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

Meriel, the heroine, is also about to become a nun when she realizes she does not have the proper vocation for the sisterhood, and chooses to return home with her brother to help run his newly-granted estate.

Meriel is out with her falcon one day when she follows the bird way off course, ending up in a forest belonging to Adrian. He and his men come upon her in the forest, decide she’s been poaching, and take her captive. Also, Adrian gets a good look at her and, aside from noting the oddity of a woman proclaiming to be a peasant wielding a fully trained falcon, a hobby reserved only for those of elevated status, he decides that she’s beautiful and he wants to bring her home.

He holds her captive in exceptionally kind quarters, especially when one considers that later, she is captive again and this time dropped down a hole. She resists his confinement but refuses to tell him who she is, telling lies because she is afraid he would attack her home since her brother supports one claimant to the English throne while Adrian supports another. He grows angry, tries to force her to become his mistress, then repents his horrible behavior and asks her to be his wife.

She jumps out the window to avoid marriage, miraculously survives, and wakes up with no memory of who she is and how she came to be there.

But oh my, that Adrian is a hot man, she thinks, in her newly clueless state. He’s awful nice, especially since he feels awful about not having been as honorable towards her as he ought to have, and they fall in love, get married, ride off to make whoopee in the fields, get hit by lightning, and presto, she has her memory back, with no recollection of the past few months of wedded and hypersexed bliss.

And this is where I about lost my patience. I know this is among the favorite keepers among our readers, so I expect a good number of dissenting opinions, but I have to line up and redress each element that just didn’t fit together.

First, Meriel. Girl, you got on my last nerve. You want to be free as a falcon, but yet as an educated almost-nun, surely you are aware of the life you chose for yourself when you left the cloisters. You remind me horribly of Belle in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” There you are, twirling around in the fields, unescorted and unattended in a war-torn area, following your falcon for miles without paying attention, thinking about how “there must be more than this...life.” Who told you there was? I’m sorry, dear, no, there’s not.

You want to be free? Where on earth did you get the idea that you could be free? Freedom was your obsession while you were held in capitivity by Adrian as he tried to come to terms with his attraction to you, but even in the convent you felt the walls were closing in on you. Where did you get this idea that as a single woman you were able to do whatever you wanted? Was there some time travel from the 20th century that I missed?

Next, did Adrian really treat you all that badly while he held you in capitivity? He gave you new clothes, he held you in a guest’s room, fed you, gave you gifts, made sure you had a bath every time you requested it, and the only things he did that you disliked were to make sexual advances on your person and refuse to give you any work to do.

Leaving the sexual advances aside for a moment, what did you expect? You’re a shitful liar; you know it, he knows it, and in a time where his enemy just killed his entire family, shouldn’t he be suspicious of a single woman out with a falcon unattended in the forest who tells inconsistent tales as to her provenance and intentions? Why should he trust you if he knows you’re well born, you’re obviously lying to him, and he has no proof that you’re not a spy? 

In short, Meriel, dear, you’re an idiot, and you grated on my nerves the entire story. I had no empathy for you when you were whining about capitity, I was not taken with your innocence and goodness both in and out of the convent, and I was completely furious with you when you had the poor sense to go off, get yourself captured and dropped down a hole, only to have Adrian ride in, win you back your precious freedom, and fight for you, while you try to figure out new ways to escape with your precious freedom. The man just kicked all kinds of ass and risked his life, and you...ride away. You are a fool, and when you got dropped down that hole, I thought, “GOOD, stay THERE you stupid ninny.”

I confess: I started skipping the Meriel-on-her-own parts and just looking for passages that discussed that scrumptious Adrian.

Next, the plot: one of the Amazon reviewers used the phrase, “Gilligan’s island plot device.” Hell, yeah. Amnesia storyline aside, what was the real conflict of the story, here? Was it Adrian’s coming to terms with his choice to be a battle-fighting, ass-kicking leader of his people instead of a peace-seeking, scripture-reading monk? I can understand the turmoil there, but I’m not entirely sure that was the real issue. Adrian felt a good sized mountain of guilt over his treatment of Meriel, but really, he could have, well within his rights, treated her a whole lot worse. Was it his inability to reconcile his faith with is overpowering lust? Was it the quest for revenge?

Further, the enemy of this story, the guy named Guy, reminded me of the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Theives.” More specifically, he reminded me of Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Theives.” He chewed on the scenery in his over-the-top evilness. And guy named Guy, short of being gay and molesting animals, masters ubervillany to the point where I didn’t fear him at all as a villain. He was so damn villainous he became almost a caricature of evil: raping, pillaging, bankrupting the estate, setting families up to die so he could steal their wealth. I get it. You’re a bad, bad man.

But then, there’s Adrian. Oh, Adrian. Come on over here next to me and tell me how annoying you find your heroine. You are worth so much more, and at the very least worth a better heroine to be worthy of you.

I swear, he’s like the romance novel dream man: in a time period of ignorance, cruelty, war and instability, he’s educated, fair, possessing of a moral compass that dictates his decisions as a leader, honorable to his bastard brother, careful of his family’s memory, and ready to kick ass and take names of anyone who tries to hurt him and his again. I am fanning myself right now, he’s so hot.

Moreover, between Adrian and Meriel, Putney manages a most wonderful portrayal of faith and devotion to prayer for two characters who almost took vows to the church. At that time, religion was one of the few systems of laws that were constant as leaders changed hands so frequently. One might not know who the rightful leader of the country was, but the Bible’s message at its core did not change. Meriel and Adrian’s devotion to prayer and to their faith was not at all treacly or preachy, but was a source of excellent warmth and a clever method through which to appreciate the complexity of their character.

I read like a fury through most of the novel, but stopped and savored each and every scene with Adrian. Wow, what a creation. He’s so great, I might have to start writing fanfic about him.

Sadly, my dissatisfaction with this book comes from my sense that Adrian was so fan-fucking-tastic that I didn’t think the rest of the story lived up to him. Putney crafted a story about a most exceptional hero, and the plot and chracters around him didn’t equal the joy of Adrian.

Watching Adrian struggle with his feelings for Meriel and finally allowing her to leave him for good was like watching one’s best most wonderful guy friend, the guy who you know is one of the best men out there, marry some shrew who you cannot stand.

Like I said, I’ve been staring at this book, trying to figure out the grade I’d give it. I used to teach remedial Freshman composition, and I’d grade on content and then on composition - what you said, how you said it. If you had a good argument, should it be penalized because you don’t yet know all the grammar rules?

The same rule applies here: there’s a fantastic hero, one of the best I’ve ever read, in this book. Should readers be dissuaded from experiencing his story because I thought the heroine was a right twat?

I will have to spoil one small bit: the best character, after Adrian, in my mind was Cecily, the guy Guy’s heiress wife. She deflects a rape against Meriel and takes it onto herself when her husband decides to violate their high-born prisoner. She’s frequently beaten but once her husband is dead, she stands up to an army of her own men intent on killing Adrian and tells them that she will not stand for any more violence. She throws men without honor out of her home, kicks the villainous sidekick out immediately, and restores order in one long moment. Cecily is amazing, and I adored watching her stand up for herself and take back control of a keep that was rightfully hers to begin with.

My final question: what heroine that I know of would live up to Adrian? If I could pluck a heroine out of another story, historical or contemporary, and match him with someone more worthy, who would I pick? Adrian needs his own personal ad:

Honorable, faithful, morally upright and damn fine looking hero, recently titled and owner and protector of a crapload of land, seeks strong, devoted woman of similar faith to stand beside him against much kicking of ass and political strife. Women with tendencies towards whining, bipolar mood swings, frequent mentions of yearning to breathe free, and multiple losses of memory need not apply. 

The setup is pretty simple: B.G. Grantham is a Scientist of Very Big Brain who lives and conducts research in a mansion located in an isolated part of Washington. When he’s tired of conducting research into the more arcane aspects of quantum physics, he turns his attention to human psychology. Specifically, he’s interested in the mechanics of desire and how people behave when the circumstances surrounding their sexual release are tightly regulated, and to this end his entire household participates in a sexual game in which he has the ultimate control. Every once in a while he invites new candidates to the mansion to participate in the game. He’s assisted in this endeavor by his childhood friend and long-time lover, Eric Berne, who becomes the guest’s “keeper” throughout his or her stay.

Their latest candidate is Charity Wills, who’s beyoootiful (aren’t they always?) and sassy but not exactly on the fast-track to success. Charity is initially skeptical, but agrees after they promise to pay for a college education—a promise that’ll be honored whether or not she decides to play the game for the entire duration. Eric rating five out of five rrrowrs on the Studliness Scale doesn’t hurt, either. Eric, of course, finds himself moved in all sorts of uncomfortable ways by Charity.

The rest of the story can be summarized thus: Much Crazy Sex Happens, occasionally interrupted by the aforementioned squishy claptrap and suspense plot. Along the way, Eric falls in love with Charity, B.G. finds more than his trouser monster being moved by Charity, and Charity? She has two hot men sexing her up and then some. That lucky bitch is having a ball.

Er. I swear the pun was completely unintended. But it’s making me snicker and it’s pretty appropriate, so I’m leaving it in.

The sex scenes and the love story in general break several taboos held dear by many traditional romance novels, namely:

1. The hero and heroine shall be straight as an arrow. If anyone has gay urges, it’s going to be the villain, y’hear? Bonus points if he molests children, double bonus points if the children are his, triple bonus points if he molests the family pet and THEN the children.

2. The hero and heroine shall be monogamous. Once the hero meets the heroine, that’s it, he’s found his soulmate, and he won’t be able to get it up with his mistress even if he tries because the power of True Lurve® will have sucked all the vigor from his dicky-poo, said vigor being restored only by the unschooled yet wildly arousing touch of the heroine.

3. Hot, skanky, meaningless sex with minor characters shall be indulged in ONLY by either the villain(s) or the hero before he meets the heroine.

4. Heroes shall be plentifully be-furred, especially on their chests, to indicate their virility. Shaving body hair is for women and faggots, and you know how we feel about faggots. See point 1 for reference.

Holly breaks all these taboos with great glee, and hoo boy is it fun to read. Like the first time Eric and B.G. get down when Eric comes back from college for summer vacation? Damn. And when Eric and Charity finally hop in bed with B.G. and decide that he needs to be hoist with his own petard? GOOD GODDAMN.

It’s not that I haven’t read other books with lots of rumpy pumpy in them. I’ve read a fair share of Susan Johnson, for example, but reading too much of one of her books in a sitting often leaves me feeling mentally numb because those geysers of love are just squirting non-stop in them thar hills and well, it gets kind of monotonous after a while. What makes Strange Attractions stand out from other sex-fest novels is how Holly creates genuinely likeable characters. Eric, Charity and B.G. all have baggage, but they’re decent people and minimally annoying, despite B.G.’s resemblance to a particularly lifeless android when he talks. Holly also introduces a lot of variety in the scenes, and she makes the characters wait. And wait. And wait. AND WAIT. B.G. figures out early on that Charity savors the sexual suffering of others brought on by pent-up desire. All I can say is: me and her both, buddy.

The book, alas, isn’t perfect. B.G. is a typical romance novel geek, for one, a peeve which I’ve already discussed at tedious length. When he’s having sex, or when Holly isn’t paying attention and allows B.G. to talk and act like a human instead of an RNG, he’s pretty damn sweet.

And then there’s the parts in the book where the author extrapolates the science wildly and sloppily, like countless other people who read about quantum mechanics and subsequently have their minds blown by the idea of wavefunctions, or by the fact that quantum entanglement (a.k.a. non-locality) has been proven to exist. This leads to mush-minded talk about how “consciousness creates reality” and “you are a quantum being and you embody all possibilities"—shit a knowledgeable quantum mechanician like B.G. should’ve been embarrassed to say because it so grossly misrepresents the science. I’m not going to address all the silliness in this review (I know, big sigh of relief all around!), but if you’re interested, this excellent article debunks some popular misconceptions revolving around quantum mechanics.

One particularly heinous part I will mention, though. Towards the latter half of the book, B.G. explains that particle accelerators can warp spacetime severely enough that the effect can be felt by the whole mansion. Why? Ostensibly because the sub-particles it generates from the collisions travel at the speed of light and therefore pull “pure, undigested quantum stuff” into our dimension. Leaving aside pressing questions such as “What in the fuck is ‘quantum stuff’?” and “What does a quantum gastrointestinal tract look like?” this badly misrepresents how particle accelerators may be able to affect time.

Yes, I know it’s a romance novel. Honestly, I’m not expecting rigorous scientific detail along the lines of hard science fiction, but I would’ve appreciated it if the appalling pseudoscience had been left out. Quantum mechanics is pretty fucking cool as it is—why add extra kookishness to it?

Oh, and the suspense side-plot: really, the less said about it, the better. Let’s just say that some of B.G.’s experiments have yielded unexpected and not necessarily desirable results, and ultimately it’s all a very transparent machination to speed up the HEA. I don’t object to suspense plots in general; I just want them to feel less slapdash.

However, despite all my bitching and moaning, this book is definitely a keeper. It has the honor of being the first novel specifically labeled as “erotic romance” that I’ve enjoyed reading. It’s also the first love story I’ve read in which the affection and attraction felt by two men equals, if not surpasses, that felt between the hero and heroine—but this is the first romance I’ve read that involves two bisexual heroes who love to play.

May it not be last.

So when I say I know geeks, I KNOW GEEKS. I know and appreciate the many different flavors and varieties of them: the hardcore science geeks, the geeks who like to dabble in the shallow end of freaky physics and cosmology but can’t be bothered with the freaky math (*raises hand*), the rainbow varieties of computer geeks, literature geeks, music geeks, movie geeks. These are, of course, hardly mutually exclusive categories: it’s extremely uncommon to find a geek who’s solely into, say, research on irrational numbers and nothing else. Geeks, because they’re smarter than the average bear, tend to have varied interests about which they are usually extremely knowledgeable. Geeks tend not to have hobbies so much as obsessions. But despite this wonderful variety of geekery to draw from, not a single damn romance novel has gotten a geek hero right. This is how most romance novels handle the characterization:

1. Make them sound like Spock after a lobotomy. The more painful and stilted their conversation, the more intelligent they must be, right?

2. They are always, always, always science geeks. Give them an especially esoteric area of interest the average romance novel reader probably won’t know too much about so if the hero’s area of research becomes a plot point, you can fudge outrageously. Quantum mechanics and bioengineering are two extremely rigorous fields that have unfortunately been bombarded by more than their fair share of mass media oversimplification and pseudoscientific kookishness, leading to widespread misconceptions about what’s possible and not possible, so go ahead and misrepresent quantum non-locality or gene therapy and have a friggin’ field day.

3. Despite their geekiness, social awkwardness and general isolation (romance novel geeks resemble people with Asperger’s syndrome more than anything else), these heroes have super-duper lovemaking powers. Is the ability to cause an orgasm merely by waggling their fingers in the general direction of the heroine’s clitty a geek hero trait? Oh yes. In fact: Yes! Yes! YESSSSSS!

Peeve Number 1 is probably what bugs me the most. The reason why I’m so overwhelmingly attracted (romantically and otherwise) to people of Very Big Brain is because they’re such excellent conversationalists. The talk can switch from riffing over the A-Team to the situation in Sudan (which will of course bring up inevitable comparisons with Rwanda) to how photons have momentum even though they don’t have mass to why you think anchovy ice-cream is so very, very wrong, even if it was made by Iron Chef Chinese, to whom you would give your first-born child if you actually had any kids, and isn’t that Rosanjin scholar just the whiniest little bitch of a judge, ever? Geeks are articulate, geeks are quick-witted, and best of all, geeks are FUNNY--or at least the sexy ones are. So why oh why do so many authors take the lazy route and make their geek heroes sound about as lively as those computerized messages you get from the library? Seriously, I often expect the geek hero to start saying things like “Please pick up your books at the CENTRAL… LIBRARY… before APRIL… FOURTEENTH… TWO THOUSAND AND… FIVE.” Except that would be an IMPROVEMENT on the average geek hero’s dialogue.

So if you’re a romance novel author contemplating creating a geek hero, please, please, PLEASE have your geek heroes talk normally. In fact, make their conversation zippy. If you HAVE to show how extra-super-duper-king-sized-smart they are, then sure, throw in some stupid puns involving gluons or whatever, but in my experience, real-life geeks are more likely to make dirty jokes than jokes involving exotic sub-atomic particles. Just keep this in mind: your geek should be capable of creating HAL, but he shouldn’t at any point sound like HAL--unless he’s re-enacting 2001: A Space Odyssey for some reason.

The first bit of Peeve Number 2 isn’t really too much of a peeve, because it IS romantic fiction, and theoretical physics research is a sexier occupation than civil engineering or IT, though all these are honorable geek professions. But for the love of God, GET THE SCIENCE RIGHT. I’m not asking for equations or details, I’m talking getting the most basic of basics correct. Don’t have your geek hero assuming that the magnitude of uncertainty as put forward by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle remains the same for large bodies as well as sub-atomic particles. If you have a smart science-oriented high school kid handy, have her proof-read the rivetty bits. If she spots errors, it’s a pretty good sign you should do a lot more research. You don’t expect a romance novel set in fourteenth-century England to refer to Thomas Jefferson, right? I mean, that kind of an egregious error merits a thorough beating about the head and shoulders with a history textbook, doesn’t it? So why be sloppy with the science research?

And as for Peeve Number 3: Geeks are often geeks because at some point they were unattractive and/or unpopular, and the mindset has spilled over into their adult lives. This unpopularity oftentimes is due to the person not being able to look right or care about the same things other kids care about, and not necessarily due to a lack of social skills. Yes, there are geeks who live up to every awful stereotype: they’re physically unattractive in every way you can think of (too fat/too skinny/too pimply/bad teeth/bad hair/partially-resorpted fetal twin dangling from their forehead), they snort when they laugh, they’re completely clueless on how to behave themselves in any given social situation, they’re genuinely uncomfortable people to be around--but are we really trying to portray these kinds of geeks as the geek hero? I mean, WHY?

So given that many of the stereotypes of the completely socially inept geek are not necessarily true, one thing does tend to be true: geeks as a group tend to have less sexual experience, or at least start their sexual experiences later, compared to the general population. Sexually inexperienced heroes may turn off some people, but personally, I think they’re adorable. Actually, it’s almost a fetish for me. Part of the reason why I like Wild at Heart and The Shadow and The Star so much is because the heroes have never been with a woman, and witnessing the fumbling is both sexy and very, very emotionally-charged. Why so many romance authors include all the inaccurate and unattractive personality stereotypes while overcompensating them in the bedroom is beyond me. One can learn to give good head; learning to be an engaging conversationalist is also possible, but a LOT harder. Guess which skill I’d much rather teach a guy and which skill I’d much rather have a guy know already. Hell, guess which skill attracts me to a guy in the first place, and the one that will keep the relationship going years and years later when all the fun bits are no longer firm and pert and cellulite has made inroads in areas you never though possible.

You want good geek hero models? Science fiction shall be thy savior. Read some Neal Stephenson. Pick up some William Gibson. Or hey, try Connie Willis--she writes SF novels with a distinct romantic bent featuring brainier-than-average people. See how these authors make being a geek pretty damn sexy even if the books aren’t necessarily focused on sex or romance.

It’s not often that I go back and revisit a book’s characters, and now that I’m about to move AND pay movers to move my stuff because I’m too old and creaky to do it myself, I’m looking at tossing out at least half of my paperback novel collection. I have a bajillion and six Nora Roberts’, a bunch of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’, some various Catherine Coulters because I just couldn’t believe she really was getting that horrible, and I’m thinking: the whole lot of them are not worth keeping. How often do I go back to reread them? And of those books, which ones will I read?

Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that “Born in Fire” might make the move, because I love the main characters, though I have to ask myself whether I’ll keep the following two books in the trilogy just because they are a trilogy. But all sixteen bajillion of the rest? I think it might be time to let go. But talking about it now, and sitting down with a “donate” and a “keep” box will be two very, very different stories.