Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Luckily for Daphne, Virgil cocks his toes five years into their not-quite-blissful union, and she’s free to travel to Egypt and follow her interests without his admonishments about her unfeminine pursuits. But that still leaves the problem of having her scholarship being taken seriously by the rest of the world. Enter her lovely and supportive older brother Miles, who helps her by masquerading as a linguistics scholar and thus providing her with a much-needed link to the mainstream of scholarly society.

And then Miles goes and gets kidnapped shortly after he purchases her a rare, beautifully-inscribed papyrus, reputed to hold the secrets to the location of an ancient pharaoh’s tomb, filled with treasure. Daphne runs to the British Consul for help, only to find that the only assistance available is Rupert Carsington, the completely unmanageable fourth son of the Earl of Hargate. He’s huge, spirited and tremendously strong, but he also doesn’t seem all that bright: he’s currently languishing in the depths of one of the nastiest dungeons in Cairo for allegedly trying to take on a large chunk of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s army, single-handedly.

Rupert isn’t stupid, of course. He merely enjoys provoking the very beautiful, very smart Daphne, just to see what she’ll say or do; he also finds that keeping her in a state of high dudgeon helps prevent her from crying, a female state he feels completely unequipped to deal with that drives him absolutely frantic. So he cheerfully declares that thinking is her domain, insists on calling papyri “those brown thingums,” claims her servants’ names are completely unpronounceable and proceeds to call them by English names, and then goes on to flirt outrageously with her. And Daphne can’t help but be attracted to this unpredictable, beautiful man who, infuriating though he may be, actually seems fascinated by her intellectual prowess instead of belittling it.

The budding romance happens during a most delightful adventure story that reminds me in many ways of an Indiana Jones movie, only set in 1821. Daphne and Rupert weather all sorts of attacks by assorted thugs hired by not one, but two different villains, narrowly escape from being trapped in pyramids and other types of ancient Egyptian tombs, rescue some strays along the way, are shot at, stabbed at, have their heads beaten (and do some head-beating of their own) and still somehow manage to save the day (and Miles, of course).

And may I say that Chase does a most excellent job with her villains? She doesn’t make them gay, or hideously ugly, or beat up small animals or children, or anything else of the sort to indicate that they’re Very Nasty People. Instead, they’re two men engaged in a race for Egypt’s slowly dwindling supply of antiquities, and their ambitions have so completely consumed them that it has become a veritable war of one-upmanship. One of the villains actually treats his employees very well and forbids them from being beaten—that is, unless they fail at a crucial task, in which case their punishment is very familiar if you’ve ever read Asterix and Cleopatra.

As in every Chase novel, the witty dialogue is the best feature. Rupert, in particular, won me over with his sly attempts to incense Daphne and his cheerful proclamations of his irresistible charms. Here’s a little sample from the very beginning of the book, where Daphne and the consul’s secretary are picking Rupert up from the Cairo dungeon. Keep in mind he’s still behind bars, and his release is as yet uncertain:

“That man,” she said in low but still audible tones, “is an idiot.”

“Yes, madam, but he’s all we got.”

“I may be stupid,” Rupert said, “but I’m irresistibly attractive.”

“Good grief, conceited too,” she muttered.

“And being a great, dumb ox,” he went on, “I’m wonderfully easy to manage. (…) I’m as strong as an ox, too,” he said encouragingly. “I can lift you up with one hand and your maid with the other.”

“He’s cheerful, madam,” Beechey said, sounding desperate. “We must give him that. Is it not remarkable how he’s kept up his spirits in this vile place?”

Obligingly, Rupert began to whistle.

And I don’t know if you noticed, but when you read Chase dialogue, you can actually hear the British accents in your head. Chase has an uncanny knack for the correct rhythm and cadences of British speech, and never resorts to random ‘tis-ing and ‘twas-ing in an attempt to recreate “authentic” historical speech patterns.

I only have two very, very minor complaints with this book. One of them falls into the realm of petty nitpicking, but really, I hate it when authors do this. One of the villains is described as having tawny hair and eyes at the beginning of the book, but towards the end of the book his eyes mysteriously change to blue. This pulls me out of the story and sends me on a frantic search for eye color references in other parts of the book the way few other errors can.

The other flaw has to do with what I feel are too many references to Alistair Carsington, Rupert’s older brother and the hero of Miss Wonderful (another excellent book). I felt that Rupert’s references to Alistair add something to the book in only two spots during the story; the other mentions started to sound repetitive after a while. Yes, we know Alistair is a Waterloo hero; yes, we know he limps. Get on with the seduction and/or the skullduggery already!

Anyway, if you like your heroes big, protective and confident without being annoyingly arrogant; if you like intelligent, strong-willed heroines who don’t indulge in Too Stupid To Live behavior; if you enjoy zippy dialogue and adventure stories that swash and buckle along with great flair—you’ll probably enjoy Mr. Impossible. God knows I did. Now I’m just antsy with anticipation for the next book in this series, featuring the oldest Carsington brother, Benedict.

I know, y’all can’t wait to read the no doubt four or five blog entries I’ll dedicate to my obsessive attempts to get my hands on a copy as soon as humanly possible. 

So anyway, on to the review. Here’s some good news: If you really liked Archangel but thought Rachel should’ve dropped the rather stiff-rumped Gabriel for the gorgeous, golden, sweet-natured Obadiah, you’ll be ecstatic because Obadiah finally gets his own story, and it was worth the wait. Shinn weaves together two most excellent stories of two different sets of people falling in love.

The book starts a year and six months after the cataclysmic events that ended Archangel. First, we meet Elizabeth, a wealthy man’s daughter who has fallen on hard times after being orphaned. She currently lives with a cousin on his farm, essentially working as an unpaid servant. When presented with an opportunity to run off to Cedar Hills, a new angel stronghold, she decides to try her luck being an angel-seeker in the hopes she can regain her life of luxury.

Angel-seekers are essentially groupies. These women do their best to establish sexual relationships with angels, not just because angels are powerful, gorgeous and exotic in their own right, but in the hopes of becoming pregnant. If the pregnancy results in an angelic child, their future and status are assured because angel babies are so rare.

Soon after moving to Cedar Hills, Elizabeth strikes up a relationship with the handsome but rather feckless angel David. She also meets an Edori man named Rufus who works as a construction worker. Rufus was a slave until the archangel Gabriel outlawed the practice. He seems to love her, but he can’t give her an angel baby and the cushy life she’s looking for. Quite the dilemma, eh? (If you can’t guess what the outcome is to this love triangle, you gotta be brain-dead.)

The second love story is a lot more compelling. The angel Obadiah is assigned a new job by the archangel Gabriel: to pacify and negotiate with the Jansai. The Jansai are a people whose primary commerce used to be capturing and selling Edori slaves, and they are not happy with Gabriel’s new interdiction. But Obadiah is happy to accept this thorny commission because he’s more than half in love with Gabriel’s wife, and the assignment allows him distraction and distance from temptation. However, one of his wings is seriously injured on his way back from his first talk with the Jansai leader and he crash-lands in the middle of the desert. Luckily for him, a young Jansai girl, Rebekah, finds him on her way to get water for her family’s caravan.

Rebekah, like all other Jansai females, lives a life so sheltered it’s oppressive. It’s obvious that Shinn modeled the Jansai very closely to wacky fundamentalist Islamic regimes like the Taliban. Jansai women are required to keep all of themselves (including their faces) completely covered when not in the presence of immediate family, and are not allowed to go out in public unaccompanied by male relatives. Women found guilty of being “impure” are put to death. So Obadiah is completely out of Rebekah’s realm of experience, but she has a strong streak of independence to go with her compassion, and so their love story begins: she secretly helps nurse Obadiah back to health in defiance of everything she’s ever been taught, and they eventually become lovers when she returns home—quite the dangerous enterprise for both of them, especially Rebekah. How the two of them achieve their happily-ever-after is quite the suspenseful ride, but the resolution is very, very satisfying, if occasionally heart-stopping.

I really enjoyed this book. It is mostly character-driven, and Shinn does a good job with the people who populate the novel. I loved Obadiah when I first encountered him in Archangel, and I loved the opportunity to finally get into his head and see things from his point view. On the other hand, I found Rebekah and her wishy-washiness regarding Obadiah a little annoying at times, but then I realized that growing up as she did, her feelings about what she was doing and who she was doing it with could hardly be unequivocal. Elizabeth, however, was the character who grew and changed the most, and the transformation was very satisfying to see. She starts out as an unhappy, rather petulant woman who longs most of all for a life of luxurious idleness, and by the end of the book she has matured tremendously and manages to build true happiness from her circumstances.

Shinn also manages to present the angel-seekers with a lot of depth and sympathy. The seekers are generally treated with contempt by both people and angels, but Shinn convincingly shows us why many of these women are driven to do what they do, especially Elizabeth and her circle of friends.

I only have one small beef with the book, and it’s in the way Shinn writes about the Jansai. I know there are cultures that are based on oppression of the weak, and I can buy that these types of cultures don’t always produce the nicest people. I didn’t really have a problem with seeing many of the Jansai men being presented as greedy, brutish and selfish. But not only are they evil oppressors, they’re also FAT. And DIRTY. What the fuck? I think the dirty bit was what bothered me the most, because I grew up in a Muslim country (though I was raised Buddhist and am now officially agnostic), and I’ll tell you what: ritual purity and cleanliness are very important to most Muslim cultures. I would’ve appreciated a little bit more depth and balance to the portrayal of the Jansai; throwing in “fat and dirty” to add to their general villainy essentially pushed the race from being credible to being caricatures.

Anyway, if you enjoyed the previous Samaria novels, what are you waiting for? Go get it; this is one of the best so far. (But just to give you an idea of my tastes: Unlike most other readers, I found Archangel a bit underwhelming and really, really liked Jovah’s Angel.) If you’ve never tried Sharon Shinn and you like love stories set in other worlds, then check her out, she’s one of the best.

Notes:
The Samaria novels, in the order in which they were published:

Archangel
Jovah’s Angel
The Alleluia Files
Angelica
Angel-Seeker