The Dragon’s Bride, published in 2001, is part of Jo Beverley’s Three Heroes series (aka the “three guys named George” series), based on three friends, all named George, who fought in Waterloo and return home to challenging circumstances. The other books are the novella “The Demon’s Mistress,” from the anthology In Praise of Younger Men (2001), and The Devil’s Heiress (2001). [Wow, that was a busy year for Jo Beverley!]
I listened to this one on audio, read by the irrepressible Simon Prebble, who performs loads of historical romance, by authors including Julia Quinn, Madeline Hunter, and Stephanie Laurens. I think Mr. Prebble gets more excited than just about anyone by purple love scenes. I am fairly certain he needs either a cold shower or smelling salts or both at several points during the performance. He is overall an excellent narrator, and even manages not to mangle feminine voices. Click this link, then click the bottom right of the page, for a sample.
Here’s how the author herself describes this RITA finalist novel:
Con Somerford, Viscount Amleigh, is not pleased to have inherited the Earldom of Wyvern and the monstrous house that goes with it. He’s even less pleased when the first person he encounters there is Susan Kerslake with a pistol in her hands. Susan and he have a past, a bitter one. The years in between, however, have been years of war. That must, surely, have armed him so he can resist her, and deal with the smuggling with which she is clearly involved.
Susan and her brother (children of a smuggling captain and a “loose woman”) lead a smuggling ring — which is excused in the book as a necessity for a village struggling under high government taxation — on the south coast of England. By day, she is housekeeper and he is a kind of estate manager at Crag Wyvern, a scary old castle with lots of secrets. For years the old Earl looked the other way, but Susan fears the new Earl will clamp down on the smuggling. To her shock, she discovers the new Earl is Con Somerford, her lover for a brief period at age 15. Susan had seduced him when she believed him to be the older son, and rejected him after discovering he wasn’t. Con joined the army and Susan remained at home, never marrying.
Here is an excerpt:
She seized the lamp to lead the way out of the constricting room.
“But I didn’t find everything in order.”
She turned back sharply, alerted by his tone.
He was still angry. After all these years he was still angry. Fear surged through her in a sickening wave. This was a man to fear when he was angry.
He frowned. “Are you all right?”
She’d probably gone sheet white. “Like you, I am tired. If you expected a better reception, my lord, you should have sent warning. Come along and I will see to your needs.”
She opened the door, wishing she hadn’t used quite those words. What was she going to do if he wanted her in his bed? She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want anyone else to kill him. She didn’t want to stir anymore trouble around here than they already had.
She didn’t want to bed him.
A slight but deep ache said that perhaps she lied….
Aware of stillness behind, she turned.
He was giving that excellent impression of a stone statue. “If I choose to act on impulse, Mrs. Kerslake, it is for my household, my servants, to accommodate me.”
“You inherited the earldom two months ago and haven’t seen fit to visit here until today. Were we to stand in readiness, just in case?”
“Since I am paying you, yes.”
She raised her chin. “Then you should have made it clear that you wanted to waste money. I would have had a banquet prepared every night!”
This excerpt pretty much showcases both the things I liked and the things I didn’t like about this book. On the plus side, the writing is more than solid. The interactions between the hero and heroine are compelling, and at times breathtaking. The heroine is an interesting character: she’s done bad things, she’s had lovers, she smuggles, she’s nobody’s pushover or fool. The setting is unique, and the smuggling is an integral and interesting part of setting, plot, and character.
On the other hand, way too much of the conflict rests on an event that occurred when Susan and Con were fifteen years old — over a decade prior. With all of their life experiences, how is it that they are stuck emotionally in a moment that happened when they were children? Yet the powerful connection between them must have been forged during the two week period of their acquaintance at age 15, since the present day action takes place over a mere three days.
To be fair, some conflict is generated over the smuggling. Susan is determined to retrieve a stash of smugglers’ gold hidden in the castle before quitting her post there. For some reason I never quite understood, she lets Con think she is trying to find the gold for her own enrichment, rather than for the “horde”. She generates a lot of internal tension over her fears that her repudiation of Con eleven years ago will turn him against the smugglers. I confess my thoughts occasionally strayed into “get over yourself, honey” territory.
I also felt that the balance of telling to showing was off. Con, for example, takes almost no action in the entire book. I found him to be quite passive overall. Yet readers are reminded how powerful and brave he is (see the line above: “This was a man to be feared”. Where is the evidence for that in that passage?). We are often told how perverted and evil the late Earl was, and of an evil that supposedly infects the entire castle Con has inherited, but while there was a fetish for deviant art (rape of a maiden by an unexpectedly well endowed dragon), and an intense unrequited love for Susan’s mother, the strong negative emotional reaction of Con to the Crag Wyvern is hard to fathom.
This book felt, to me, too long for the amount of plot, and too angsty for the amount of conflict, but with good chemistry, a unique setting and an unusual plot, I was (mostly) won over.
Other reviews:
The Romance Reader, 4 hearts
All About Romance, Blythe, B
All About Romance, Jennifer, C+
I do like several of Beverley’s books, but I don’t think this is one of her best.
That’s my complaint about quite a few single-title historicals. They’d be better in the shorter, more category-romance-like format used by the old Signet Regency line.
This pretty much describes every single Jo Beverley book for me. There’s a whole lot of beautiful writing, but nothing ever really happens. I’ve actually bought two of her books, not remembering that I had read them already!
For that reason–and the fact that I’ll do violence if I come across Rothgar again–I don’t read Beverley anymore.
Simon Prebble has a lovely voice but listening to that little link just brought home to me yet again that I can’t do audiobooks – I just can’t! It drives me nuts even listening for two minutes. I want to hunt him down and wrest the book out of his hands. I hate that I can’t control the pacing.
I know I’ve said this before, but I’m yet to find the JB novel that will be better than ‘ok’ for me. Whereas I really enjoy Madeline Hunter’s books – an author I think of as having similar qualities to JB.
@RfP: Honestly, I have not yet noticed a length problem in historicals. Maybe that sets in after you’ve been reading them for longer than I have.
@Las: I guess I should be glad I do not know who Rothgar is? I read An Unwilling Bride and A Most Unsuitable Man and liked them. I would say she is a “solid” bet for me, but not an author I get excited about.
@Tumperkin: I know, you do have to get used to letting some things go when you listen to books. I get so little time to read, and read so slowly, that the tradeoff is worth it to be able to read more books than if I eschewed audio.
Please recommend a Hunter!!
Rothgar is the omniscient and omnipotent (I’m not being hyperbolic with that description) eldest brother from Beverley’s Malloren series. I actually really enjoyed the series, and, for me, Rothgar’s presence was an easy way for Beverley to solve the main characters problems. And he did solve every single problem, no matter how huge. I don’t think I was supposed to find him as amusing as I did in the first few books but I found him over-the-top in a fun way, and his air of mystery was lost on me.
His book was the last of the Malloren siblings, and it was “meh” for me, but whatever, it was the last book of the series and I probably didn’t enjoy it much partly because Rothgar was so overexposed at that point. Except, he kept popping up in subsequent books. I picked up a Beverley book because the blurb sounded interesting, I didn’t read any reviews, and I was completely blindsided when Rothgar turned out to be a really important part of the story. Picked up another book, and once again Rothgar shows up to save the day. And I was done. From what I hear he’s still all over the place.
So that’s Rothgar. ;=)
I really love Hunter’s writing. She writes longing so well…I’d get a lump in my throat reading some of her scenes.
I loved Lady of Sin. Her Seducer series is really good. The Charmer was the only one that I wasn’t crazy about, but I don’t remember why I felt that way. The other books in the series are (not in order) The Saint, The Sinner, and The Romantic. You don’t have to read them to understand what’s going on but I’d recommend it. I haven’t liked her current series as much as her previous work. Ravishing in Red was ok and there were a few lovely scenes but Provocative in Pearls didn’t do anything for me, which sucked because I was really looking forward to it after reading the excerpt in RiR.
If you are going to read Hunter … and I have and do … go medieval. The Arrangement is the start of a six-part series that I could not recommend more highly.
JoBev is a major fave of mine but Dragon’s Bride not quite so much. The main couple just didn’t flare and sparkle for me. But then I liked Anne’s book and St. Raven … but hands down, An Unwilling Bride and that couple never stop being themselves in every consequent book.
Rothgar is wonderful but by the time his book rolled around I think expectations might have been a tad high. He’s fantastic thou in books 1 & 3 of that group.
Lord of My Heart is a sizzling and lusty medieval and it’s edgy and dangerous too. Those were not placid times.
I went back over my journal commentary when I was reading Hunter for the first time, and I apparently liked Lord of Sin a lot for the cool details about engraving and lithography. I didn’t mention the romance in my comments.
The Seducer was my least favorite.
Brief reviews of several Hunter novels I read in a row.
I don’t like mediaevels so I personally wouldn’t recommend Hunter’s – I had hoped Hunter would change my mind on that genre but regrettably she didn’t. I doubt anyone can.
I liked her whole Easterbrook quartet and so far am greatly enjoying the new series. I actually liked Provocative in Pearls better than Ravishing in Red but am waiting with bated breath for the last book which has to feature Daphne and the Duke as H/H since she is the uber-independent-woman and he is the uber-manwhore-power-wielding-aristo. I predict the title will be Dazzling in Diamonds. But there’s a third book featuring Celia to come out first.
One thing I would say about Hunter though is that she is not someone who has blown me away in any single book – they’re just all consistently good quality. So I didn’t really think of her as one of ‘my’ authors until I’d read 3 or 4. I think that’s the difference between her and JB – I didn’t feel any desire to read any more JB after reading 3 or 4 of her books.
Very late to the party with a 2nd comment. So Tumperkin, somehow Jo Beverley’s books have sunk like a parasite under my skin: I just can’t rid myself of the compulsion to read and re-read them, especially the stretch of books that culminates in Dare’s miraculous return to life. The books after that aren’t as powerful and they certainly don’t demand total immersion. Again. Now Hunter I like, the medievals I more than like but they don’t call out to me. How strange are our differing tastes since the similarities are so vivid!