bourne movies did it SO much better, imo), so he’s a product of what created him. Passive, although of course he’s got all that psychometric control hoo-hah. Wasn’t there some Bad Mother figure in there as well?
DA’s hero (forget his name (John?), which Amazon tells me we only learn at the end — interesting touch, to have him be basically anonymous for the romance) picked his career. Now, if that’s bad bad bad, then I don’t blame anyone for hating him, and the book. But it’s a choice — not a passive training process.
He actually reminded me of Thomas Perry’s antihero in Pursuit, whose skill is both inherent and then carefully honed. Not a sociopath, to be sure, but someone who decided this was a career he could do well. And in Thomas Perry’s universe, that’s really close to Jane Whitefield, his Native American heroine in several really wonderful books.
{Sidebar — If anyone wants a palate cleanser after a TSTL protag, read Thomas Perry’s Jane Whitefield thrillers. Specifically, read Dance for the Dead, the first in the series. It will turn the tables on the Anne Stuart trope. (And if anyone else is familiar with the Jane Whitefield books, and the first one in particular, please please please don’t spoil it for anyone. There’s a twist I don’t want even to allude to because new readers really should be allowed to get the pleasure of the whole book. Thanks.)}
Okay, so back to Black Ice. I couldn’t put together the two pieces to Bastien as we’re meant to understand him: he didn’t choose to be a killing machine, but he got super-good at it, and now he is capable of a deep abiding love. Sorry, doesn’t compute. I’m just saying…
#82 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:34 pm
Jessica, I was kind of hoping to hear what you thought of this book overall. Did you like it?
#83 by Jessica on October 25, 2009 - 9:36 pm
@SonomaLass:
Please do come back when you’ve finished. I’d like to know what you think!
@Angela/Lazaraspaste:
I agree with you that Chloe’s normalcy was a big attraction from Bastien. And, you know, I find this very very common in the genre. Especially with more alpha heroes whose contact with women may have been with scheming whores, etc.
And I think, it operates for us ordinary folks on some level, too. I had a very unorthodox and sometimes quite troubled upbringing, and was always attracted to boyfriends who had stable, happy, large families.
Good night Carolyn, and thank you!
Yes, it’s odd that Chloe thinks about Stockholm Syndrome. But wouldn’t it be part of SS to think of it and dismiss it?
@Magdalen:
Wiser words were never spoken.
I am sorry my edit function is giving you trouble. but thanks for clarifying.
I find I often put things the “wrong” sort of way the first time, and it is in discussion that I find the words. that’s why I wanted to talk about a book this way.
@Jill D.: Jill! Hello!
A number of people have suggested this about Stuart. I think this is true of a lot of romance authors (and movie makers, and singers). It;s a rare writer who can reinvent herself each time out of the gate. I think of Ivory and Kinsale as two who can do it.
@Sherry Thomas:
I liek this pint. Without the kind of depth to which you refer, the attraction comes too close to the mystical Power of the Feminine, concentrated, of course, in the Magic Hoo Hoo. It’s archetypal, not about Chloe and Bastien.
@Janine: Janine, does she write differently for the two subgenres? I a always interested in whether authors do that.
Ok, folks, it’s bedtime for me. I have a 9:00am class.
I hope to get up in the am and see a few more comments.
Thank you so much for everyone who has spent some time here tonight.
I had a GREAT time!
#84 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:36 pm
@Magdalen: I totally thought that Bastien chose to be a killing machine (and I’ve read the book five or six times). He just chose it a long time ago, and was getting very weary of the life, and wanted to see if there was any goodness left in himself, and therefore, he was ready to make a different choice.
#85 by Magdalen on October 25, 2009 - 9:40 pm
@Sherry —
Not to worry, I was using it pretty loosely myself. I borrowed it from the Smart Bitches, who coined it to explain how for some heros, only that one heroine would do. She might not be the prettiest, thinnest, richest, but she’s got the magic woo-woo.
Believe me, I am the stunned beneficiary of the magic woo-woo effect: My husband loves me in precisely that way and I’m confident of that, but there are days when I actually ask him, “Okay, why — ?”
#86 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 9:41 pm
Magdalen – in a sense Bastien is anonymous too – no real name, no real identity. The last line of the book is one that really stuck with me, for that reason.
#87 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 9:46 pm
Dig me! With my mad googling skillz, I managed to dig up that Stuart reference. It’s from a comment at Dear Author:
Just search on “ordinary,” that should bring it up.
This is still a second hand comment, I would love to find the actual interview referred to.
#88 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 9:47 pm
I’m not sure what you mean by “write differently.” There are so many ways to vary writing. I have the impression that her more recent historicals are more in the vein of The Devil’s Waltz, that is, a bit lighter in tone. But some of her older ones, like A Rose at Midnight are quite dark. And from her description of the historical trilogy she is writing now, I think these books may be darker too, though of course we won’t really know until those books are out. I personally am usually more drawn to her contemporaries because I find her voice feels more contemporary to me.
And speaking of her voice, the evolution of it over the years is one of the things I find most interesting. It’s become tighter and leaner and for me, more satisfying than it used to be. Even in a frustrating book like Silver Falls, I can stop to enjoy the punch her phrasing packs, and that didn’t used to be the case.
#89 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 9:49 pm
And here’s the actual Anne Stuart interview, which it took two more second to find. :-
Anne Stuart at AAR
#90 by jillsorenson on October 25, 2009 - 10:06 pm
I wish I had time to read all of the comments! My computer is having a meltdown so I’ll be brief. LOVED the book. Disliked the first sex scene. Her inability to say yes or no bothered me? I think I saw it as weakness.
Wish I could linger…
#91 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 10:08 pm
Re. the first sex scene,
For me the second and third sex scenes are two of the highlights of the book, but I really can’t say that about the first. I think the first sex scene didn’t completely work for me because I’m not convinced that I buy the concept of sex as a method of interrogation or Bastien’s confidence that it would be successful, nor the cartel members’ expectation that that is how the interrogation would take place.
Also, I wasn’t completely clear about whether or not it was consensual. There wasn’t explicit consent given, but there also wasn’t an explicit refusal. I would have liked it to be a little more clear in my mind, whether this was rape, forced seduction, or what.
I do, however, see the scene as having huge importance to the story because without it, I don’t think Chloe’s fear of her feelings for Bastien would have worked nearly as well.
For me, even her going back to the apartment wasn’t exactly TSTL. I saw her as having an overriding emotional impulse to get away from Bastien at almost any price. Without the first sex scene, I would have thought she was nuts. But with it, I thought she was being irrational, but the lack of rationality worked for me because it stemmed from the anger and hurt and fear she felt as a result of what Bastien had done to her.
It may or may not have been rape, but either way, it was at least near-rape, and well, I just don’t know how many women would never try to get away from a man who violated them in a way they found devastating and sickening, even if their lives depended on him. I think sometimes there are very powerful emotions that take over and override all rational sense, and that is what I saw happening when Chloe went back to the apartment. IMO it is different from stupidity, because I find it human and understandable.
So I guess with regard to the first sex scene, my verdict is (A) it doesn’t completely work but (B) the book as a whole, which works beautifully, wouldn’t work at all without that scene. It’s crucial, I just wish Stuart had written it more clearly.
#92 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 10:11 pm
@jillsorenson: Cross-posted! I was just saying the same thing about the first sex scene. Although I don’t know if it wasn’t Stuart dodging a bullet — trying to write it as close to rape as the genre’s parameters in 2005 would allow. Pure speculation on my part, of course…
#93 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 10:22 pm
@Jessica:
That was my conclusion too, but it took me at least a couple of reads to get there. I think a lot of readers don’t look beyond Chloe’s surface and I didn’t either at first. IMO that’s because we are primed by the way Bastien views her as “dangerously inept.” I think he even likens her to a bunny rabbit at one point. I don’t think that’s the reality of Chloe so much as Bastien’s initial impression of her, for reasons having to do with his rejection of what’s left of his own innocence. That’s an aspect of his character that I find interesting, but I think it has the unfortunate side effect of preparing the reader to see ineptitude in Chloe.
#94 by Janine on October 25, 2009 - 10:39 pm
Well, it’s almost 8:30 PM here on the west coast, and I think I’m talking to myself, so this will be my last post for the day. I wish I’d gotten here earlier.
Just to throw some food for thought out there for tomorrow morning, here are some aspects of the book that haven’t been discussed that I would love to hear opinions of.
What did you think of the way Stuart uses snow and ice as a kind of metaphor and for setting a dark atmosphere?
i.e.
I’d also love to hear what people thought of the second and third sex scenes.
#95 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 10:48 pm
@Magdalen:
LOL. I like the “stunned beneficiary” part.
But I think that is the right mix of a relationship, that there should be a part that is inexplicable to anyone else except the two involved.
#96 by heidenkind on October 25, 2009 - 10:49 pm
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: I just finished Tempt Me at Twilight, and the hero is a Scorpion. Kleypas makes a big deal out of pointing it out–so you’re probably right!
#97 by heidenkind on October 25, 2009 - 11:01 pm
I know I’m late and whatever I say will probably be repetitious at this point, but I’m going to comment anyway. ^_^
I really enjoyed this book, although my favorite “amoral” hero of Stuart’s is Dillon from Into the Fire–that book is crazy. Anyway, I think the appeal of amoral heroes like Bastien is that, if they do something good or that’s not completely self-serving, you know it’s because the influence of heroine. That gives one the warm fuzzies.
#98 by willaful on October 25, 2009 - 11:17 pm
I just came across this line: “He was a monster, not even human. But he was her monster, keeping her safe, and she was past the point of caring.”
This made me think of a personal theory I have, that much of the appeal of vampire romance is the appeal of having your own monster. Someone terribly dangerous who would never hurt you. In that interview, Stuart says she thinks of her heroes as being vampire-like.
IIRC, Stuart also uses the monster analogy in Ice Storm – not going to bother to find the quote, but Isobel thinks something like, “He was a monster–but he was the same kind of monster she was.”
#99 by Sherry Thomas on October 25, 2009 - 11:26 pm
@Jessica:
That’s another reason why I did not react to this book as well as I’d hoped. Because Chloe is Everywoman, while Bastien is most certainly not Everyman.
So much character-building went into Bastien. (I have very little recollection of him myself but Janine is not the kind of reader to casually throw sky-high praise–“In terms of complexity, depth and nuance, I just haven’t seen another hero to equal Bastien from Stuart”–around.) Chloe, in contrast, felt constructed out of leftover parts, just different enough to avoid being completely boring, just clueless/brave/impulsive/emotional/sexual enough to be a convenient driver of plot.
This book is all about the hero. Just about any pretty, scared, non-evil woman would do as the heroine. That non-specificity bothers me.
That’s what I expect from Hollywood movies, where men and stories about men are the norm. Where men get character arcs and women are just lures/obstacles/inspirations and completely interchangeable. Even in a movie as adorable as UP, the late wife was still this ideal of perfection, no character growth there.
But in books written by women for women, I really wish the heroines received some more TLC. That authors–good authors especially–don’t lavish all their attention on the hero and stop at “good enough” for the heroine.
#100 by Bronwyn Parry on October 26, 2009 - 2:06 am
It’s been a while since I read the book, but I have since read all but one of the Ice books, and this one remains the one that worked best for me – despite its problems.
I read Chloe as being very young – and she is, in the book (twenty? or something like that?). So, rather than TSTL, I read her more as being simply young, inexperienced in the ways of the world, with that enthusiasm and lack of awareness, experience and judgment that many of us had at the age. So, while she does some things that I was screaming at her not to do, I could also see my niece or some of her friends (or even myself, at the same age) doing just what Chloe did. Her confusion and mixed reactions to Bastien also rang true for me in the context of a very young woman.
I liked Bastien. I didn’t really read him as amoral; the fact that he didn’t like who he was, and that he was, in some ways, seeking punishment for what he’d done in the past, convinced me that there was a moral backbone there – as did the fact that the things he’d done were supposed to be for the greater good. He didn’t go around torturing or killing people for fun, power, money, or whatever.
The improbability of the plot did pull me out of the story a number of times. I can merrily suspend disbelief, but only to a certain extent before the internal critic starts commenting. However, I don’t really expect totally realistic plots in this sub-sub-genre corner of romantic suspense.
When I got to the end of the book, I did feel somewhat dissatisfied about the resolution. While I didn’t disbelieve the connection between Chloe and Bastien, I’d be far more convinced of a HEA if Bastien had gone off and worked on an Arctic icebreaker (or something similarly isolated and mentally and physically challenging) and if Chloe had finished a Master’s degree or worked for the UN or an NGO and generally gained a bit more experience of life – ie, if they’d both had time to understand themselves better and come to the relationship mature and mentally healthy.
That said, I did enjoy the book. The three others in the series that I read didn’t work as well for me, although Blue Ice came close. I found the second heroine, and Isobel, both unrealistic, and although they were supposed to be highly intelligent I couldn’t read them that way. I do think Stuart’s strength is in the damaged, ambivalent hero, and the high-action, thriller pacing, and I enjoy her books more for them.
#101 by Elyssa Papa on October 26, 2009 - 2:55 am
I got into Black Ice when Squawk Radio was still a blog—and one of the Squawkers (perhaps it was Eloisa James?)—talked about how complex/interesting this series was. I bought Black Ice and glommed it, much like Sherry Thomas did. The book was good enough that I’ve read all the books in this series. Also, I didn’t find Bastien attractive either, and I worried that Chloe would be getting kiled after their HEA. I kept having visions of that one James Bond movie where he gets married and then his wife is shot in the car right after the ceremony. I simply don’t think Chloe would survive if Bastien got killed or wasn’t around to protect her.
I actually understand why Chloe went back to the apartment and didn’t think of it as TSTL. Instead, I always view Stuart’s heroines as undergoing a modified Hero’s Journey—in that Chloe had to return “home” in order to make her next step in the journey. While it makes sense to all of us to head to the Embassy, it doesn’t make sense in the world Stuart has created. Chloe’s journey is that she has to reject “normalcy” (such as oh, you don’t have to worry about getting murdered every day) and strike out with Bastien to (hopefully) survive, of which I have doubts of.
I always liked Peter’s book the best—but Stuart seems hero-centric to me in that she has these dark, complex heroes and the heroines, with the exclusion of Rachel from THATH, are often placeholders. I was really looking forward to Izzy’s book, and that was a total fail for me.
Also, Bastien becoming a warm, cuddly papa in the other books had me rolling my eyes. At least Peter kept true to his character in latter books.
#102 by Elyssa Papa on October 26, 2009 - 2:59 am
@Sherry Thomas, I think it would have been interesting if Stuart had done a demon/demon pairing as opposed to an angel/demon.
#103 by Niveau on October 26, 2009 - 3:04 am
I was so looking forward to participating in this discussion! Alas, there was not enough caffeine in the house to keep me awake until it began, so I’ll just have to weigh in now instead. I don’t have my copy of the book with me, so you’ll have to forgive my inability to make direct quotes.
Black Ice is the only book of Stuart’s that I’ve read and, honestly, I found it rather underwhelming. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I felt the same way about Bet Me, which I love. But unlike Bet Me, Black Ice doesn’t really do anything for me. I was along for the ride, and then the ride was over. That’s all. Even the things that bothered me about it – and there were many – were just part of the ride. I really couldn’t connect emotionally with either of the characters, or with the book as a whole. It’s fun to analyze, though.
I don’t think Bastien’s amoral. I agree with what Stuart herself said: “My heroes aren’t honourable men, at least, not by conventional standards. They have their own moral code that they wouldn’t break, and of course half the interest in the book is making him break that code, which is usually the one thing he holds on to.” I think this describes Bastien perfectly: he has his own set of rules, rules which are destroying him, and Chloe is the catalyst which allows him to break free of them and start to become a complete person again.
But it’s these morals of his which cause the biggest problem I have with the book: the fact that Bastien won’t admit that he raped Chloe in that first sex scene. To me, that scene became a rape when he took away her ability to not consent. Even if the encounter was consensual to that point, the second he made it impossible for her to stop what was going on, it became a rape. Surprisingly enough, given how much I hate rape and forced seduction in romance, I really don’t mind this particular rape. The circumstances were extreme and he was doing what he felt was best. I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is when, later on in the book, Chloe tells Bastien that he raped her, he denies it. I think the reason he denies it is that, at that point, he was already breaking free of his old moral code, and the new person he was becoming simply couldn’t deal with the possibility that he’d done something so horrible to someone he was coming to love. Fair enough, but as a reader, I needed him to be strong enough to admit that yes, he did take away her ability to consent, and in so doing, he raped her. Without that admission on his part, I couldn’t root for him.
About Chloe: I’m with Bronwyn. I didn’t read her as TSTL; I read her and young and naïve. I didn’t think going back to her apartment was stupid, either. She’d just been through such intense trauma that I thought it made sense that she’d try to return to normalcy. I saw it as her trying to cope with the immense changes her life had suddenly undergone and, as such, found it endearing. Annoying, but realistic. I agree that she’s stronger than she looks, too. I think she is more than just an angel of goodness, but I don’t think Stuart chose to explore this, and I find it disappointing that she didn’t. I needed her to develop, and since Chloe doesn’t ever really deal with what happens to her, I couldn’t root for her. (See a recurring pattern yet?)
But I don’t think that she’s in love with Bastien, or that he’s in love with her. I think he sees her as his salvation, but he doesn’t know her as a person. He knows what she’s like morally, and how she reacts in a crisis, but he doesn’t know her, and I don’t think that he wants to. As I said earlier, I think her role in his life is as the catalyst for his internal change. She causes his growth, which is great, but it isn’t love. I don’t think it’s love on her side, either. Bastien does all his growing in Black Ice, and I finished the book feeling like Chloe’s growth was about to begin. I think that she’d outgrow him. She’d soon reach the point where being the instrument through which Bastien reclaimed his humanity wasn’t enough for her anymore. She’d need to be a person he cared about, too, and I don’t think that they have that kind of relationship.
Do I think they’d stay together? Sure. I think they’d make great parents and be pretty happy. I think they’d have their HEA. But I don’t think they’re soul mates who’d have the kind of all-encompassing HEA romances are supposed to feature. They’d be happy but not ecstatic, content with each other but still slightly frustrated, and that she’d spend the rest of her life wondering “What if…?”
I also found the plot pretty improbable, which annoyed me. I get that Stuart needed to put the characters together in a high-stress, high-stakes environment to forge the kind of bond she wanted between them, but… seriously? The arms dealers, the Committee… the whole thing just felt too contrived.
Anyway, I’ve written way too much, so I’m now cutting myself off. I really loved reading all the comments and hope that this is only the first of many book discussions!
#104 by Kat on October 26, 2009 - 9:32 am
I liked it, despite the fact that it skirts some romance dealbreakers for me. Like Niveau, it wasn’t so much the rapey scene that got me but Bastien’s failure to acknowledge what he did. I also disliked the over-the-topness of the baddies and the suspense plot in general. That said, I found some of the scenes/dialogue between Bastien and Chloe romantic enough to keep the book indefinitely.
#105 by Victoria Janssen on October 26, 2009 - 9:32 am
I love the wackiness of Stuart’s plots; it’s delicious to me when she goes Over the Top. She isn’t afraid to Go There. As in, “It Must Be Love, Because I Can’t Quite Bring Myself to Kill You.”
I don’t mind this at all, because I don’t expect her books to be realistic in that way. They aren’t about the man a real-life woman would necessarily want to marry; they’re about the fantasy of the deadly dangerous man who is brought low by a woman, and the action-movie rollercoaster fun of imagining What If. Or for another analogy, I read them like I read comics/manga, and consider them to have different “physics” than a regular contemporary novel. Cartoon Physics.
And I seem to be capitalizing a lot in this reply. I am Miss Murchison today, I guess.
#106 by Marianne McA on October 26, 2009 - 9:33 am
@Janine.
Does seem to be often the way of it in fiction: the male spies get to be super studs – the female spies, not so much.
No, that’s my first Stuart. I don’t imagine I’ll read her again – the sloppy world-building irritated me too much to let me relax into the story.
Instead of thinking about the romance as I read, I was getting annoyed by things like the torture scene: if you set up a scenario where the bad guys want the heroine’s death to pass unnoticed, why have them act in a way that guarantees it can’t be written off as accidental?
I really did think the entire suspense part of the book was nonsensical, and while that is a fairly common fault with romantic suspense, I thought this was worse than most.
FWIW, I think she’s a very readable writer: I didn’t have any problem finishing the book.
#107 by Magdalen on October 26, 2009 - 10:09 am
Sherry —
Oh, honey, I’ve got that going on, in spades. My first marriage made sense to people (first marriage for both of us at age 42, we’d known each other since adolescence, although on different continents, and he was my “what if” guy), but my divorce was inexplicable to everyone but us (still loved each other; just ready to be even more mature and healthy unmarried). And when I married someone Hub 1.0 had introduced me to, and all three of us remained friends — that completely stumped most people.
The reality of relationships is usually (often?) private. What makes a good romance so powerful is when we, as readers, get to see behind the curtain to what’s on the other side. It’s the private revealed without being made public. In effect, we’re in on the magic.
Oh, and Hub 1.0 and I are still great friends (he’s the family of my heart!). But anyone who thinks I keep marrying the same guy over again is deluded. They’re completely different — Hub 1.0 has a Physics degree from Cambridge, Hub 2.0 has a Chemistry degree from Oxford! (Sheesh — why can’t people see this!)
#108 by willaful on October 26, 2009 - 10:52 am
I agree – perhaps it’s nuts of me but Basien’s (and Chloe’s internally) belief that it wasn’t rape bothered me a lot more than the rape itself. Especially him saying she never said no. Perhaps not the specific word, but she did tell him to stop and *he* said no. I have a hard time not seeing that as rape.
#109 by willaful on October 26, 2009 - 10:58 am
This reminds me that I have been wanting to start a discussion about Whoppi Goldberg’s “it wasn’t rape-rape” comment in reference to romance. Not specifically about what she said, which is pretty disgusting considering a child was involved, but I can’t help thinking that many of us as romance readers do frequently make a (conscious or unconscious) distinction in our heads about what is “allowable rape” and what isn’t. Do we accept what Bastien did because it wasn’t “rape-rape”?
#110 by willaful on October 26, 2009 - 10:59 am
Elyssa – I believe Stuart has done bad-boy/bad-girl pairings. IIRC, A Rose at Midnight is one of those books, but I haven’t read it so I’m not certain. IT come up in a thread on this topic at AAR.
#111 by willaful on October 26, 2009 - 1:57 pm
Ack – I killed it!
#112 by Janine on October 26, 2009 - 2:49 pm
@willaful:
Horrible and also incorrect on every level, since not only could Polanski’s victim not give consent at her age, she also testified at his trial that she refused consent several times. There is a great piece here in Salon about it.
In a fictional novel, I can accept a character who commits real rape, I think. It is very different for me than accepting a rapist in real life, partly because a book doesn’t present the same kind of danger, partly because I can see the characters’ thought process in a book and know if they feel remorse.
I’m not sure what you mean by “it isn’t rape-rape” as applied to romance. Do you mean it isn’t rape because it is written as a forced seduction, where the heroine feels too turned on to refuse, even though part of her wants to? Or do you mean “it isn’t rape-rape” because we know it is the protagonist (hero or “hero”) doing it and therefore we as readers consent to it, knowing it will all end happily?
With regard to the first scene in Black Ice, I thought the way it was written was murky as to whether Chloe would have refused at the moment just before penetration, had Bastien given her the opportunity to do so. Therefore I wasn’t sure whether to classify it as rape or forced seduction, but whichever it was, Chloe was traumatized, which is one of the things I did appreciate. It bothers me when heroines have no negative response to rapes or forced seductions.
Honestly, in this case, I don’t think I was captured by the story until they went on the run, so I don’t think I looked at it as not being rape because it was the hero.
But I think there have been other romances where while I did look at it as rape, I wasn’t entirely sorry it was taking place, because I wanted to see how the author would resolve the complex dynamics that result from something as traumatizing as rape in the context of a romantic relationship. I think knowing that there is a happy ending coming does make it less traumatizing to read, at least to someone like me who spent her teenage years reading Woodiwiss, Rogers, McBain, Lindsey, Brandewyne and others of that generation of writers. This is troubling to me, but I can’t deny that I have sometimes felt that way. While I don’t like conflict in life, in books I find it engaging.
#113 by Niveau on October 26, 2009 - 3:09 pm
To me, that distinction is most obvious in the forced seduction/rape division. Personally, I think that forced seduction in romance is merely a… a subgenre, if you will, since I can’t think of a better word, of rape. I’m uncomfortable with both, but I know that a lot of readers see them as two completely different things. And I think that, even with blatant rapes, if we know that the rapist is the hero, we’ll give him reasons for his actions. The biggest example of this for me is the set of initial rapes in The Flame and the Flower: while I don’t think anyone could read those scenes, if taken out of the context of the book, as anything other than rape, as soon as Brandon becomes the hero and not just a nameless man, the justifications start to come up. “Oh, but he thought she was a prostitute and acted accordingly.” If I say that he’s still committing a rape, another argument is made. “But it’s not like she tried to tell him she wasn’t a prostitute!” If I say that she didn’t understand what was happening, another argument is made. “Well, she didn’t really struggle all that much.” It goes on and on and on, and finally boils down to the heroine being irresistable and the hero not being able to fight his desire.
I’d like to be able to say that the reason readers do this is because we know that the hero will end up with the heroine, regardless of how despicable his actions may be, and so we want to make him as palatable as possible, but I know that there are a lot of readers who just really like “forceful” men and see rapist heroes as falling into that category. To distinguish these “strong” heroes from the villains – the villains who generally also want to rape the heroine, but are less handsome – we make excuses for them and suddenly their actions are no longer “rape-rape.” Instead, it’s about the heroine being so attractive that the hero can’t control himself, and it’s not so bad really, because he does give her an orgasm sooner or later. And really, isn’t the ultimate fantasty making a man lose control of himself?
I know that my problem with Bastien’s rape is that he can’t admit it to himself. But I think the reason I can read that scene without throwing the book at the wall is that it’s not about him being overcome by desire. It’s about power, it’s about him getting information, and it’s not in the slightest bit romantic. In many ways, it reminds me of the rape in To Have and To Hold. I can deal with both of these because they’re both cold-blooded acts. The author doesn’t try to excuse them by making it about love and desire. (So, basically, I can accept what Bastien did because it is “rape-rape,” to me, at least, and not the other way around.)
#114 by Janet W on October 26, 2009 - 5:41 pm
Chloe reminded me somewhat of the SEP heroine who wrote children’s books — her life didn’t quite seem started and many of her decisions were choices to not be what her family perhaps expected. And as trivial as it sounds, I thought Chloe’s high-flying wardrobe — lent to her by her roommate — intrigued her, made her want to “be” a different person. Altho clearly not a complex as Bastien, she was more multi-layered than she initially seemed — which made them ultimately more equal. I haven’t studied the Ice books carefully enough — but the comments here make me want to sink into a re-read.
#115 by Jessica on October 26, 2009 - 8:24 pm
@Magdalen:
This is too funny! On the one hand, I think the phrase was meant to convey a problem in the narrative, a shortcut. On the other, as Angela intimates, and Sherry says, there IS something magical, or at least irrational, or at least inexplicable, about loving a particular individual.
@willaful:
Thank you for the links!
@jillsorenson:
Jill, I am sorry I missed you! but I am glad to hear someone shares my unease with the first sex scene.
@Janine:
Thanks for answering my question about Stuart’s voice across subgenres. I guess I found the prose in this book quite spare, and I thought that woudl not work well for historical, or at least I cannot think of a historical romance whose prose I would describe that way.
And I appreciate you connecting these two things so helpfully.
@heidenkind:
I definitely think this is part of it. That fantasy of femininity, instead of making women victims to men, actually gives women power over men, to make them better.
@willaful:
I had lingered over that line too!!
And I think your analysis is right on. AND connected to Tasha’a point, which I just quoted.
@Sherry Thomas:
I have been feeling lately like hero-centrism is a threat to the liberatory potential of the genre, but I don’t want to say too much about it because I worry about becoming a crank!
Of course, we want herocentric books, and when ti works for the story great, but there is a difference between a heroine whose character arc is less dramatic or shorter, and a 2 dimensional female stereotype (a la JR Ward’s heroines, or many heroines in paranormal series, with Meljean Brook’s being a very important exception).
@Bronwyn Parry:
Welcome ! thank you for visiting! And I agree. But can you explain the extra “sub” here?
I think this would have gone some way to making the HEA more believable, but I wonder if the starkness of Bastien’s character would have been sacrificed?
#116 by Jessica on October 26, 2009 - 8:44 pm
@Elyssa Papa: Hey Elyssa! thank you for coming!
This is a great theory. you’ve convinced me (you and Janine).
@Niveau: Hello, and thank you for coming, whenever you could get here!
I guess, I would call that a kind of personal code, but not a moral code. I am not saying it is not a moral code just because it differs from conventional morality, though. Rather, I think a moral code by definition cannot be personal. To take the moral point of view is, by definition, to get out of your own skin. But my point of view on this, while very common to humans of my ilk, is probably idiosyncratic to nonphilosophers.
This is a pretty damning critique of a romance, but what you say makes sense. It;s something people have been circling around throughout the whole discussion, and I think it’s the issue — more than his amorality, or the rape or believability of the suspense — that divides readers of the book.
Thank you! I hope so too!
@Kat:
Hey Kat! thanks for coming by.
Yeah, the baddies were caricatures.
I love the way you put that …” indefinitely”.
@Victoria Janssen: Hi Victoria!
this raises the question of whether we shoudl even be evaluating such a book in terms of believability, or what kind of believability counts in this case. Is it more like Mission Impossible? where we enjoy it, but don’t need to believe Tom Cruise can hang on to a speeding train?
@Marianne McA: Hi Marianne! I am sorry it was not to your liking.
The contrast between being a good readable writer but not being able to write believably is an interesting one.
@willaful:
Yeah, there is a very complex set of moral calibrations that go on when romance readers interface with forced seduction and rape in romance fiction. I am not even close to understanding it at all.
And you did NOT kill it!!!
@Janine:
I agree about that being a turning point in my interest as well. And also about Chloe’s realistic reaction, which made for some painful reading.
@Niveau: For me, I had to start looking at romance as sexual fantasy to understand female readers’ reaction to rape in it.
My more natural take is to look at it as literature, not as a vehicle for any specific physiological or emotional response.
Hey, thanks again everyone. What a treat to read all of these comments!
#117 by willaful on October 26, 2009 - 11:53 pm
That’s a good question. I think it can mean either… to me, it signifies any sexual situation in a romance novel where there’s force or coercion that in real life, we would probably be appalled by, but that as romance readers we might let slide or even enjoy reading. I have read reader reviews of books that justifiy even what seemed to me like blatant, completely unmistakable rapes. (A Penny Jordan title comes to mind, I can probably dig it up if anyone cares.) So to that reader, somehow, for some reason, (which may or may not be the reason they give) that scene isn’t “rape-rape.”
#118 by Anne Stuart on October 27, 2009 - 1:06 pm
Thanks so much for this fascinating discussion. BLACK ICE just came out on audio so I just listened to it again, so it was very fresh in my mind.
Just wanted to say that I definitely wanted to shag the Sheik as well. “Must I be your valet as well as your lover?” Be still my heart.
#119 by Janine on October 27, 2009 - 3:36 pm
@Jessica:
To clarify, her voice (Hi, Ms. Stuart) is somewhat different in her historicals, but personally I find her contemporary voice more suited to the contemporaries, if that makes sense.
#120 by Bronwyn Parry on October 27, 2009 - 5:55 pm
Jessica, I was basically referring here to the fact the even within the sub-genre of romantic suspense, there is a great deal of variety. To me, Stuart’s Ice series is in the action-packed, fast-paced, larger-than-life, rattling good adventure part of the sub-genre – they’re books where, as with a James Bond movie, we’re happy to go along with the implausability of plots because the over-the-top-ness of spies and secret committees is part of the appeal.
Not all romantic suspense can be described in the same way
Just as the crime genre can include the cosy, the hard-edged, gritty realism, dark noir, or humour, and thrillers can range from realistic and taut psychological thrillers to action-packed roller-coaster rides that are pure entertainment, the romantic suspense sub-genre can combine any of those crime/thriller sub-genres, and weave a romance through it – which can, in it’s own turn, be gentle, or gritty, or sweet, or hot and steamy, or paranormal, or whatever. The romance can also play a greater or lesser role in the story.
So, with that huge diversity, I think readers probably gravitate towards their preferences even within the sub-genre, and I know that for myself, where I mentally ‘place’ a book as I’m reading does affect the role my inner critic plays as we go through. Does that make sense?
#121 by Gennita Low on December 5, 2009 - 10:43 pm
@Carolyn Crane
I’m sorry I’m so late, so I hope you’re subscribed to this thread still. I’ve read almost every one of Anne Stuart’s books from the 70s to the present. I love her anti-heros like a fat kid loves sweet potato chips.
From my list, the three that are most “modern” in feel, that showcase her dark hero, are:
Nightfall
Moonrise
Ritual Sins
These three books encapsulate all of Bastien’s qualities in their main male protagonists. I love these books most of all of my AS collection. They were published by Onyx and when they first came out, many romance fans were shocked at how amoral the heroes were. Onyx didn’t request a fourth bk from AS.
I’m always amazed at how AS’ dark hero could do the most horrible things and I still like him. Don’t know why. One of my most memorable shocking moments was when she snuck in a few lines suggesting the hero, in the middle of the story, slept with the heroine’s bitchy sister in one of her categories. It should be a dealbreaker in a category romance but the few lines went by so fast, I had to reread the scene a couple of times to make sure
.
#122 by Gennita Low on December 5, 2009 - 10:47 pm
Forgot to subscribe to thread.
#123 by Jessica on December 6, 2009 - 10:44 am
@Gennita Low: Hope you worked it out!