The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
My rating: 3/5 cats
zombies. kraken. pirates. automatons. marriage reform. nanotech. mongols. just another classic steampunk romance, right? or maybe not – this is my first one.
it was crazy – none of the other bodice rippers wanted to read the shapeshifter romance!! come on guys!! shapeshifters!!! romance!!! i am so curious about the mechanics of it, but i am not going to read one without the protective cloak of the rest of the rippers.
so -steampunk…
i mean, honestly, there wasn’t anything wrong with this book; it replicated a lot of the typical romance conventions and fell into the same booby-traps (which is totally not the right word, but i got to say “booby”) – two strong-willed people like this shouldn’t really spend this much time running away from each other, legitimate reasons or no. sex should not be this complicated. in this book, racial and gender issues were legitimate roadblocks, but between the two of them they had guns and money and a title and and self-confidence and an iron freaking skeleton – these two should not have anything standing in the way of whatever they want. these are the kind of people who tell other people the way things are going to be, not sheep people who are slaves to silly societal norms. i mean, i personally would not have put up with his sexual pushiness, but she seems okay with occasionally being pushed up against a wall and getting the physical equivalent of “you mean yes when you say no, right??” so to each his own.
but he is such a schizophrenic male lead. sometimes he is a calculating pushy rapist, sometimes he is all secret philanthropy and delicate treatment of the feelings of others. but who needs consistency? who reads to reconcile conflicting personality traits?? she’s got a burning knot, he’s got a hot ridge of flesh – these crazy kids were made to clench and twine and growl and clutch and rub!! we are in romance country, it doesn’t need to make sense or have any real-world applications!
and her – she can save kids from monsters but she can’t figure out how to get laid?? this world is kind of awesome; i would much rather have had the conflict be external (zombie, war, monsters) than internal “noooo don’t put your mouth on my vagina, it makes me too craaaaazy.” i mean, there is plenty of external conflict, i just think her sexual resistance was (while explained adequately) retarted and less interesting than zombies.
but the rest of it was pretty fun. i should probably read more fantasy, so i can get those muscles honed, because it took me more time than i care to admit to get myself situated in this world. i had to go back and reread several pages over and over, and it wasn’t her fault, it was me – there were so many details that i had trouble cementing them in this here swiss-cheese brain.
so, for a bodice ripper read, it was better than most.
i like reading things i would never read otherwise – it makes me (a) broad.
