I seem to be sampling Anne Stuart’s books (over 60 of them, beginning in 1994) willy nilly. Back in 2009, I read her romantic suspense, Black Ice (MIRA, 2005) and did an open discussion of it (on which she commented. Squee!). More recently, I read a category, Cinderman (1994 Harlequin American). And now, I’ve read a Stuart historical. I found all of them to be compelling, intelligent and interesting reads. But Ruthless (MIRA, 2010) is a clear favorite.
Ruthless is Book 1 in the House of Rohan Trilogy. Books two (Breathless) and three (Reckless) have since been published. In an unsavory neighborhood in pre Revolutionary Paris, Elinor Harriman, tall, sensible, strong, and large nosed English miss, lives in near poverty with her beautiful half sister Lydia and her mother, Lady Caroline, whose advanced case of syphilis is a sorry prize for a selfish lifestyle of lover after lover, gambling and spending beyond her means.
When Lady Caroline runs off with the last of the family’s tiny bit of money, Elinor’s search — in a stolen carriage – takes her to the chateau of Viscount Francis Rohan, le Comte de Giverney, on the outskirts of Paris. Rohan is hosting a, erm, meeting of his club, the Heavenly Host, a “covert gathering of wicked aristocrats with too much time on their hands” whose motto is “Do what thou wilt”. As Rohan, an exile of twenty-two years from England, looks on, from his dais (!), women and men engage in orgies, devil worship, gambling, and a multitude of other sins.
Alas, Rohan is bored. So when Elinor storms in, demanding her mother back, he is “reluctantly fascinated.” Rohan “usually found innocence to be tedious, [but] Mademoiselle Elinor Harriman’s innocence was oddly appealing.” For her part, Elinor finds Rohan attractive, but quickly squashes her feelings under her moral outrage at his attitude (he has a tendency to refer to her mother as a “poxy whore”), behavior (he’s the “fiend of duplicity”) and general existence (a “heartless, soulless libertine”). Plus, she blames her mother’s insatiable lust for her family’s current straits, and feels “unclean” just being in the chateau.
This is a familiar conflict for romance readers, and it’s one I enjoy reading. I was very interested in the story, in Rohan’s attraction and growing concern for Elinor, and in Elinor’s yielding to him, and found it hard to put down. Depths to Rohan are hinted by the loyalty shown him by his servants, and his best friend, Charles Reading (whose secondary romance with Lydia Harriman is quite touching). As one motherly servant explains, “He’s a very bad boy, he is. But he has a reason.” That reason turned out to be a bit underdeveloped, and thus less interesting or explanatory than his just being a rotten jerk would be, but whatever.
Rohan decides he wants Elinor, and his own inability to examine his motives prevents the reader from asking too many questions:
I have no idea why I am so intent on debauching a young woman who will give me nothing but trouble. But then, I’ve never spent overmuch time examining my motives. I want her.
That’s ok. Readers know that Elinor is exactly what he needs to move from a state of permanent ennui to a fully engaged and happy human life. She won’t put up with his highhandedness, accuses the self-styled “lord of the underworld” of being a spoiled brat, and generally brings out the best in him.
But why should Elinor want Rohan? Well, for six years she has been “calm, practical, thoughtful.” She has taken care of her mother, her sister, and their servants without a thought to her own needs or pleasure. Rohan brings out the reckless part of her she has hidden. In the carriage on the way back to Paris, Rohan teaches Elinor what a lesbian is using the improbable method of bringing her to her first orgasm via external genital rubbing. When Rohan sees the state of the Harriman apartments, he sends furniture, food, and firewood, and although Elinor tries to refuse it, deep down she’s relieved to have someone share some of the burden. Preventing her from succumbing completely to Rohan’s charms, however, is the memory of her mother’s ruinous dependence “on the largesse of a man with wicked plans. She was not going to follow in her mother’s footsteps, she was not.”
I enjoyed the heck out of this book, but there was some things that kept it from being a truly phenomenal read. For one thing, Elinor’s character. I know others have complained about Rohan being a “wallpaper rake”, and I do understand that. Rohan’s badness seems confined to pushing the sexual envelope (but not, of course, with our heroine. You know what they say. It’s not love unless it’s missionary.). But I read him, with his yards of lace, his high heeled silk shoes, his long flowing hair, his mincing walk, his dais, and his tendency to talk or think constantly about his own badness (“I have evil plans to hatch”, ” “He was not a good man.”, “He needed to remind himself who and what he was. The Prince of Darkness, the King of Hell. A thoroughly bad man.”) as kind of ridiculous. Sexy ridiculous, but still.
What bothered me more was Elinor’s wallpaper fiestiness. I don’t think I can count how many times this heroine’s actions were determined by a false choice put to her by someone else with power over her, as in this passage:
You’ve been given a chance to save your family, to protect your younger sister to aid your mother in a time of great need. You can do the selfish thing, and refuse, or you can accept, gracefully. It’s your choice.
Or…
She didn’t bother to argue. He had the upper hand, which was both unsettling and infuriating.
Or…
Her choices were not many, and they were all unappealing.
She’s often infuriated, but does, or can do, little to change her situation. For example, she pulls a gun on Rohan, twice, and you know how he disarms her? By asking her for the weapon. There was one moment when Elinor took absolute control, but it was in bed, and so left field for her inexperienced and lust-averse character, that it didn’t completely satisfy my hope for her agency.*
(*As an aside, after consummation Rohan tells Elinor that while he is ready for another immediate go, she must rest. Only in romance would a 39 year old man recover from sex faster than a 23 year old woman!)
There were also some things that felt rushed, or undeveloped. For example, Rohan and Elinor never discussed his past, or the shadow it casts on his present. And Rohan gains important information about Elinor’s late father’s estate and his heir, but doesn’t tell Elinor. At the very end, Elinor has an abrupt realization which the narrative doesn’t have space to explore … so why put it in there?
Still, I liked this one a lot — great sexual tension, interesting setting and characters, especially Rohan, snappy dialogue, sweet secondary romance — and recommend it if you aren’t tired of the rake and the virtuous-miss-clinging-to-her-dignity storyline.
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I’m glad to know you like it so well. I read the prequel novella and liked it well enough that I added this to my list.
When an author writes different subgenres I always find myself preferring one over the other. For example (this is going to be a shocking confession so beware) I don’t like Lisa Kleypas’ historical novels but I adore her contemporary ones (did you gasped? I did warn you). But with Anne I just loved every single one of her books. She can write a bad boy hero like nobody’s business. Did you read A Rose at Midnight? I could spend hours talking about her books and her borderline evil heroes. Her books are fascinating.
I absolutely hated this book. I realize hate is a strong word to use regarding a book, but I really did feel strongly about it. Nothing about the main romance worked for me – I found the hero ridiculous (rather than sexy-ridiculous), the heroine an annoying martyr who never stands up for yourself, and the progression of the relationship not at all believable. The setting was underutilized, which was a shame because it was one of the things that sold me on the novel. I also disliked Rohan’s cartoonishly baaaaaad friends.
In short, I should have made it a DNF, but since I kept hoping it would improve (I did like some of Stuart’s other titles) I kept at it. And I’m very, very sorry I did.
Though I do agree that the Lydia-Charles secondary romance wasn’t bad.
Just to fill out the complete range of reactions, it was a meh-read for me.
I read the free prequel and liked it, although it felt a bit rushed and shallow, but I wrote it off due to the format and went in search of the other titles. However, once I read this one, I simply wasn’t interested enough to stay with the series. It wasn’t bad (and, perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t find Rohan ridiculous at all, but maybe that’s because I kept imagining Johnny Depp as the Libertine from the eponymous movie and that totally worked for me… ) but I didn’t find either of the main characters convincing or even interesting enough to look for more.
But I do third the secondary romance likes. That was the best part for me, too.
I enjoyed this – what I most love about Anne Stuart is that she isn’t afraid to go over the top, so some of the silly aspects are pluses to me.
Thanks for the review. Your fave yet! Yippeee! I’m in this Anne Stuart mode where she can do no wrong, thus, I’m really excited to read this book. I’ve loved Black Ice, Cold as Ice, as well as her older historicals, and have been eyeing these new ones.
I find it delightful that he stands on a dais looking down at the orgies. This Rohan, from your description, reminds me of Aleister Crowley, the English occultist lionized by Led Zeppelin and others. Wasn’t Aleister Crowley’s motto “do what thou wilt” ? Yes, I just looked it up. Is this guy maybe a Crowley lite here? Maugham made Crowley a character in a book, too. And I think he was exiled to France. Oh oh oh I couldn’t be more excited that Anne Stuart has written so many books.
I wonder why in romance we tend to give the hero a reason for being bad. I.e., how come not more people follow the To Have and To Hold model where the hero is just depraved–that’s it, no reasons, justifications, nothing.
In Black Ice Bastien is a fantastic villain hero–a Satanic villain hero, according to my friend Tracy Wolff taught me, as opposed to a Promethean or Byronic villain hero. I can’t remember specifics, but for some reason I think he is just who he is–a man who’d never have led a normal life anyway and who’d always exist in the gray areas.
And there is no question Anne Stuart does Satanic villain heroes better than anyone else in the business.
This is the first time I’ve seen this phrase. Is this another phrase for anti-hero?
This is a really interesting question — one that comes up a lot in regard to the films I watch with the bf, who gets quite irked by (what he perceives as) the current trend in Hollywood of oversharing protagonists’ backstories. Naturally, when we get into these discussions, my mind turns toward the romance genre and my expectations as a reader.
With To Have and to Hold, I’d actually argue that the lack of explicit backstory works because Gaffney builds her world so richly (albeit in spare strokes) that it seems logical and believable that Sebastian is simply the inevitable product of his position in his world (which we glimpse through his friends; through the welcome he receives and the absolute power he wields in the court scene at the beginning of the book; through the sparse references to his family and the absolutely unquestioning way he accepts the icy family dynamics in which he was raised). In short, the richness of the worldbuilding makes his depravity seem logical and natural, even if simultaneously horrifying and despicable.
I think backstory becomes more important in contexts where the protagonist’s personality seems conspicuous or extraordinary even in the milieu of the novel’s fictional world. Anne Stuart’s fictional worlds generally seem to me to be so (deliciously) dark that I don’t require much backstory to bolster my belief in her heroes’ depravity. In fact, in her books, it’s the innocents who require backstory for my belief to work. (Recalling all the debate about Chloe from Black Ice, one of my favorites by her, I don’t think I’m alone in this. A good many readers on various message boards who did love the book were nonetheless a bit baffled by Chloe’s wide-eyed, virginal, ingenue routine — my theory being because, within Stuart’s fictional world, it’s harder to contextualize and accept this sort of untouched, pristine innocence than to accept a stone-cold killer.)
Likewise, in a light, comical historical, I, as a reader, require some backstory to accept and understand an embittered, vicious rake, but very little to buy a heroine who’s pure as the winter’s first snowfall.
Anyway… to cease rambling: this was a great review, Jessica, and like you, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was very adeptly written.
I read Stuart for the heroes, with a couple of exceptions (I find the heroines in Nightfall and Banish Misfortune to be quite interesting even though they skirt right up to the TSTL category). Her worldbuilding is fascinating for me because I find it utterly compelling even though it defines history-lite. I think it’s because the things she does well in creating atmosphere (e.g., the apartment, the feel of the streets in Ruthless), she does extraordinarily well, so I don’t care that she has Eleanor enjoying a “cream tea” in the 17xx’s (and let’s not get started on the problems of dating the 4 Rohan books). The focus of Stuart’s books is really on the romantic relationship and everything else in there (and there’s often quite a bit of worldbuilding) is in service to that relationship. For me, it’s the essence of what makes a great romance novel distinct from a “social world” novel with a strong romantic storyline, even when the latter fits firmly within the genre tradition.
Thanks for the review and discussion. I read this and really enjoyed it. Loved the hero so much more than the heroine. You’re right there wasn’t much of a reason for why he was so bad and I really didn’t care. I wonder why that is. I think it’s because he really wasn’t all that bad. No one got hurt that didn’t deserve it and you know he really was good to who mattered and that’s what we want in out bad boy heroes (at least it’s what I want).
As for the heroine she did annoy me at times but it was all about the hero in this story.
I enjoyed it.
Great review and discussion! But it’s mostly making me want to read To Have and To Hold. Why, why, why are Gaffney’s books not available on Kindle? : (
Yesterday I almost loaned out my copy of Crooked Hearts, then glanced inside and saw that it’s a signed copy. Much as I like the person to whom I was lending, a signed copy wasn’t leaving home. And, yes, it’s about time for a re-read of To Have and to Hold.
I read Ruthless last month, my first Anne Stuart, and I enjoyed it. Rohan’s darkness didn’t distress me, and as soon as he sent firewood, food and furniture to Elinor’s household he went on my good guy list, whether he understood his own motives or not.
There’s this great scene in the movie version of the play Noises Off where Christopher Reeve, playing an actor, keeps asking the director, played by Michael Caine, for his character’s motivation. The actor wants this elaborate backstory for a character in a farce, which is patently ridiculous because characters in farces don’t have elaborate backstories and motivations. They just run in and out of doors in various states of undress.
Similarly, I think people want villains in stories either to be EVIL through and through with no depth or only bad because of some childhood trauma. I think this is because people feel uncomfortable granting forgiveness or redemption narratives to those characters that they feel are unethical or immoral unless there is some Freudian explanation or justification for those bad actions. Otherwise, people feel that the redemption is not actually warranted and forgiveness shouldn’t be granted. I think many people think redemption and forgiveness are conditional–one of the conditions being some backstory of childhood trauma. But a villain or an anti-hero without that sort of backstory is harder to sell because you also have to sell the idea that they’ve changed or that forgiveness really is unconditional and the sort of thing given to even really undeserving people. Much harder to write that sort of character and get the reader behind it.
I have a whole theory of villainy in literature (of course I do) revolving around readers’ reactions to Severus Snape.
Seriously liked and enjoyed this book so much — and I don’t think I expected to. But the 2nd one I liked even more. Is it a case of preferring Vidal to Avon (a reference to Heyer’s twinned books). But this was great and I just curse having to Do Things rather than just wallow in your comments … as always, your comments are the best in the biz!!
@lazaraspaste:
I would love to read this!
I haven’t read any of these historicals because I felt burned by Silver Falls because it wasn’t unique it was average. Yet I love the Ice books and their satanic heroes. It seemed to me it was that voice and those characters in particular books that were my thing and when I wasn’t getting that the other books paled in comparison.
@Julia Broadbooks: I did not know there was a prequel novella. I may have to read that one. Thanks.
@Brie: I went a little crazy yesterday and bought The Devil’s Waltz, Lord of Danger, and To Love a Dark Lord. Will have to add Midnight to the TBB list.
@Meri:
I’m afraid this is a little unclear. Are you saying you didn’t like the book?
@Victoria Janssen: Right. They were plusses for me, too. In one scene, Elinor storms into Rohan’s house, into his bedroom, and he’s totally decked out in silk robes, on this monstrous bed, long hair flowing over the pillow, minions attending him. I laughed out loud. I loved it.
@Carolyn Crane: Oh that Crowley thing is interesting. But I think Crowley took the occult seriously, whereas Rohan thinks it;s all silly.
It was a funny thing Stuart did, on the one hand putting him at the center of all of this stuff, and on the other, with his ennui, distancing him from it. One tiny example is his attempt to perfect the mincing walk. He can’t do it. But many modern readers are probably glad, because they think real men don’t mince. So Stuart kind of has her historical cake and eats it too.
@Sherry Thomas:
I have to be honest: the whole “his whole family was killed at Culloden, so…” read to me like a kind of half hearted attempt to provide a reason. Maybe I am missing something, but there is no direct causal line between losing your family and becoming the leader of a group of depraved aristocrats.
@Meredith Duran:
This is such a great point. Was Rohan conspicuously depraved?
@Sunita:
I agree, and as a romance reader who really prefers a very strong focus on the relationship, this helps explain why I like Stuart’s books. I felt this book really crackled in all the Elinor/Rohan scenes.
@Kwana:
Yes, I agree. It’s like this very clear demarcation — these are the people who deserve care and attention (Elinor, her sister, Reading) and these are the people who don’t (their mother, Rohan’s heir, the guests at his parties), and it’s a free for all for the latter group.
@Louisa Edwards: I know I really hope they get digitized (legitimately. Sure they are all out there illegitimately.)
@Karenmc:
Yes, this conversation has helped me to formulate a topic for another blog I have been asked to write for. And it involves THATH. That book really repays reading and analyzing.
@lazaraspaste:
This is very interesting. Basic badness is something kids’ stories seem to understand. I despise film treatments of beloved children’s books, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas that provide back stories their authors did not intend.
@Janet W: I was thinking of going to her backlist before going forward in this series, but just maybe I need to read books 2!
@Merrian: Yes, I think her voice is very compelling. A few people on Twitter said they did not like Silver Falls, too, so I’ll avoid that one.
This sounds like a fun one. I will keep an eye out for it.
FWIW, I really enjoyed The Devil’s Waltz; Anne Stuart is one of the few authors whose books can either really work or really fail for me.
@ Louisa Edwards – I still haven’t bought a Kindle (trying to talk my parents into making it my birthday present) so I have to get OOP titles the old fashioned way – or at least, the semi-old fashioned way: from Better World Books. THATH is absolutely worth tracking down in hard copy.
This one was a DNF for me, for the reasons Meri stated. I actually slogged through about 3/4 of it, when I realized that I was almost done and I was still wondering when the actual romance was going to start, and I couldn’t force myself to finish. The prequel novella was great, so I was especially disappointed in this one. I was in the mood for a dark romance, but I found the characters so over the top that the book came across as trying too hard.
I both really enjoyed this book and agree 100% with this statement. However, it was paced really nicely, such a good little page turner. And so knowing about that ridiculous-sexy appeal of the hero; a shared joke there I enjoyed.
@ Janet W: I prefer Avon to Vidal, so I guess it isn’t remarkable that I preferred Ruthless to book 2 of this series. There is just something I love about a foppish, lace-clad, heel-wearing hero who is wicked and dangerous. I think an early and frequent exposure to the TV movie The Scarlet Pimpernel with Anthony Andrews might just be the culprit!
I loved this book and like others have stated in comments above the focus on the relationship rather than the setting/historical details is refreshing to me. I can’t say I dislike books that have amazingly accurate historical details woven into the narrative because some of them work, but I really appreciate the heightened sense of intimacy Stuart’s style provides. I think her secondary romances usually shore that up as well by keeping the reader focused on characters and interactions rather than on places and things.
What is a mincing walk? I picture it as small steps, like a woman in a constricting dress. That can’t be! Or can it?
@ Carolyn Crane:
Here’s a scene from The Scarlet Pimpernel with some decent mincing in it although I know I’ve seen better examples. Must spend some more time on youtube to unearth them…
There’s an urban dictionary definition:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mincing
Pamelia! Thanks. That definition and especially that clip was very helpful. Once I read the def, I could look for it in the video, short as the mincing shot was.
@Carolyn Crane: Two words… Jack Sparrow.
Ruthless didn’ t work for me either, and I can’t really say why. It was a good read, but I got about 3/4 through, and that was it . I put it down, and haven’t picked it up again, and that was months ago.