Sherry Thomas

• Rated 4 stars

“Dear Ms. Sharpe,

Brace yourself. I’m going to French-kiss you—I’m talking about serious, messy, slobbering tonguing—and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop at just that.

I’ve railed on my blog that although romance is largely a genre by women for women, there is a lack of memorable heroines that almost rivals that of Hollywood action flicks. This is, of course, one picky woman’s opinion. But I don’t think I’m at all alone in it. Romance, in its current state, is men-centered, full of matches between larger-than-life heroes and very nice but no-more-than-life-size heroines.

While I can enjoy that match-up as well as anyone, being a very nice, no-more-than-life-sized suburban soccer mom in real life, I’ve come to realize that deep in my heart, I don’t want to be a good girl and never have. My fantasy is to be the baddest motherfucking woman that ever lived, like Queen Elizabeth I, a woman who wields tremendous power with ease and surety and harshness when necessary, and who yet is respected, admired, and even loved. And if QE1 had had a worthy man to warm her bed nightly, why then, the fantasy would be complete.

You write my fantasies–my complete fantasies.

There is no other way to put it. I don’t know how you do it. It is as if you heard all the vague moaning and rattling in my head, laughed, and said “No, sweetie, pie, this is what you fucking want.”

And like the limp and sore but oh-so-happy heroine in a ménage story who’d just experienced the man-sandwich for the very first time, all I can say is, “Fuck me again, Bettie.”

Oh, I guess readers would want a synopsis or two here. This is Bettie’s own introduction to Ember.

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.

Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.

Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.

ember_cover_small.jpgEmber is Tanith Lee on acid. It’s the bestest, baddest take on the Cinderella story and turns every last familiar element on its head with a “Ha!” and a fuck-you. One of my favorite such moments happens at the meeting of Ember and the Stepmother.

She paused when she saw me, and I couldn’t blame her. I knew what I looked like—my cold expression, my red hair and freckled skin, my angry black eyes smoldering like hot coals. Her eyes flicked to the torches flanking our door, noting, I am sure, the way the flames yearned toward me though the wind urged them in the opposite direction.

Her face tightened beneath its façade of paint. Her white-powdered hand wavered on the verge of greeting me. In that moment, she realized my father’s tales of an innocent, biddable daughter were spun from the same wishful imagination that had let him believe her to be a noblewoman, and to believe the two hard-eyed whores (scarcely a decade her junior) who peered out of the carriage behind her were her daughters.

“Step-mamá!” I greeted her, taking her shoulders and kissing her powdered cheeks.

My lips came away white with a mixture of lead and lard, but it was worth it for the expression of surprise that crossed her face. When my father wasn’t looking, I wiped my mouth on the cuff of my velvet sleeve.

And it gets even better when the Stepmother and the Stepsisters, frightened of Ember’s power, tells her they would leave.

“Leave?” I said. “But my father needs a wife. The Old Wives say sheep dogs are descended from wolves, and the best thief takers were once thieves, themselves. You know how gullible my father can be, for you gulled him. Who better to look after him than one who knows his weaknesses?”

My new stepmother opened her mouth to protest, but the fire flared in anger at her interruption. She snapped her jaw closed and let me speak.

“Sylvia’s potion must be made and taken by the month. The price of my help, dear Stepmother, is that you stay.”

“But I saw your sour face at the sight of us. You don’t like courtesans.”

I laughed and every flame in the room danced with joy at the sound of it. “You mistake me, Sister. Whores are the better part of my business. A witch who shuns the custom of whores and courtesans will be a pauper. No. I dislike liars and cheats. I dislike deceivers and dissemblers.

“Now that the air is clear between us, I like you just fine. My father needs a wife, and as long as you care for him and do not cuckold him with other men, we shall get along as well as he imagined.”

As I had predicted, we got along quite well.

Ember is a witch, not a nice one, but a true one, with a fundamental sense of fairness you could only hope that anyone wielding a large amount of power would possess. She is what she is, she loves as she is, and her love is as full of flaws and fascinating and dangerous as herself. She is, without a doubt, one of the best heroines (protagonists) I’ve ever read, anywhere. And the prince, he is every asshole Prince Charming you’ve ever wanted to bring to heel, and then some. And he comes to heel in the most satisfying way here.

And by the way, Ember is a free story. It was first serialized at Bam’s blog. And now available to be read online or downloaded in pdf at your website. How can anyone beat that?. An A+, for the orgasmic reading experience it was.

571.jpgLike a Thief in the Night is not free, but that’s fine. I was very happy to pay my $3.50 ($3.15 in fact) for it, so as not have to go through ten long weeks, counting down the days till the next Thursday to read the next installment.

The blurb:

She’s a heartless assassin; he’s an immortal thief. In another life, they would have been lovers. In this one, he’s her target and she’s his prize.

Somebody would have a fit reading this story. It’s sex, violence, more sex, more violence, even more sex, and even more violence. And such language as would have fainted an entire population of Victorian ladies and exhausted the world’s supply of smelling salt. In Ember, the word “cunt” was thrown about like firecrackers at Chinese New Year. In Thief, you even used the word “twat”. I believe I choked on my dinner at that and read on with even greater glee.

I love that Arden is a heartless assassin, truly a bad, bad, bad girl–and omg she likes sex too, looks for it, in fact, when she’s not killing. And I love that she’s finally come up against a man she can’t kill. And he’s caught her and is holding her in a super-secret, super-inescapable location. Mandatory sex, anyone?

I love the way Arden sees herself.

And how screwed up was she to check out the man who had stripped her naked and tied her to a chair in his basement? The answer to that question was all too obvious. She killed people for a living; she was a very sick girl. She would just have to add this newfound taste for high-stake bondage to her already long list of kinks.

And does she have kinks ever. Let me just say that though I’m not such an innocent girl at heart, this story had a good several “Holy shit!” moments for me, as in “I can’t fucking believe Bettie Sharpe wrote that”—but in a good way, cuz I am obviously developing a taste for kink and sick and all that good shit.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s a pretty decent love story too?

Is it perfect? No. I would have liked for you to have explored the relationship more at length. And I thought the SF/fantasy aspects were slightly pat, in the sense that they made things too easy for our protagonists at certain points. But perfection is such a pale, silly standard before the force and vitality of your writing. A-

Your talent burns like a star gone supernova. I love your lean, potent prose. I love your bad-to-the-core and yet still-worth-loving characters. And I love your take-no-prisoner voice.

And I love how I feel when I read you: like someone finally understands me, understands the rotten, crazy, bad, bad, bad girl that I am at heart and loves me all the same. The. Best. Fantasy. EVA!

And because I love it so, and because you first instilled the idea of pay-it-forward in me, I’m going to buy three more copies of Like a Thief in the Night and give them away to three commenters to this post. Jane’s Note: I liked this book too and would be willing to chip in 3 more books

Let the fun begin. And I look forward to a long, and illustrious career from you, young lady.

Sincerely,

Sherry Thomas

P.S. And I just love that my spellchecker had no suggestions to offer when it came to the word “motherfucking”.

Note: This 2008 review first appeared at DearAuthor.com”

Sherry Thomas wrote this review Friday, July 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Let me state that it is difficult to summarize Black Silk without doing it an injustice, because this book, this story, these characters and their interpersonal relations are so unusual, so remarkable, and so complex that the whole is near nigh irreducible. I mean, is it possible to admire the Mona Lisa a square inch at a time?

Reading Black Silk is like going to a five-star restaurant for the first time. You fidget a little in your chair, admire the ambience and the elegant waiters doing their nightly ballet. The kitchen is taking its time. A little plate of nibbles arrives, compliment of the chef. You munch, you ooh and aah. It's fabulous. But it's only a little plate. You wonder a little anxiously whether the rest of what is to come can measure up. And then the appetizers arrive - and then the first course. You half-swoon. Then comes the entree and you can hardly comprehend how you came to be in such heaven. Then the dessert which ends your experience with a bang (well, almost literally in this case, if I may be pardoned for a little risqué pun). You cannot believe the evening is over since you wanted it to go on and on and on.

Pardon the gustatory analogy, which in this case is apt. Judy Cuevas is a master of sensual description. Her writing has flavor, succulence and substance. It has that indescribable something that can only be called literary "fat", a quality that makes her particular confection of words deliciously tangible.

But her talent goes far beyond mere linguistic sumptuousness. Ms. Cuevas creates memorable characters. Graham Wessit, the hero of Black Silk, could probably be labeled a bad boy, a Victorian bad boy if you will. But unlike so many other romance novel bad boys who seem to copulate their way from one end of the country to the other and in doing so, generate nothing but good-willed envy from all men and trembling desire in all women, Graham has troubles. He is the defendant in a false paternity suit. His current mistress is thinking of divorcing her husband to marry him - a big scandalous deal in 1858. And on top of it, there is a popular newspaper serial that has its root material in the deeds, mistakes, and peccadilloes of his life, all exaggerated and ridiculed for the entertainment of the masses. Lest we forget, those were far more puritanical times. Even men paid for their transgressions.

Submit Channing-Downes is a virtuous widow, still in mourning, clothed in black - hence the title - for almost the entirety of the book. Her late, much older husband Henry had been Graham's cousin and one-time guardian. Submit loved and still loves Henry. Graham despised and still despises Henry. From their vastly different experiences with Henry and their intertwined present predicament, (thanks to a nasty posthumous bequest from Henry to Graham) arises what surely must be the most intriguing triangle of human relations in romancedom.

Graham is indolent and indulgent, but as the story unfolds, we see his honesty, kindness, and sincerity. He is also vital, exciting, and young at heart. Submit is equally complex. She is intelligent, thoughtful, and serious. And it is Ms. Cuevas' great accomplishment that this woman of true gravitas is also endowed with a subtle yet potent carnal allure. The two of them are a wonderful match because she needs his energy and vigor and he needs to be anchored by her rationality and cool-headedness.

The late Henry, of course, was one of a kind. Read and marvel. This book is perhaps not to everyone's taste. I'll admit, it took me a while to get hooked. Black Silk is not exactly a comfort read, and does not offer instant gratification, meaning, no kisses until half-way through, and no hero/heroine love scene until the last fifty pages or so. But those readers who stick with it will be richly, splendidly rewarded. And that is a promise.

Note: I wrote this in 2002 as a reader-submitted Desert Isle Keeper review for All About Romance. Juey Cuevas, of course, is none other than Judith Ivory.”

Sherry Thomas wrote this review Friday, July 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“Beast by Judith Ivory is one of my two all-time favorite romance books and also simply one of the best books I have ever read. When I read books or watch movies, afterwards I have a certain feel for them, a textural sensation. Beast has left me with one of the richest, most voluptuous "feels" ever.
The story is set around the turn of the 20th century. The first half of the book takes place on the ocean liner Concordia; the second half takes place in Provence, France.
The plot is fairly simple. It combines an unknown lover theme with a beauty-and-beast theme. Louise Vandermeer is an heiress and beautiful beyond mere mortal imagination. Her fiancé, Charles Harcourt, is sophisticated, successful, and well-admired, the perfect man if you will, except for a couple of unfortunate defects. He is blind in one eye from a childhood ailment. That eye is further distorted by a scar. He also has a bad knee and limps a bit when the weather is unfavorable. In other words, he is not pretty.
Louise agreed to marry Charles sight unseen because she wanted the freedom of a married woman. While she is on the Concordia traveling to Nice for the wedding, Charles, unbeknownst to her, happens to be on the same ship. He seduces her in complete darkness. But the prank backfires. Charles falls hard for Louise, but she is in love only with her shipboard lover, unaware that it was Charles Harcourt all along.
One of the reasons I love this book is because of its characters. One doesn't see a heroine like Louise everyday. In fact, I've never read another one like her. She is not what one would label immediately sympathetic. She is eighteen, raised in the lap of luxury, more beautiful than Helen of Troy, completely aware of her power over the opposite sex, bored with her life, and annoyed with her parents and relatives.
Sounds like somebody you and I could detest? But Judith Ivory made her so much more than a spoiled darling. Louise is excruciatingly intelligent. I can hardly think of any heroine from any other book who is sharper or more observant. As a result, Louise is painfully aware of how circumscribed her life is, both by her wealth and her beauty. People are struck dumb by her looks. They have no idea who the real Louise Vandermeer truly is or wants to be. She adroitly fends off open-mouthed admiration from men and jealousy from women while longing to be someone kinder, wiser, someone more open, someone who was in fact, the real Louise Vandermeer.
You don't have to be beautiful. You only need to have been eighteen, confused, aimless, misunderstood and feeling like an outsider to sympathize with Louise.
Charles Harcourt, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is also a victim of his appearance. With him, Ivory has succeeded in creating a man who pays a great deal of attention to and agonizes over his looks, yet who is never diminished by this seemingly less-than-manly concern. Charles is mature, understanding, generous, and open-minded. He is the person with whom Louise could be completely open. And while he is awed and flabbergasted and flustered by her beauty, we are never in doubt of what he really fell in love with: her strength, her perspicacity, her desire to improve herself, and the force of her will.
Louise, to her great credit, realizes and admires the less-than-sightly Charles for all his wonderful qualities. In time, she falls in love with this Charles and we know they've both found the one person they needed.
As if such complex, human, flesh-and-blood characters aren't enough, Ms. Ivory wows me with her exquisite command of language. There is something inimitable about her writing. (I know - I've tried and failed.) Not only do lovely similes, metaphors, adjectives, and adverbs cascade freely from her pen without ever degenerating into verbosity, she writes with an energy, an enthusiasm - almost a glee - that I have not seen anywhere else except perhaps in Isabel Allende's book Aphrodite.
Her writing is tactile, visual, olfactory, gustatory. When she describes pearls, you feel their cool smooth roundness. When she describes food, you are hungry. And when she describes scenery, by God, you are there. Provence comes alive in her pen just as it does in Peter Mayle's books.
And when she writes a love scene, you need a cold shower.
Sometimes after reading a romance, one sighs and is satisfied. I was not only satisfied, I was astounded by Beast. Judith Ivory is one of the best writers writing today, period. And Beast, in my opinion is Judith Ivory at her best.

Note: I wrote this back in 2002 as a reader-submitted Desert Isle Keeper review for All About Romance. ”

Sherry Thomas wrote this review Friday, July 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )