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Jul. 13th, 2009 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAccording to the Smart Bitches, Laura Kinsale writes THE BEST MOST AMAZINGEST ROMANCE NOVELS EVER, bar none! So, I decided that I was going to foray into romance novels, I should start with a Laura Kinsale and got out Midsummer Moon from the library.
I - okay, I am feeling the need to summarize the plot for you guys in GREAT DETAIL, so bear with me.
CAST:
MERLIN: Our heroine! A GENIUS INVENTOR who has devoted her life to inventing the airplane! Along the way she has absentmindedly invented the short-wave radio! Did I mention this is Regency England and she's also a drop-dead gorgeous orphan of noble birth with a formerly tragically deaf and currently tragically dead mother, raised by eccentric twin servants? Did I also mention that she is conveniently completely ignorant of sexual propriety due to aforementioned eccentric upbringing? Did I also mention the constant presence of the pet hedgehog?
RANSOM: Our dashing, noble hero, a Duke who spies for the crown! He is assigned to protect Merlin from EVIL FRENCH SPIES! He would be perfect for Merlin the would-be daring aviatrix, EXCEPT that he is TERRIBLY AFRAID OF HEIGHTS! His backstory angst: he stuttered as a kid. (No, really, that's it.)
RANSOM'S FRIENDS AND RELATIONS: A wacky cast including a spendthrift gambling brother, his dramatic opera singer French wife, his uptight sister, her prim priestly suitor, her less prim super-Irish suitor/Ransom's subordinate spy, and several adorable moppets of nieces and nephews.
EVIL FRENCH SPIES: Periodically enter the book, drug Merlin, carry her off, and stash her somewhere where she can be conveniently rescued, and then disappear again for large swathes of plot.
THE PLOT:
So Ransom and Merlin have a traditional meet cute of the "I am supposed to protect this genius inventor!" "I am this genius inventor!" "YOU? A woman! I am so shocked! Also wow, you're hot. But so young and naive!" type, and I was anticipating a lot of buildup of tension and sparks, as is traditional in Regency novels. BUT INSTEAD:
THIRTY PAGES IN -- the pet hedgehog has made its home in the table salt, so that wacky Merlin accidentally feeds Ransom APHRODISIAC SALT!!!! They go upstairs and have hot monkey sex! Merlin expresses mild bemusement and says, "Oh dear, I think there was something in the salt!"
(BECCA: . . . well, that was sudden.)
Once the aphrodisiac salt wears off, Ransom, of course, is ANGST-RIDDEN about TAKING A MAIDEN'S PURITY and gallops off to fetch a priest to marry them on the spot.
HOWEVER -- Ransom's FEAR OF HEIGHTS causes him to disparage and break the latest iteration of Merlin's flying machine! Merlin decides that, alas, she cannot marry him! Because her flying machine is more important! And because she is innocent and unconventional, you see, and does not understand the rules of society.
SO THEREFORE -- Ransom takes advantage of the evil French spies' first attempt to drug and kidnap Merlin and carries her off to work on her short-wave radio at his manor, along with a captured French spy. AS YOU DO.
Most of the next half of the book involves Merlin secretly trying to build her flying machine in Ransom's house despite his disapproval, and acting like a relatively endearing absent-minded inventor half the time and like a brain-damaged person the other half the time. (Climbing out half-naked onto your host's roof instantly after you have arrived? IN REGENCY ENGLAND? I don't care how innocent and naive you are, that is just dumb.) There is a subplot about how Ransom's brother and his estranged wife and the rest of his family all bond while working on the flying machine which was very sweet, while Merlin runs around frantically trying to beat a rival inventor and Ransom is constantly attacked by the hedgehog, and I would have loved to read the book that was just about this divided from the romance novel I was busy cracking up at.
BUT THEN -- Merlin is captured by French spies! Again! Who conveniently stash her in a ~secret tunnel~ underneath the main house, where Ransom eventually finds her and rescues her. Merlin actually pulls off some serious awesome here - she bandages Ransom's bullet wound and spends her period of imprisonment making rockets!
(RANSOM: WHY do you have rockets in your pockets?
MERLIN *startled*: You never know when you might need a rocket.)
So they escape! Ransom is bedridden for a while and uses his wound to seduce Merlin into some more hot sympathy sex. BUT she still refuses to marry him! Ransom comes to a GENIUS REALIZATION: It is okay if Merlin keeps working on her flying machine, as long as he hires SOMEONE ELSE to fly it!
The next chapter starts with Ransom riding back from town with an engagement ring, just in time to see Merlin testing her flying machine, which crashes . . . AND SENDS HER INTO A COMA. SHE IS BRAIN-DAMAGED AND PROBABLY WILL NOT LIVE.
(I spent this whole chapter convinced it was a dream sequence, until time started passing and I realized, no, that actually just happened.)
Finally, Merlin wakes up from her coma! BUT! She has CONVENIENT AMNESIA and remembers nothing. Ransom seizes the opportunity to inform her that they are engaged and were supposed to be married today, and pulls off an admittedly hilarious if ethically dubious performance of angst and woe about their cancelled nuptuals; Merlin, once again, is bemused, but basically says "well, you're hot and I would hate to disappoint you, so we may as well go through with it!" AND THEY DO.
BUT THEN! Ransom's adorable-insecure-moppet of a nephew tells Merlin that her flying machine was SABOTAGED, which is why it crashed! But Ransom burned her flying machine and all of her notes! MERLIN REMEMBERS EVERYTHING (three hours after waking up with amnesia), storms out in the middle of her wedding, accuses him of destroying her life's work, and prepares to go home that very night! Ransom follows her and they have some more hot sex, but Merlin is still determined to steal his clothes and go home in the morning, inconveniently cross-dressed.
Before she can escape, however, she is kidnapped yet again by French spies and put in a castle with her flying-machine-designing rival, who, being even more absent-minded than Merlin, has not in fact noticed that he is being imprisoned by the French. They work together to finish the flying machine! Ransom CONQUERS HIS FEAR OF HEIGHTS to rescue her! Merlin's flying machine FLIES TO FREEDOM! The French spy is revealed, Ransom's brother's family is reunited, Ransom's sister turns out to have been having hot sex with the Irish dude (in Regency England!) and they all live happily ever after, THE END. And Merlin, her dreams of building a hang-glider having been realized, decides to build a rocket to the moon.
In Regency England.
Snark aside, there really were a lot of genuinely (and intentionally) funny scenes, and there's the core of a book in there that I could really quite like if separated from the romantic plot. But I continued to get bored every time Ransom and Merlin went off into rhapsodies about each other's eyes/hair/breasts/muscles what have you and started acting like morons, and I was not convinced they were actually very good for each other and did not really want them to end up together.
But the hedgehog was awesome.
I - okay, I am feeling the need to summarize the plot for you guys in GREAT DETAIL, so bear with me.
CAST:
MERLIN: Our heroine! A GENIUS INVENTOR who has devoted her life to inventing the airplane! Along the way she has absentmindedly invented the short-wave radio! Did I mention this is Regency England and she's also a drop-dead gorgeous orphan of noble birth with a formerly tragically deaf and currently tragically dead mother, raised by eccentric twin servants? Did I also mention that she is conveniently completely ignorant of sexual propriety due to aforementioned eccentric upbringing? Did I also mention the constant presence of the pet hedgehog?
RANSOM: Our dashing, noble hero, a Duke who spies for the crown! He is assigned to protect Merlin from EVIL FRENCH SPIES! He would be perfect for Merlin the would-be daring aviatrix, EXCEPT that he is TERRIBLY AFRAID OF HEIGHTS! His backstory angst: he stuttered as a kid. (No, really, that's it.)
RANSOM'S FRIENDS AND RELATIONS: A wacky cast including a spendthrift gambling brother, his dramatic opera singer French wife, his uptight sister, her prim priestly suitor, her less prim super-Irish suitor/Ransom's subordinate spy, and several adorable moppets of nieces and nephews.
EVIL FRENCH SPIES: Periodically enter the book, drug Merlin, carry her off, and stash her somewhere where she can be conveniently rescued, and then disappear again for large swathes of plot.
THE PLOT:
So Ransom and Merlin have a traditional meet cute of the "I am supposed to protect this genius inventor!" "I am this genius inventor!" "YOU? A woman! I am so shocked! Also wow, you're hot. But so young and naive!" type, and I was anticipating a lot of buildup of tension and sparks, as is traditional in Regency novels. BUT INSTEAD:
THIRTY PAGES IN -- the pet hedgehog has made its home in the table salt, so that wacky Merlin accidentally feeds Ransom APHRODISIAC SALT!!!! They go upstairs and have hot monkey sex! Merlin expresses mild bemusement and says, "Oh dear, I think there was something in the salt!"
(BECCA: . . . well, that was sudden.)
Once the aphrodisiac salt wears off, Ransom, of course, is ANGST-RIDDEN about TAKING A MAIDEN'S PURITY and gallops off to fetch a priest to marry them on the spot.
HOWEVER -- Ransom's FEAR OF HEIGHTS causes him to disparage and break the latest iteration of Merlin's flying machine! Merlin decides that, alas, she cannot marry him! Because her flying machine is more important! And because she is innocent and unconventional, you see, and does not understand the rules of society.
SO THEREFORE -- Ransom takes advantage of the evil French spies' first attempt to drug and kidnap Merlin and carries her off to work on her short-wave radio at his manor, along with a captured French spy. AS YOU DO.
Most of the next half of the book involves Merlin secretly trying to build her flying machine in Ransom's house despite his disapproval, and acting like a relatively endearing absent-minded inventor half the time and like a brain-damaged person the other half the time. (Climbing out half-naked onto your host's roof instantly after you have arrived? IN REGENCY ENGLAND? I don't care how innocent and naive you are, that is just dumb.) There is a subplot about how Ransom's brother and his estranged wife and the rest of his family all bond while working on the flying machine which was very sweet, while Merlin runs around frantically trying to beat a rival inventor and Ransom is constantly attacked by the hedgehog, and I would have loved to read the book that was just about this divided from the romance novel I was busy cracking up at.
BUT THEN -- Merlin is captured by French spies! Again! Who conveniently stash her in a ~secret tunnel~ underneath the main house, where Ransom eventually finds her and rescues her. Merlin actually pulls off some serious awesome here - she bandages Ransom's bullet wound and spends her period of imprisonment making rockets!
(RANSOM: WHY do you have rockets in your pockets?
MERLIN *startled*: You never know when you might need a rocket.)
So they escape! Ransom is bedridden for a while and uses his wound to seduce Merlin into some more hot sympathy sex. BUT she still refuses to marry him! Ransom comes to a GENIUS REALIZATION: It is okay if Merlin keeps working on her flying machine, as long as he hires SOMEONE ELSE to fly it!
The next chapter starts with Ransom riding back from town with an engagement ring, just in time to see Merlin testing her flying machine, which crashes . . . AND SENDS HER INTO A COMA. SHE IS BRAIN-DAMAGED AND PROBABLY WILL NOT LIVE.
(I spent this whole chapter convinced it was a dream sequence, until time started passing and I realized, no, that actually just happened.)
Finally, Merlin wakes up from her coma! BUT! She has CONVENIENT AMNESIA and remembers nothing. Ransom seizes the opportunity to inform her that they are engaged and were supposed to be married today, and pulls off an admittedly hilarious if ethically dubious performance of angst and woe about their cancelled nuptuals; Merlin, once again, is bemused, but basically says "well, you're hot and I would hate to disappoint you, so we may as well go through with it!" AND THEY DO.
BUT THEN! Ransom's adorable-insecure-moppet of a nephew tells Merlin that her flying machine was SABOTAGED, which is why it crashed! But Ransom burned her flying machine and all of her notes! MERLIN REMEMBERS EVERYTHING (three hours after waking up with amnesia), storms out in the middle of her wedding, accuses him of destroying her life's work, and prepares to go home that very night! Ransom follows her and they have some more hot sex, but Merlin is still determined to steal his clothes and go home in the morning, inconveniently cross-dressed.
Before she can escape, however, she is kidnapped yet again by French spies and put in a castle with her flying-machine-designing rival, who, being even more absent-minded than Merlin, has not in fact noticed that he is being imprisoned by the French. They work together to finish the flying machine! Ransom CONQUERS HIS FEAR OF HEIGHTS to rescue her! Merlin's flying machine FLIES TO FREEDOM! The French spy is revealed, Ransom's brother's family is reunited, Ransom's sister turns out to have been having hot sex with the Irish dude (in Regency England!) and they all live happily ever after, THE END. And Merlin, her dreams of building a hang-glider having been realized, decides to build a rocket to the moon.
In Regency England.
Snark aside, there really were a lot of genuinely (and intentionally) funny scenes, and there's the core of a book in there that I could really quite like if separated from the romantic plot. But I continued to get bored every time Ransom and Merlin went off into rhapsodies about each other's eyes/hair/breasts/muscles what have you and started acting like morons, and I was not convinced they were actually very good for each other and did not really want them to end up together.
But the hedgehog was awesome.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 03:30 pm (UTC)Have you read any of Julia Glass? Her Regency romances are fantastic. Or any of The Pink Carnation books? Thinly veiled romances that involve Regency spies named for flowers!!! Amazing :)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 03:37 pm (UTC)I haven't read any Julia Glass, but I have read one or two of the Pink Carnation books. I am a ridiculous Scarlet Pimpernel fan, so how could I not? :D And, I mean, SPIES.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 03:41 pm (UTC)SPIES. I mainlined the first two books, but got a bit sick of them before I read the next one. It might be time to grab it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 03:44 pm (UTC)Though so far, for cheery Regency fluff, Heyer remains my favorite. Everyone is so cheery and generally sensible!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:10 pm (UTC)Darn it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:37 pm (UTC)(So clearly the fic needs to exist where Iron Man is anh absent-minded Regency-era inventor and Captain America is a Duke with a terrible fear of heights?)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 06:00 pm (UTC). . . uh, the literary representation thereof, not . . . the actual . . . you know what I mean!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 11:13 pm (UTC)Also did I tell you that I have a new voice, its all Saphie's fault for playing Yrael so amazing that I read the books and got a new voice.
I'm sure I have a type that is young men or women who think too much and don't realize that they can do stuff.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 11:46 pm (UTC)<_<
*griiiins*
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:42 am (UTC)*grins* Nothing wrong with having a type! Nooot that I have one or anything. Um. (Also, Saph is often sneaky in that way, I SEE YOUR INNOCENT EYES DOWN THERE, MISSIE.)