**½~~ (2.5/5)

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Note: I realize it’s a bit cheeky reviewing a book of quotations, but it’s either this or another bit of nothing.

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Horseradish is a book of quotations drawn mostly from Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books. The author, as you might know, is also a fictional character, and one with a uniformly bleak view on life. The name of the novel refers to a particularly unpleasant vegetable, and forms a part of the introductory tale of the book, that of a woman who goes in search of a wise man to find out if there’s more to life than utterly depressing things like family, work and literature. She is, as can be expected, disappointed, and ends up worse than she started.

The opposite of a positive thinking book, Horseradish’s “wit and witticism” centers on putting things into a depressing perspective. It’s interesting to note that recent research suggests attempts at positive thinking make a person with low self-esteem feel worse, while flat, unpleasant facts cheer them up. This makes perfect sense to anyone who has ever had a low self-esteem, and none at all to those who haven’t, as false optimism only serves to underline a sense of hopelessness and make a person feel more alone. As such, Horseradish might work to cheer some of us up, by mocking platitudes and coming up with better, funnier, more realistic, wonderfully depressing ones instead.

That being said, I would have wished for more consistent sets of thoughts in each of the thirteen categories, and perhaps even a sharper focus on truly sad ideas. The quotes range from the flat (“Oftentimes, when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable too. But it never helps.”) to the keenly observant (“When people ask you if you play a certain sport, it is likely that they are very good at that sport and are hoping you are only mediocre so that you can waste an afternoon losing a game.”) to the pointless (“A good thing to do when one is sitting, eating and resting is to have a conversation.”) and the facetious (“There are some who go through life with a shadow hanging over them, particularly if they live in a building which has long, wide awnings.”), with some nearly positive messages thrown in between just to keep you off balance.

Whether or not you’d enjoy this book as a stand-alone depends on no-one but you. To some, it will seem pointlessly depressing, and others, a handy go-to when you feel like an inspiring sentence or two to remind you that a lot of other people have it pretty bad too. If you’re a fan of Lemony Snicket and have read all his Unfortunate Events novels, this book is truly pointless because it’s just repurchasing the words you already purchased before, with only a few new sentences thrown in. But, at least it was printed in an eco-friendly way, cost a couple of coins, and I, who haven’t read the series, personally rather enjoyed it for the 30 minutes it took to read it.

**~~~ (2/5)

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Ten Thousand Waves is a video installation – a film played on four different screens – inspired by a tragedy where 13 Chinese clam collectors drowned off the coast of North Wales, by the British artist Isaac Julien. It’s currently on display in Helsinki’s Taidehalli.

The film mainly consists of long, beautiful shots of a perfectly coiffed, beautiful woman, apparently in mourning, wandering around Shanghai, or staring out of a hotel window, or taking tram trips; of equally long and beautiful shots of the sea goddess Mazu moving over cities and rivers, seeming to search for something. There are a few other images to vary these: grainy footage shot from the air, an old man painting Chinese characters on paper, and on glass, fishermen in the gorgeous Chinese countryside lying sleeping or dead on the bank, cars speeding on Shanghai streets, Mazu suspended on her wires in the studio against the green screen. The soundtrack consists of occasional touches of music, city sounds, wind sounds, and Chinese and English speech, the English of which talks about the 13 dead, and the Chinese being the poetry composed by poet Wang Ping on Julien’s request, about the same incident. The Chinese, of course, I couldn’t understand any more than I understood the characters drawn on the screen. The leaflet provided a translation.

The film lasted for 50 minutes, and then began playing again from the top.

It was beautiful. It was slow. It was pretentious. It was atmospheric. It was pointless. And it was presumptuous – claiming to be a study of Chineseness, created by a Brit. If I hadn’t read the leaflet, I wouldn’t have known it was about clam collectors. Why is this playing for Western audiences? It didn’t manage to portray a single genuine emotion or situation we could connect with – other than to admire its beauty. I don’t think I would have connected with it even if I had been Chinese. It would still have been essentially empty. That it was made by a Westerner and viewed by a Western audience just made it seem all the more fetishistic.

Why is Maggie Cheung so flawless? What does this obviously wealthy, picture-perfect woman in Shanghai have to do with poor immigrant clam collectors? This deliciously lovely, depiction of mourning, and the romantization of death at sea serve to sever connection with the horrors of the event itself – the event becomes nothing but an excuse to show this beautiful sorrow.

The poems by Wang Ping were beautiful in an emotional, keening way, and they, in contrast to the film, do not flinch from the horror of death, which is supposed to sit at the centre of this piece. They combine melodrama with delicate expression and the harsh reality of dangerous manual labour abroad, and are much better on their own than the video installation as a whole.

There is something reminiscent of Chinese films and Chinese poetry in the way the film was built, in being implication more than story, and by reflecting the Chinese love of beauty for beauty’s sake. I’m not saying that Julien got that part wrong. I am, however, saying that he flinched from his subject matter and built a wall of beauty between it and himself, or it and us. Call me a snob, but isn’t that the opposite of the purpose of art?

I’m not saying Ten Thousand Waves has no worth, but from my point of view – white female Finn who immigrated to a cozy office job in Belgium and wandered into a museum on a visit home – its worth is just in giving one a chance to relax for a loose 50 minutes and look at pretty pictures. Beauty has value, certainly, but I expect much more than this from a lauded piece of art about a horrible subject, which has been so many years in the making. I expected the author to engage with the subject, and I also expected him to expect more from his audience.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal, pretty as ever) is a street urchin adopted by the king, who is impressed by his running and jumping, and grows up as the third prince of Persia. After a successful victory over the city of Alamut, the king is poisoned, and the blame falls on Dastan’s shoulders. He also comes In possession of a sacred dagger capable of turning back time. The princess of the city of Alamut (Gemma Arterton, also pretty) is sworn to protect the dagger, and wants to hide it so it won’t cause the end of the world, whereas Dastan wants it to prove his innocence, and the villain (I shall not spoil it) wants it to rule the world. Cue wandering in a desert bickering and fighting people, and a great deal of running and jumping.

If it seems like a video game, it’s because it is. Luckily it’s a video game with a rather cinematic plot. The focus on a complicated mystical device bespeaks the origin, as does the hero’s need to bring device A to device B in order to accomplish objectives. This gets a little tiresome, but in the meanwhile there is a lot of entertainment to be had in watching the lovely choreographed fighting, the prince and princess’s slap-slap-kiss-kiss, and the side characters and villains, who, true to heroic action movie form, are more entertaining than the main characters. The Ngbaka knife thrower’s bromance with the tax-hating ostrich race organiser was one of my favourite things in the film.

How historically accurate it is, I can’t say, but I wouldn’t bet it was terribly so. While light, I should point out the film also gets quite violent; people die in battle, and not entirely bloodlessly, and some of them are people we liked a great deal.

Despite the antagonistic romance being quite central, the emotional core of the story lies in Dastan’s relationship with his family and specifically the bond of brotherhood. Brothers are pitted against each other in two generations, and it’s brotherly affection and trust that saves the day. Dastan also gets to grow through his experiences, from a rascally younger brother to someone who knows when to speak up, and when to be humble – something in which the princess has a hand. It’s a good lesson to walk away with from an action movie.

In conclusion, while fun and colourful and visually masterfully realized, the film was essentially forgettable. I suppose one needs to spend hours trying hard to achieve Dastan’s various objectives to really appreciate it.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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The family of the late Mr Dashwood, consisting of his second wife and three daughters, are left with very little property after Mr Dashwood is torn to pieces by a hammerhead shark, and must remove themselves to a rattling shack on Pestilent Isle. Life settles down despite the continuing ravages of supernaturally malicious sea creatures, but the two elder daughters, the sensible Elinor and the romantic Marianne, are caught up in hopeless romances. They play out over a year of heartbreak, careful attention to propriety and the dire consequences of its lack. And some sea monsters.

One thing to be said for this novel is that it is better than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In both novels the monsters are superfluous to the plot, tacked on rather than made an essential part of the story. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters at least attempts to tie the added elements to the plot and achieves some truly hilarious moments, where ladies beset with creatures and surrounded by death and disaster still manage to discuss prospective engagements.

I would not recommend this novel for any particular fan of the Regency period or Jane Austen, because the author seems to have transported the story to the other end of the 19th century. The first decade of that century had not yet even heard of bustles, and did not favour pointed heels. Then again this could be attributed to the author’s general lack of knowledge regarding period clothing; a gentleman would never refer to his trousers – should he indeed be wearing trousers rather than the more formal breeches – as “pants”. The technology described is also more reminiscent of late 19th century fiction but, then, they didn’t have underwater cities at that point either, so we can put that down to the novel being science fiction in the first place.

I might recommend it to people with very low expectations. The Lovecraftian mood is nicely set, the best parts involve mixing convoluted Austenian sentences and repressed propriety with scenes of bloody loss of life and limb, and there is, after all, something entertaining about bloody pirates and tentacled beasts. There was a great deal of potential here, but I just don’t think that potential will ever be realized before these re-writers are allowed to rip the original text apart even more. Until then, the monsters will be nothing but window-dressing and that, ultimately, doesn’t excuse their presence, and will never truly satisfy.

**~~~ (2/5)

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When lay-about gentleman barrister Robert Audley finds his friend missing on a lazy summer’s day at his uncle’s house, he starts from a dreadful suspicion and goes on to unravel a story of bigamy, deception and murder.

It’s not as good as it sounds like.

First of all, this isn’t really a detective novel. Audley is not a detective, and the secret in almost all of its particulars can be inferred before the disappearance even occurs. It is really more of a gothic romance, save that its hero is a gentleman rather than a harassed lady; in fact, the harassed lady is the villain.

Secondly, the novel is woefully predictable. The only two twists of the plot that I did not anticipate I am inclined to think the author made up on the spot. The novel very much has the air of being written in one go, from returning in latter descriptions to earlier points in the story with a “as I have said before”, and correcting an outburst of description in the previous paragraph with “I am speaking now of his feelings in the period that…”

It almost begs to be rewritten as a real mystery, by withholding details and elements from the reader by rearranging he events and how those events are revealed.

So why two stars instead of one?

Even though many of the characters, events and situations are cliché upon cliché, on occasion the author hits upon a character portrait that’s nothing short from spot-on and charming, or a playful, naughty paragraph that shows that she ought to have been writing comedies. Squeeze out some of the sappiness, leave out the gothic thrills and have the plot be about a missing dog or what-have-you, tidy up the results in editing and amp up the comedy, and you really could have had something. It’s almost a shame to waste a slow-moving, pleasure-seeking, well-intentioned Robert Audley on all this gloomy anguish and the edifying example of a man growing to have a purpose in life. It’s a pity that Sir Harry Towers was only there for a moment to harrumph and haw and feel pleased with himself, or that we didn’t see Mr Harcourt Talboys’ harsh narcissistic personality compromised. Miss Alicia, too, could have had a delightful comedy written all about her.

But no. Gloom and anguish it is, and horrors of madness and blackmail, and my lady punished cruelly with what, really, amounted to not being able to get divorce papers before remarrying and temporary insanity – at least until she tried to protect herself against accusations of the same.

I would not recommend this novel, unless you’re specifically curious about Victorian detective novels (or novels that could broadly fit that description), as I was. The predictability and the slow rhythm of the novel may very well be too much for any casual reader, and the virtues of it are few in comparison.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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Now, I know what you’re thinking, but William Shatner is funny. You can’t say he isn’t. Have you seen Boston Legal? Shatner reading Palin’s poetry on Conan O’Brian’s show? Yeah. I haven’t read his autobiographies, but I’m informed they are hilarious. Intentionally! So I started reading this book with fairly high expectations.

The story follows young Kirk and young Spock’s first adventure together, back when they were both teenagers in San Francisco, Spock staying at the Vulcan embassy and Kirk living with his brother doing who-knows-what for a living. The two brothers are on the lam from their father, who wants them back on the farm, while Spock is having raging fights with his father. Vulcan fights, of course, which means they politely voice doubts regarding the soundness of each other’s logic.

The way the book opens up can only be summed up as: fangirl-bait. It also makes it seem highly likely that J.J. Abrams, the director of the recent Star Trek reboot film, or the script-writers Robert Orci & co., have read this book. In Chapter 1, Kirk steals a car. In Chapter 2, Spock visits a strip joints. Few more chapters in and they’ve started a barfight and end up exchanging their names at the back of a police car. Oh and Spock has long flowing hair.

Now, my uncritical fangirl mind is full of glee. It’s like a smorgasbord of delight. More delights follow, though the mood is sort of brought down by constant flashblacks to the Tarsus IV massacre and, you know, piles of dead children. It turns out that the reason Kirk hates Starfleet (!) and is living a life of dubious morals in San Fran instead of working at the family farm is PTSD. The reason his brother Sam is doing the same is that he’s a symbol of human weakness on a greater scale than a hero like Kirk can be allowed to be – drug-addicted and bumbling, apparently unable to get off his ass to fix his life, depending on Kirk even for feeding the fish. For Kirk, the real story turns out to be getting back on his feet, so to speak, through adventure, heroics and joining the military. For Spock, it’s a process of liberating himself from a confined life of an ambassador’s son and his father’s stern influence via – well, adventure, heroics and joining the military. And crime. Let’s not forget the few dozen laws they break to get their way. But that’s just how these guys do it. (Sam manages it via fish, by the way.)

In the end, though, the novel failed to deliver its promise, even for a fangirl. I mean, I never went into it expecting high art. It’s a Star Trek novel, which can be all sorts of things, but which mostly boil down into sci-fi adventure. That’s what I got! There was something in the way it was written, in how little I took it seriously, that even the massacre seemed like light reading. It’s probably only so, though, because I never had to live through such atrocity in real life. It could have been awesome, entertaining, high-flying, legendary sort of sci-fi adventure, though, such as Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice was, but nope. It’s okay. We can’t all be LMB. It was a fairly entertaining novel, and kind of just worth it for the police car anecdote and the occasionally hilarious Vulcan/human interaction.

A few more observations:

- Kirk’s girlfriend Elissa is coded as uptight but a good person. The bad guy Griffyn’s two evil girlfriends, however, are coded as H-O-T-T. I’m just saying I notice.
- Elissa gets points for dumping Kirk’s ass by the end of the book.
- Surprisingly little homoerotic subtext, but maybe I was just hoping for more from the raging Kirk/Spock ‘shipper Shatner.
- Kirk reverses the “show some leg” trope by seducing one of the evil girlfriends. Oh Kirk.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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The show follows the crime-solving success story of Patrick Jane, former fake psychic, as he uses his amazing powers of observation and, well, guessing, to aid a California Bureau of Investigation unit lead by vague romantic interest Agent Lisbon. The other members of the team include Agents Van Pelt – the hungry rookie – and Rigsby – the temperamental he-man – who not-that-secretly long for each other, as well as the only non-white character in the regular cast, the stoic Agent Cho.

Jane’s drive to solve crimes results from his guilt over the death of his wife and child, who were killed by the serial killer Red John (not terribly original, I know – either the set-up or the killer’s name) after Jane belittled him on national television. This turned him from a money-grubbing fraud to an honest man with a mission.

Jane is one of the creepiest heroes I’ve come across in a while. On one hand his ability to feel or at least fake compassion and/or understand people who others dismiss as flakes or jerks is endearing; on the other hand his cool detachment in the face of suffering is creepy as all hell. He may have a fascinated smile on his face as he views the scene of a rape-murder. He also talks quite seriously about meaning to murder Red John at the earliest opportunity. But we like him, because he’s clever and he’s always right, except when it’s cute or funny for him not to be.

The rest of the cast, from what we can tell in one season of episodes mostly focused on the crime of the week, more resembles a stock set of characters, the only exception being Agent Kimball Cho. It’s typical for crime shows today to consist of two women, one black person, no Asians, and a bunch of white guys*. The Mentalist breaks the mold by having the standard non-white character be that elusive Asian. Aside from that fact, Cho is atypical in that he is the perfect stoic, with few quibbles and a perfectly expressionless face, and apparently no life outside of his work. Maybe it’s thanks to the actor Tim Kang, but he was my favourite character in a show with very little time spent on characterization outside that of the lead.

Since that’s the kind of a blog this is, let me list some of the first season’s diversity fail.

Religion

In the episode “Red Rum” the team investigates an apparently occult killing of a teenaged boy. The parents point an accusing finger at the local Witch, Tamzin Dove. Tamzin introduces herself as a Wiccan, and yet goes on to tell the agents how she put a killing curse on the dead boy. For the record: while some Witches may throw killing curses, Wiccans do not – on of their core beliefs is that every spell is returned upon the caster. And, of course, all the CBI agents agree with laughs and shakes of their heads that Tamzin is a whackjob. Very sensitive.

Towards the end of the episode, Jane takes – or pretends to take – Tamzin’s religion seriously for about a split second, thus wrangling some more facts out of her.

The sad thing is that this is probably the best depiction of Wiccans I’ve so far seen on TV.

Race

The worst incident of racefail was when a Lisbon and Rigsby go interview a bouncer in relation to the death of a man he disliked. “Do they call you Terence or Terry?” Lisbon asks. “They call me Mr Andrews,” says Terence Andrews, a black man, quoting In the Heat Of The Night. An altercation occurs, Lisbon tazes Andrews, and says “You okay, Mr Andrews?”

In other words, they took an iconic scene of a black person demanding to be treated with respect and then tazed the black person and mocked his uppity bravado. I have to put it down to the producer’s and director’s privilege-blindness that this ever even got in.

Another example would be in the episode “Red John’s Footsteps”, where an Asian small business manager gives Cho a picture of her niece, suggesting he consider her for marriage. This without ever having met Cho before. Because it’s funny how Asians arrange marriages, or something? I don’t know.

Disability

Also in the episode “Red John’s Footsteps”, which was the season finale, there was a blind woman living by herself. As with the issue of the Asian manager, I’m not really qualified to judge this representation, but I did notice that they repeated the “heightened senses” gag and made it sound as if blind people necessarily had a hard time finding lovers. I’d love to hear some thoughts on this; I just know I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it.

They also repeated the “heightened senses” gag in “Bloodshot”, where Jane loses his eyesight, leading to all sorts of blind jokes, and the fake-disability gag was used in the episode “Flame Red” where a man pretends to have a learning disability, and again in the episode “Miss Red”, where a con man pretends paraplegia to seem more trustworthy to a company. It’s news to me that disabled people apparently find it so much easier to find employment…

So what’s the verdict? Well, it’s an entertaining enough show. You don’t have to swallow a lot more bullshit than you do with pretty much all crime shows, but the bullshit is not non-existant. The main character’s psychology is interesting and could do with more exploring. There is Cho. Some episodes give you the satisfaction of figuring it out just as Jane does just by following visual clues. I failed to make an emotional connection with it, though, and that is really what is required for the full enjoyment of any show. If you manage that, you’ll love this show. If not, it’s still a good mostly mindless diversion.

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* This was first pointed out to me by Spacelogic, and it will never stop astonishing me how correct she was.

**~~~ (2/5)

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The plot: Seth Grahame-Smith adds to and occasionally re-writes Jane Austen’s classic to be about Regency Kung-Fu masters battling zombies as well as looking for love. Miss Elizabeth Bennet has her warrior’s honour besmirched by the rude Mr Darcy, but somehow events and the undead prevent her from killing him before he has proven himself worthy of her affection.

The judgement: I really wish this novel had been better, but it was mostly just a hilarious idea badly realised. Grahame-Smith’s self-confessed lack of talent doesn’t really excuse the fact that the “Oriental” influences were not sufficiently explored, the warrior’s code seemed haphazard, the characterisation was all over the place and, frankly, it was a bit boring.

If there was on touch of genius in Grahame-Smith’s additions, aside from the idea of re-writing Austen with zombies in the first place, it was in the handling of the infected Charlotte’s story. It was exactly the right amounts of funny, gross and tragic. Had the whole novel been like that, it would have been – excuse my Internet colloquialism – epic.

Still, as reasons to re-read Pride and Prejudice, this was not a bad one.

I’m now hoping to see fanfiction written for the zombified Austen universe that is much better than Seth Grahame-Smith’s original. The possibilities go far beyond what we saw here and I would love to see those possibilities explored further. And yes, I’ve already ordered Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

**½~~ (2.5/5)

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This short novel or novella concerns the adventures of a pirate crew, headed by a pirate captain, who have lost their ship in their previous adventure, which was with scientists. In a fit of macho bravado, the pirate captain decides to purchase the most expensive ship being offered by the fearsome Cutlass Liz, and so the crew now needs to find a fortune of 6,000 doubloons. Along the way they repeatedly run into the eccentric Captain Ahab, who is looking for his whale. The search takes them to many strange places, adventure, gambling and floor shows.

The plot presents issues related to both Neo-Marxist and Capitalist ideology and explores their relative approaches, as well as economic politics in general, with the other major conflict in the narrative seeing archetypes and social roles pitted against individual experience. The Pirates! In An Adventure With Whaling beautifully condenses the pirate adventure genre while crossing said genre over with other, incongruous genres and situations to create an absurdist alternate reality where all directions, including the one that goes through the fourth wall, are open to the characters, thus also challenging the reader to question the limits of accepted reality within a given emic sphere.

The pirates are on one hand driven by a monetary obligation wilfully entered into and enforced by show of strength – Cutlass Liz’s superior skills and network – which is comparable to Capitalist debt slavery, but are themselves pilferers and outlaws, by their profession driven to confiscate other people’s possessions without their say-so. This model of competitive society is tempered by the inherent humanity of the pirates. On the other hand, the apparently autocratic but essential elective model of pirate democracy can be applied also to post-Capitalist society.

The pirate captain represents not only the figure of the archetypal leader and the ideal of a pirate, but ideology itself, and also social conditioning, especially pointedly in the scene where he writes a list of occasions on which pirates are “allowed to cry”. This also works as a chilling image of government truncating human emotion.

None of the pirates have names. They are simply called by their position in the crew – the first mate, the pirate with a scarf, etc. Yet their humanity and individuality shows through the narrative, where they act for their own ends and from their own motivations, and not simply to fulfil said role. Even so they must defer to their autocratic alpha male leader, who has the best beard of them all, and has very little else to recommend him for his position – a scathing comment on the democratic election process or on the deification of leaders in certain Communist states? There is room for debate here.

Quite aside from the social commentary inherent in the plot itself, the “humoristic” or “stupid”* approach the novel takes on the art of fiction-writing itself works as a commentary on the nature of linguistic truth versus experienced reality.

For example, when the pirates sail into Las Vegas in search of the White Whale (which functions as a symbol of the elusive unseen enemy, the mythical villain upon whom blame for human misfortune is projected, ignoring any actual intricate causal chains), we’re told this impossible fact in one simple sentence. In the world of the novel, language has accomplished something that in experienced reality would require quite a feat of engineering. This is much in the spirit of the opening sequence of the remarkable film The Meaning of Life by Monty Python, in which corporate piracy is taken on by rebel accountants sailing the seas of finance in a captured office building. This linguistic trickery forces the reader to reflect on the duplicity of language and eventually to declare the world of the novel entirely fake. Some may experience this forcible disengaging of the suspension of disbelief as uncomfortable and alienating, while others experience it as “funny”.

I find the approach challenges the reader to reflect on the construction of stories and on fiction’s position between poetic expression and deceit. Language can never fully describe reality**, and on occasion associative expression can seem to capture reality*** in a more meaningful and nuanced way than language that strives to be scientifically accurate. But what happens if language is used with linguistic accuracy but in a manner that breaks all pretence of being tied to experienced reality, or when the narrative doesn’t even strive to communicate a genuine experience, save through subtle symbology? Then you get fiction like the Monty Python films, Lewis Carroll’s “nonsense” poetry or, alternatively, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Whaling.

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* Defoe’s own definition – see “Important Work I Am Doing Re: pie-Charts”.
**See, for example, Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler.
*** For a given value of reality – see for example Quantum Psychology by R.A. Wilson.

**~~~ (2/5)

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Note: Surprise Monday Romance Review Extravaganza Review #3.
These are all short reviews previously posted on GoodReads.com, re-written and expanded a little for our first random Review Extravaganza.

I gave up on the romance genre already before I picked up Ravished, but as this novel came specifically recommended, I decided to give it a chance.

The Smart Bitches talk about romance as a genre that can be “intelligent, savvy, feminist and fabulous”, and about how a large contingency of people don’t like the genre based on one book they read. I’m trying not to be in that contingency. I would love to love romances. I already read romantic fanfiction, for Chrissakes. Still, I can’t help the feeling that if a romance is actually good or actually the sort of novel I would enjoy, it wouldn’t be marketed as a romance novel in the first place; sort of like good movies aren’t marketed as romantic comedies even if they are comedies focused on a romance – well, unless they’re also British.

My current approach is to read only romance novels that have specifically been recommended to me. If even these don’t float my boat, I’ll at least know I gave it a fair try. For most genres, seven books is a fair try, wouldn’t you say?

Right.

I can see why Ravished was recommended. The heroine, Harriet, is rather delightful – a fossil-collector who talks a great deal and is used to having her way, who is not easily spooked and who looks past This Month’s Douchebag’s imposing exterior to the whatever underneath.

I love Harriet obsessing over her fossil tooth. I love Harriet geeking the hell out in a museum. I love Harriet giving a fellow collector the baleful eye when he questions her about the cave where she’s been excavating. I love the Fossils and Antiquities Society. All in all, if you take away everything in this book that isn’t about fossil collecting, you have a rather likeable short story, though not much of a plot.

The plot involves Harriet’s virtue being compromised by a big ol’ viscount dude who marries her to preserve her honour and in the process ends up convincing Society that he probably didn’t disgrace that other girl six years ago despite what everybody said. It’s rather dull, but it leads to a climax where Harriet hits a rapist over the head with a fossilized fish. So that’s something.

As for the few sex scenes: I like how much cunnilingus you get in romance novels, i.e., once per book in five out of seven books, in my experience, which is kind of a lot. The non-licky sex scenes in this novel were pretty simple, though, and surprisingly lacking in pain despite the rather fetishistically described size difference between the hero and the heroine (he, of course, is the bigger one).

There was entirely too much repetition. I don’t know how many times Harriet told people not to call Douchebag “the Beast of Blackthorne Hall” – I lost count around five. The villainy of the villain was so neatly nefarious that it absolved the hero of all wrong-doing in one fell swoop. It was all pretty stupid. I’m already forgetting the details. I don’t mind stupid, though. Many of my favourite novels are occasionally stupid. I do sort of expect them to be more entertaining and likeable, though.

I may have to go through the book and pick out the fossil collecting parts and collect them together somewhere for people like me. That would have pushed the novel well into the three-star range.