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Apr. 26th, 2016 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsApparently Anna Cowan's Untamed was Controversial in the Romance Novel Community, and to be honest the plot was total nonsense but I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed the hell and a half out of it.
Untamed's hero is the Cold, Emotionally Tortured Bisexual Duke of Darlington, who has a lot of very public affairs, a harem of hot boys living in his house, and a death-wish. The heroine is impoverished, awkward, plain but extremely well-muscled Kit, currently living with her beautiful baby sister Lydia. Lydia has married a wealthy husband who loves Lydia very much but is big and shouty and regrettably triggers Kit and Lydia into remembering their abusive father; therefore, Lydia is avoiding her husband and banging Darlington. Kit has never met Darlington but thinks he is the worst in all ways. They meet, of course, when Darlington is at a party disguised as someone else.
DARLINGTON: So ... I heard Darlington was a MONSTER. Like, pure evil. Pure evil with an 8-pack.
KIT: lol as if. I heard Darlington was the worst in all ways but, like, stupid ways, you know? Very stupid ways.
DARLINGTON: I find you strangely intriguing.
KIT: Anyway, can't wait to meet Darlington and tell him to stop banging my sister or --
DARLINGTON: Or what? I mean, he's a duke and you're an impoverished young woman, so ...
KIT: -- OR ELSE, is what. I have muscles.
DARLINGTON: Hell yeah you do. *__*
But then Kit accidentally wanders in on Darlington seducing the party's hostess while secretly being not into it at all.
KIT: ...wow. WOW. Nobody should be pretending to be really into having sex with someone when they're not into it at all, it is offensive to everyone involved, that's gross and I'm DISGUSTED.
THE NEWSPAPERS: Darlington seduced the lady of the house, news at 11!
KIT: Also, whoa, that cute guy I was flirting with was Darlington? GROSS.
So Kit marches off to find Darlington and make him promise he'll lay off her baby sister!
DARLINGTON: Sure! I will leave town and leave your sister alone! .... if you take me back to the country with you and let me just like follow you around for a few months.
KIT: That seems like a weird, kind of contrived request.
DARLINGTON: Well, I'm a weird, kind of contrived sort of guy, as you may have noticed.
KIT: Uh, how you gonna work that without destroying my reputation? As you may have noticed, we are kind of sort of technically in something that might resemble the Regency era.
DARLINGTON: Because I'm gonna disguise myself as my beautiful cousin LADY ROSE and just spend the next couple months cross-dressed and fluttering around the countryside in beautiful gowns while leaning on your sexy, well-muscled arms!
KIT: ..... ............ ......................
DARLINGTON: Also I'm afraid of the dark so I'm going to have to sleep in your room with you like besties, is that cool?
KIT: NO IT'S NOT COOL, IT'S NOT COOL AT ALL
DARLINGTON: Too late, I already said I wanted to in front of your mom and brother Tom, who think I'm your beautiful BFF, and you can't turn me down without making it weird!
KIT: oh my god, I hate you so much.
DARLINGTON: Is it because I'm so hot and delicate and you're worried about accidentally compelling me into having sex with you when I'm not really into it?
KIT: A LITTLE.
So Kit and Darlington spend a couple of months as roommies in the country, negotiating their power dynamics and various complex emotional issues resulting from abusive-parent backstories while Kit flexes her protective instincts and Darlington gets weak at the knees about Kit's strength and power and ability to coolly chop wood and butcher a pig, all very much in the constant-emotional-shattered-glass-mixed-with-points-of-high-hilarity vein of Authors Formatively Inspired By Dorothy Dunnett. However, just as Kit and Darlington have tipped straight over from love into ridiculous emotional codependency without having yet actually banged: LYDIA SHOWS UP. With Darlington's favorite cute boytoy in tow!
LYDIA: NOPE.
KIT: But --
LYDIA: nope nope nope nope nope nope, NONE OF THIS, my douchebag ex is moving OUT of your bedroom and I am moving INTO it and we are going to have some NICE SISTER BONDING and WORK THROUGH OUR CHILDHOOD ISSUES and NOBODY IS HAVING ANY SEX AT ALL.
KIT: Wait, nobody is having any sex? I mean -- but I thought you were into him!
LYDIA: Sure, we're great friends with benefits, but dating Darlington is a terrible idea! He is a total mess of a human! I threw myself on this bullet so you would never have to and NOW LOOK AT YOU.
KIT: Well, I threw myself on this bullet so you wouldn't have to, and --
LYDIA: And now you're in love with him, right? Ugh, this is why I wanted to make sure you NEVER MET, I knew that I definitely wasn't gonna fall in love with him and you would and that is why there will be NONE OF THAT.
KIT: .... >:(
LYDIA: ALSO I can't BELIEVE you didn't tell brother Tom that Lady Rose was a dude, I am telling him right now before he falls in love with him because that is just the LAST thing we need --
TOM: Rose is a DUDE?
KIT: Yes, um, sorry about --
TOM: oh my god this is so disappointing, this is the first time I have ever been attracted to an actual woman? and I had such hope??
KIT: ...
LYDIA: ......
DARLINGTON'S FAVORITE CUTE BOYTOY: ........>:D!
And the next several chapters mostly just consist of Kit and her family and Darlington and Darlington's boytoy hanging out and bonding in a cottage and working through their various childhood sibling issues, and everyone is happy except that every time Kit and Darlington start making googly-eyes at each other Lydia or Tom rushes in shouting "NOPE!!!" and it's basically the best part of the book.
(Tom and the boytoy, however, get to make all the googly eyes they want and NO ONE CARES, which Kit finds deeply unfair.)
However, this (hilarious) idyll of sibling bonding and sexual frustration is interrupted when Lydia's husband follows everyone else to the countryside! And, alas, Darlington has to flee into the night, WITH his boytoy, WITHOUT the pet pig he adopted to save it from the slaughterhouse, and then Lydia and her husband reconcile, and Tom moves to London and joins the gay scene, and Kit chases Darlington down, WITH the pet pig, WHILE designing herself a fabulous breeches-and-military coat makeover, and challenges the woman Darlington seduced in Chapter 1 to a duel for Darlington's honor in front of the entire Regency world, and the entire Regency world is just like '....yeah, seems legit, I hope those two crazy kids can make it work.'
AND INDEED I AM SURE YOU ARE ALL SHOCKED TO HEAR THAT THEY DO.
Untamed's hero is the Cold, Emotionally Tortured Bisexual Duke of Darlington, who has a lot of very public affairs, a harem of hot boys living in his house, and a death-wish. The heroine is impoverished, awkward, plain but extremely well-muscled Kit, currently living with her beautiful baby sister Lydia. Lydia has married a wealthy husband who loves Lydia very much but is big and shouty and regrettably triggers Kit and Lydia into remembering their abusive father; therefore, Lydia is avoiding her husband and banging Darlington. Kit has never met Darlington but thinks he is the worst in all ways. They meet, of course, when Darlington is at a party disguised as someone else.
DARLINGTON: So ... I heard Darlington was a MONSTER. Like, pure evil. Pure evil with an 8-pack.
KIT: lol as if. I heard Darlington was the worst in all ways but, like, stupid ways, you know? Very stupid ways.
DARLINGTON: I find you strangely intriguing.
KIT: Anyway, can't wait to meet Darlington and tell him to stop banging my sister or --
DARLINGTON: Or what? I mean, he's a duke and you're an impoverished young woman, so ...
KIT: -- OR ELSE, is what. I have muscles.
DARLINGTON: Hell yeah you do. *__*
But then Kit accidentally wanders in on Darlington seducing the party's hostess while secretly being not into it at all.
KIT: ...wow. WOW. Nobody should be pretending to be really into having sex with someone when they're not into it at all, it is offensive to everyone involved, that's gross and I'm DISGUSTED.
THE NEWSPAPERS: Darlington seduced the lady of the house, news at 11!
KIT: Also, whoa, that cute guy I was flirting with was Darlington? GROSS.
So Kit marches off to find Darlington and make him promise he'll lay off her baby sister!
DARLINGTON: Sure! I will leave town and leave your sister alone! .... if you take me back to the country with you and let me just like follow you around for a few months.
KIT: That seems like a weird, kind of contrived request.
DARLINGTON: Well, I'm a weird, kind of contrived sort of guy, as you may have noticed.
KIT: Uh, how you gonna work that without destroying my reputation? As you may have noticed, we are kind of sort of technically in something that might resemble the Regency era.
DARLINGTON: Because I'm gonna disguise myself as my beautiful cousin LADY ROSE and just spend the next couple months cross-dressed and fluttering around the countryside in beautiful gowns while leaning on your sexy, well-muscled arms!
KIT: ..... ............ ......................
DARLINGTON: Also I'm afraid of the dark so I'm going to have to sleep in your room with you like besties, is that cool?
KIT: NO IT'S NOT COOL, IT'S NOT COOL AT ALL
DARLINGTON: Too late, I already said I wanted to in front of your mom and brother Tom, who think I'm your beautiful BFF, and you can't turn me down without making it weird!
KIT: oh my god, I hate you so much.
DARLINGTON: Is it because I'm so hot and delicate and you're worried about accidentally compelling me into having sex with you when I'm not really into it?
KIT: A LITTLE.
So Kit and Darlington spend a couple of months as roommies in the country, negotiating their power dynamics and various complex emotional issues resulting from abusive-parent backstories while Kit flexes her protective instincts and Darlington gets weak at the knees about Kit's strength and power and ability to coolly chop wood and butcher a pig, all very much in the constant-emotional-shattered-glass-mixed-with-points-of-high-hilarity vein of Authors Formatively Inspired By Dorothy Dunnett. However, just as Kit and Darlington have tipped straight over from love into ridiculous emotional codependency without having yet actually banged: LYDIA SHOWS UP. With Darlington's favorite cute boytoy in tow!
LYDIA: NOPE.
KIT: But --
LYDIA: nope nope nope nope nope nope, NONE OF THIS, my douchebag ex is moving OUT of your bedroom and I am moving INTO it and we are going to have some NICE SISTER BONDING and WORK THROUGH OUR CHILDHOOD ISSUES and NOBODY IS HAVING ANY SEX AT ALL.
KIT: Wait, nobody is having any sex? I mean -- but I thought you were into him!
LYDIA: Sure, we're great friends with benefits, but dating Darlington is a terrible idea! He is a total mess of a human! I threw myself on this bullet so you would never have to and NOW LOOK AT YOU.
KIT: Well, I threw myself on this bullet so you wouldn't have to, and --
LYDIA: And now you're in love with him, right? Ugh, this is why I wanted to make sure you NEVER MET, I knew that I definitely wasn't gonna fall in love with him and you would and that is why there will be NONE OF THAT.
KIT: .... >:(
LYDIA: ALSO I can't BELIEVE you didn't tell brother Tom that Lady Rose was a dude, I am telling him right now before he falls in love with him because that is just the LAST thing we need --
TOM: Rose is a DUDE?
KIT: Yes, um, sorry about --
TOM: oh my god this is so disappointing, this is the first time I have ever been attracted to an actual woman? and I had such hope??
KIT: ...
LYDIA: ......
DARLINGTON'S FAVORITE CUTE BOYTOY: ........>:D!
And the next several chapters mostly just consist of Kit and her family and Darlington and Darlington's boytoy hanging out and bonding in a cottage and working through their various childhood sibling issues, and everyone is happy except that every time Kit and Darlington start making googly-eyes at each other Lydia or Tom rushes in shouting "NOPE!!!" and it's basically the best part of the book.
(Tom and the boytoy, however, get to make all the googly eyes they want and NO ONE CARES, which Kit finds deeply unfair.)
However, this (hilarious) idyll of sibling bonding and sexual frustration is interrupted when Lydia's husband follows everyone else to the countryside! And, alas, Darlington has to flee into the night, WITH his boytoy, WITHOUT the pet pig he adopted to save it from the slaughterhouse, and then Lydia and her husband reconcile, and Tom moves to London and joins the gay scene, and Kit chases Darlington down, WITH the pet pig, WHILE designing herself a fabulous breeches-and-military coat makeover, and challenges the woman Darlington seduced in Chapter 1 to a duel for Darlington's honor in front of the entire Regency world, and the entire Regency world is just like '....yeah, seems legit, I hope those two crazy kids can make it work.'
AND INDEED I AM SURE YOU ARE ALL SHOCKED TO HEAR THAT THEY DO.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-27 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-28 12:06 am (UTC)GENDERQUEER ROMANCE YAY.
Okay, fine, so Darlington is male and Kit is female. But the whole story is about drag... and it's not at all clear that Darlington's gown and Kit's military uniform are drag. Kit's ball gowns, on the other hand, are definitely drag. Jude's femme, Kit's butch, and they're both massively queer.
But there has got to be a better way to ... fight the corn laws...
no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 02:00 am (UTC)DARLINGTON: I shall sacrifice myself by fighting the corn laws .... WITH MY BEAUTIFUL BODY!!
EVERYONE ELSE: I don't think that's really nece--
DARLINGTON: FOR ENGLAND!!!! *dramatically throws off robe*