People in the romance community keep trying to shame people from using terms like "guilty pleasure," but there is literally no other way to describe the entertainment I get from books like old skool Sandra Brown, where I know that they're problematic and it's embarrassing to talk about them, but I still shell out coin for them, anyway.
The thing is, nobody writes sleazy-hot alpha dudes like Sandra Brown. Her leading men are a little like Linda Howard's, but way more gamma, which I prefer, because I stan an intelligent man with dubious morals (*whispers* IN FICTION). Nowadays, Brown mostly writes romantic suspense that's heavy on the suspense and light on the romance, but back in the day, she wrote these pretty hardcore villain romances.
HAWK O' TOOLE'S HOSTAGE is about a woman named Miranda who is on a train tour with her son when it gets hijacked by "bandits." At first they think it's part of the entertainment, but it turns out the bandits are real, and when they start to make off with her six-year-old son, she basically throws herself after them and makes herself such a nuisance that they take her too, as one does.
It turns out that the "bandits" are a bunch of angry Native Americans who plan on using the son, Scott, as a hostage to appeal to his father's mercy. His father is a bigwig politician and they think he can be pressured into reopening a silver mine that they depend on as part of their tribe's income, but was closed as a tax write-off by the greedy people who swindled the land from their grandparents. Hawk is a Native man of Irish ancestry who resents his "Anglo" heritage almost as much as he resents the heroine for traipsing in like a tall drink of water that he wouldn't mind chugging like a man dying of thirst in the desert.
This actually really reminds me of this other Native romance she wrote under her Erin St. Clair penname, called HONOR BOUND, from the captivity theme to the half-Native hero, to the annoying kid. This is a much better book, though. I found HONOR BOUND uncomfortable and offensive. This one was a little squirmy and definitely hit a lot of negative stereotypes about Native people, but here, I felt like the author was kind of trying to be respectful, whereas with HB, it was like she was veering well out of her lane as an author while screaming "YOLO!" with her hands off the wheel.
Hawk was hot and the sexual tension was off the charts. I can definitely see why this hasn't been rereleased for Kindle, though. It probably wouldn't get published today without some major revisions.
Sandra Brown is one of my go-tos when I'm in the mood for alpha heroes and this book was on a list for villain love interests, so obviously it took me about 2.5 seconds to be all over that like green on grass. At first, it was a pretty decent read. The hero, Lucas Greywolf, is a half-Native American man who has escaped from prison to say goodbye to his dying grandson. We learn later that he was wrongfully imprisoned at a protest because he wouldn't narc on anyone. He's not completely Mr. Nice Guy-ish, though; case in point, he takes the heroine, Aislinn, hostage to ensure his own means to an end.
The first half of this book was a three star read. It kind of had an Anne Stuart vibe to it and I liked the gamma hero, who was, admittedly, hot. Aislinn was annoying but at least she made a pretty bold (if ill-thought-out) attempt at escape, and had realistic-ish reactions given her circumstances. I didn't need to be reminded of the ethnicities of both characters 50,000 times, but okay, go off.
The second half of this book is where it takes a nose-dive for me. I didn't realize that this was going to be a secret baby romance when I bought the book, which is probably one of my least favorite romance tropes out there. The second half is where all the un-PC stuff starts to get really yikes, too. Modern readers aren't going to like that the NA hero is repeatedly compared to animals and at one point is described as "primitive." Their marriage is also a big screaming case of "man, should these two people ever NOT be together!" See you at the divorce court in 5 years. Sadly, the secondary romance between Lucas's mother, Alice, and the doctor, Gene Dexter, were probably the best part of Act II.
I keep trying to get into Sandra Brown's books but something about them always ends up putting me off. The only book I've really enjoyed of hers is SLOW HEAT IN HEAVEN (which I really need to find in paperback again). Hopefully one day I find another book of hers that strikes that happy medium between alpha jerk and sexy escapist romance, but this wasn't it.
I tried really hard to love this one. I liked that the author included a Native American character who wasn't a blatant stereotype. I also liked the headstrong heroine. This was a buddy-read with my friend, Heather, and I think we both lost interest around the same place because for some reason the hero became a huge jerk as soon as he met the heroine. I don't mind jerk heroes but it has to make sense for the character, and I just don't see why the heroine galled the hero to the point to turn him into a total cad. She committed micoaggressions against him, yeah, but so did his other lovers, so I didn't understand why he signaled her out. Parris Afton Bonds did the same thing with one of her books, LAVENDER BLUE. It was more than a little jarring.
I don't think this book is bad but this is my third time DNF-ing this book and I'm finally throwing in the towel. So far, nothing of hers has captured me the way her Russian/Kuzan series has. I'm hoping her St. John-Duras series can deliver on that same magic for me.
Rosanne Bittner is known for her Western romances, so I was excited to find a copy of ARIZONA ECSTASY, which has one of the most cheesetastic titles I've seen on one of these. CALIFORNIA CARESS (which, being from California, I one day hope to own) places a close second. Also-- that cover! I am obsessed with that cover. Zebra bodice-rippers, if you can find them, always seemed to have the best covers. (I believe this one is from the Lovegram collection.)
The hero of this book is Chaco, who is half-Native, half-White (this being the 80s, he and his people are referred to repeatedly, and incorrectly, as "Indians"). The heroine is a blonde White woman who, according to the summary on the back, is kidnapped by him after he raids their wagon and kills her mother. Cool...
ARIZONA ECSTASY tries, with mixed success, to be more sensitive to Native people. After a brief snapshot of the present, where Lisa, the heroine, is already in love with him, we go back to the past and learn about Chaco's POV and why he dislikes White people so much. The book gets points for being pretty blunt about how Native people were screwed over and kicked off their land by White people, and for Chaco it's even more personal, because his Native father loved his White mother, only to have her end up with a White man and be disgraced and dishonored in a duel that ended up with his own willing death, which White people then mocked and celebrated, since they felt "victimized" by the Apache raids on their own land.
I think the book has two major flaws: one, the writing-- it's not written very engagingly, and the characters don't really feel fleshed out. It's hard to explain how some books don't grab you while others do, but the writing of this one just felt very bland and basic, and I wasn't all that into it. Second, and perhaps the one that will probably keep more people from reading this, is that it shares a problem that a lot of Native romances have-- it has a very dated, simplistic view on a complex culture, and doesn't really divert from the usual stereotypes. Sometimes, a book can be so unapologetically, WTFistically (yes, that is a word) un-PC that it's almost fascinating and entertaining to watch, but when you get the sense that a book is trying-- and failing-- to be respectful, it becomes painful and unpleasant and incredibly uncomfortable.
I've tried reading a couple Native American romances and disliked almost all of them, partially because of the offensive stereotypes and partially because none of them were written all that well. In my review of FIRST LOVE, WILD LOVE, which is the only Native romance to date that I actually did enjoy, because it was well-written and didn't resort to the usual tropes, I delve a little deeper into some of the problematic themes that plague Native romances as a group, and how that ties into how we, as a country (if you live in the U.S.), seem to feel way too comfortably appropriating Native culture to this day.
Published in 1989, this may well be a product of its time, but unlike some of these bodice-rippers, it doesn't age all that well and I'd be comfortable with it staying in those times.
The summary of this book tells you exactly what you're getting into. I've talked before about how I don't really gravitate towards Native American romances because they tend to be inherently problematic in a way that's hard to stomach. Especially the ones that have "Savage" in the title.
SAVAGE FLAME starts off with a bang as Rebecca and this one guy are casing out their ranch, and then there's a raid and the guy gets scalped and Rebecca gets abducted and almost raped. She's saved from her rape by Black Bear by Lone Wolf, who is about to take her home, until Rebecca opens her Karen-ass mouth and starts talking about how she's going to sic the U.S. Navy on him and all his people. Obviously, being a sane dude, he's like, better not take her home then. Cut to him making her his wife in every sense of the word, with the incentive of some oral sex.
I did not like the writing in this book at all. Sometimes I love purple prose but this is an ultraviolet too intense for me. I also feel like the book was pretty heavily implying that Lone Wolf was biracial (with his gray eyes and English language skills), which is something else I've talked about in other Native American romances and sheik romances, because the implication in these books is always that their whiteness somehow makes them better, smarter, and more attractive than their non-White peers. And that's just a really tough message to swallow, even within the context of historical fiction. I've seen maybe one book that went with that and pulled it off because it was a deconstruction of racism and colonialism as a whole (JADE by Pat Barr), but this book was a no.
I keep making the joke that it's a shame that TOPAZ was never published by Topaz publishing. Imagine having a copy of TOPAZ with the Topaz Man on the spine! #goals This is Beverly Jenkins's second novel, and while it does show in the sense that it isn't as streamlined as some of her later books, I think it's an incredibly polished sophomore effort.
The book is about Kate, who works for a newspaper and has been courting a man who has been scamming Black people with fraudulent train certificates for a railroad that never came to fruition (think of that Monorail episode from The Simpsons-- that's Rupert). However, it all goes pear-shaped and Rupert doesn't take kindly to being heartbroken or cheated. He has sinister plans for Kate. Very sinister indeed.
Dix Wildhorse is a Black Seminole marshal from the Indian Territories in Oklahoma. In tracking down Kate's father, the con artist Bart Love, he ends up "promised" to Kate, and also acts as her rescuer. The two of them roadtrip it to Oklahoma via wagon, where Kate receives a rather cold reception from the women who see her as competition for Bart.
There are some things I LOVED about Topaz. The beginning was great, high stakes and full of danger. I also liked how they both had topaz jewelry that had been handed down through their families, which kind of made them feel like soulmates. There's also a moment in the book that's an homage to Lysistrata, although it put me off a bit that on the next page, the characters are like, "Hey this is just like Lysistrata." Like, I KNOW. LET ME FIGURE THAT OUT FOR MYSELF. Also, I stan a tall heroine. There are so many petite heroines in the romance genre; it's great to have a tall Amazon of a heroine.
Here's what I didn't like as much. Dix is one of Jenkins's pushier heroes. He reminded me a lot of Raimond, one of the author's other early heroes. There's also a lot of OW drama and for a while, the hero keeps the OW on working as his housekeeper, while the heroine is there. He also said he wouldn't have married her if she wasn't a virgin, and even though that's period-appropriate, it didn't make me love him at all. The sex scenes, as a result, sometimes lacked chemistry, and they were definitely a little cheesily written. I love how they were solely focused on female pleasure, however, and Jenkins is not at all shy about writing from the female gaze, which I liked, but I could do without the honey-filled gates.
Despite the uneven pacing and a few issues I had with the writing style, I enjoyed this book. Beverly Jenkins's books center Black history first and foremost, and it's so fun learning about all of these various historical events from that perspective. Not only are her books fun; they're educational, too. I don't always recommend reading the author's notes after a book, but you should definitely read hers.
Wow, there's a lot going on in this cover. From the Lisa Frank color palette, to the fact that the K in "Baker" looks like an accent mark, to the Escherian contortions of the H and the h that seem to be more and more physically impossible the more you stare at them (what the heck is going on with her neck?), it's classic 80s WTFery.
FIRST LOVE, WILD LOVE by Madeline Baker (not to be confused with FIRST LOVE WILD LOVE by Janelle Taylor) is one of those Native American historical romances that peaked in popularity in the 80s before mostly disappearing from the shelves. With good reason. I feel like Native American cultural appropriation is somewhat more accepted by society for whatever reason (I mean, you can still get "Native American" costumes during Halloween from another of stores and don't even get me started on music festivals), and romance novels featuring Native American heroes are sadly no exception.
From my experience, they tend to resort to either one of two tropes:
The noble and violent "savage" (and yes, these romances often have the word "Savage" in the title, as a "clever" play on words). A famous example of this is SAVAGE ECSTASY by Janelle Taylor (yes the same Janelle Taylor who authored that other FIRST LOVE WILD LOVE book - ooh the plot thickens). Gray Eagle, the hero, is pretty brutal, and kidnaps and rapes the heroine, before torturing a bunch of the white dudes he captures along with her - all in the name of revenge.
There's also the "half-breed" trope (and yes, they are often referred to as half-breeds in the summary and yes, they often have the word "Savage" in their titles as well). Now, to be clear, I want to say that I have no problem at all with interracial marriage or biracial characters. The problem stems from the fact that in these cases, the "half-breed" characters are touted as being somehow superior to the rest of their non-white people because of their whiteness. I touch upon why this is harmful in more detail in my review of E.M. Hull's THE SHEIK, but a NA romance that does this as well is CHEYENNE CAPTIVE, where the half-white hero is, of course, much more civilized. Gross.
FIRST LOVE, WILD LOVE gets bonus points from the get-go for not having the word "Savage" in the title. The hero is also fully Native, and I felt like the author actually made an effort to portray the culture in a respectful way (I don't know enough about the culture to tell you with any authority whether the things in here are offensive or accurate or not). There are no crazy torture scenes or rape plots. Their first time is consensual. The other Native people are suspicious of her at first but don't treat her badly and ultimately welcome her in. There's Native OW drama, but unlike Gray Dove in CHEYENNE CAPTIVE, Soft Wind doesn't try to sell the heroine in this book out to be raped.
The plot is pretty simple. Brianna sees a Native guy on a road gang and thinks he's hot. She ultimately ends up falling for him and helping him escape. The bounce back between living with other Native Americans and living with white settlers, and each of them have moments where they experience culture shock and try to overcome it for the sake of their love. There's occasional cameos of OTT WTFery but all of these WTF acts are committed by outside parties, and not the hero.
I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised by FIRST LOVE, WILD LOVE and would be interested in checking out some of this author's other books. It's only $2.99 now if you want to give it a try yourself.
Also, many thanks to Gaufre, Karlyflower, Korey, and Maraya for participating in this big buddy read with me! Sorry for racing ahead!
Native American romances were super popular in the 80s for some reason, and up until *peers at shelves* last year, I had never read one before... which is partially the reason behind why I "tricked" my entire romance reading group into reading the Native American bodice ripper, SAVAGE ECSTASY. The title ought to clue you into how this little gem rates on the PC scale.
I got CHEYENNE CAPTIVE when it was free for Kindle. The reviews on Goodreads were mostly positive. "Why not?" I figured. As one of my friends pointed out on my status updates, at least the word "savage" was nowhere to be found in the title. That, at least, should have been a good sign. Right? ...right?!
Let me show you the literal first line of the book:
Summer Priscilla Van Schuyler had never given a thought to the possibility of being raped and murdered by a band of renegade-Indians (1%).
I see your ha and raise you a ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha.
CHEYENNE CAPTIVE is one of the worst romances I have had the pleasure of reading in a while. It is the type of book people who don't read romance novels use to make fun of the romance novel genre as a whole because this book (or one like it) is the one they flipped through out of curiosity that one time as a child when they found the book sitting on their mother's coffee table. It is so terrible that it is almost good because it takes irony to the very heights of soaring ecstasy.
***WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW***
The plot is simple. Summer "Do you know who I am?" Schuyler is the daughter of a rich man who ends up being taken captive by Native Americans. The one who catches her, Angry Wolf, taunts her with rape, followed by gang-bangs and then fire torture, when one of his tribesmen shows up and quickly puts a stop to that. Her savior is Iron Knife, one of those cringe-worthy "half-breeds," who is portrayed as being superior to the other NAs simply because he's half-white.
Iron Knife does not rape Summer, but he does end up taking her as a slave, and she lives in his cabin and looks pretty and sad and sickly, because she has an infected wound on her arm that he must heal. She ends up going into a fever from it, and when she awakes, suddenly Iron Knife is the greatest and the two of them go from being captor and captive to I love you pookykins, no, I love you, pookykins rather sickeningly quickly as the reader is treated to a medley of sex scenes like these:
"Little One, I am built very big! You are a virgin-"
"I'm YOUR virgin!" she breathed against his lips.
"But I have promised you will never be hurt again!" he protested.
"Hurt me!" she begged as she kissed him deeply. "Hurt me as I want to be hurt!" (15%)
And then her need was so great she could think of nothing else but plunging her tongue deep in his sucking mouth, grinding her body down on the pulsating dagger that impaled her womanhood (23%).
She felt him forcing her thighs even further apart and she forgot about everything but the sensation of the blade of his warm tongue sliding home in her scabbard (33%).
She felt as though she were impaled on a hot, fiery sword (59%).
She surrendered to her ecstasy and began a dream ride at dizzying speed across Ekutsihimmiyo, the Milky Way. Nothing could be better than this peak of passion they were approaching together (96%).
It is tedious and repetitive. Most of the 80s romances I've read don't have explicit sex scenes. Georgina Gentry says tah-tah to that, and the hero and heroine engage in all sorts of "risque" behavior like oral sex (he reciprocates, she's a blow-job goddess); role-play (that is literally where the title comes in; he is the "master" and she is his "Cheyenne captive"); and cowgirl ("Ride your stallion!" the hero cries at one point; plot-twist, he's not talking about his horse).
The saving grace of this book is the scheming bad guys. Angry Wolf was pretty stock, as far as bad guys go, and was dispensed with quickly without a whole lot of development (although he does threaten to rape the heroine and then cover her with honey so she'll be eaten by fire ants). The real stars of the show were Jake Dallinger and Gray Dove.
I just read this great bodice ripper by Amanda York/Joan Dial called BELOVED ENEMY and it also featured a real lame-o heroine, who was made even more lame in comparison when compared with the amazingly beautiful and cunning other woman, Indigo. (I think it's also interesting that both OWs are women of color and very much in tune with their sexuality, as opposed to their virginal blonde opposites.) That's how I felt about Gray Dove.
Gray Dove is from a neighboring tribe called the Arapho and she is brutal. She sacrificed her baby brother and tortured her mom at the behest of their murderers, because she was desperate to survive, and then lets them rape her to stall for time before killing them. When she gets pregnant, she gives herself an abortion with a "rusty wire" (*cries*) & sleeps with the husband of the woman who took her in, only to leave them both by destroying all their belongings as she leaves on a rolling carpet of give-no-f*cks. She then betrays her own people and starts a war that results in many of them getting disfigured or killed - all to get back at Summer and keep Iron Wolf to herself. She sells Summer out to Angry Wolf, prostitutes herself - literally and figuratively - without a thought, and ends the book as the madam of a profitable whore-house by rebranding herself as fallen Spanish nobility.
Jake is even more messed up. He's actually tied with Iron Knife, because he had a thing for Iron Knife's white mother, Texanna. When she came back to her village a fallen woman with two mixed-race children, he tried to first proposition her and then rape her. He's the reason that Iron Knife had whip scars, because Jake's prostitute of choice slept with Iron Knife when he was like fourteen, then accused him of rape, and Jake killed her in his anger and then pinned the murder on Iron Knife.
He has some of the best lines in this book:
Yes, he would have her at least once and then she'd change her mind once he'd put a baby in her belly and take him as her protector. That was how his pa had gotten his mama. Next year, that could be Jake's baby in that cradle, his son sharing those full, swollen breasts with his daddy (62%).
"Missy," he whispered. "You just barely missed gettin' ole Jake's big rod rammed right down your little musket barrel" (62%).
"Hell, if you had as many pricks stickin' out of you as have been stuck in you, you'd look like a west Texas cactus" (82%).
There's so much more wtfery I could share, like the cat-fight, the whip fight, the gelding scene, the sociopathic younger sister line that goes nowhere, the tragic story of Texanna and War Bonnet, and the typos that get more and more abundant as the book goes on (as if the person reformatting it was getting so bored that they were just like, F it), including one where the "fierce braves raced to count coupon" (48%) instead of coup - because dammit, times are tough and groceries are expensive!
Oh - and let's not forget the rapey Spanish guy who kept repeating "Comprende?" and "Si" and "hombre" like that guy in your Spanish 1 class who missed every day but exam day and thought he could bluff his way out of it. Dude was just a phrase away from saying "bad hombres."
"You got too much spirit, puta whore! El Lobo likes his women docile as sheep. You need the fight taken out of you and I'm just the hombre to do it!" (36%)
I know what you're asking yourself. Is this a bodice ripper? (Well, okay, that's probably question #2 or #3. Right now, you're probably asking yourself: WTF???) I would say that this isn't a bodice ripper because the hero is actually very kind, and all the insane stuff comes at the expensive of the many villains who surface repeatedly to threaten the heroine with rape and the hero with bodily injury. The last third of the book is much better than the first 2/3 because that's when the author randomly decides to go into Gray Dove's and Jake Dallinger's backstories, so we can see them for the incredibly awful (but surprisingly complex) people that they really are, as well as getting more insight into the tragic and doomed love story of the hero's own parents, which I thought was really well done.
I originally thought that there was no way I could give this book anything more than one star... but now that I think about it, I feel like the last act of the book turned this book from boring-bad to wtf-bad. Both are bad, but one is vastly more entertaining than the other and offers up many interesting possibilities for self-amusement and satire. Would I recommend reading this as a straight romance? No (and I am side-eying the people who gave this book high marks who seemed genuine - what book did you read? Are there alternate editions circulating in Jekyll/Hyde format?).
To quote the aforementioned "El Lobo":
"This is gonna be mucho fun" (36%).
1 to 1.5 stars (for ironic purposes, only; actual rating: -1,000,000) ...more
I've said this before, but if Sandra Brown and Linda Howard aren't friends, they should be, because they write like they're the same people. The parallels between AFTER THE NIGHT and SLOW HEAT IN HEAVEN are numerous, as are the parallels between this book and HAWK O' TOOLE'S HOSTAGE and HONOR BOUND. If you've read one author and haven't read the other, do it. You'll become an instant fan.
That said, I have to say that I am not really a fan of these ladies' Native American romances. One of my friends said this book comes across as a bit fetishistic and, uh, yeah, it kind of does. The heroine imagines Wolf in a loincloth at some point, and he's described as warrior-like and primitive several times. Actually, the way this hero is described with his bronzed warrior-like mien and incredibly luscious dark hair really reminded me of how Rhysand is described in ACOTAR, which I found hilarious.
I don't think that Howard was trying to be offensive with these descriptions, however. As with HAWK O' TOOLE, the author seems to be trying to debunk a lot of the negative stereotypes around Native people, although I didn't like Wolf as much as I liked his son, Joe. Kudos to making a teen boy responsible and communicative about sex, btw. That's a nice change of pace to see.
The plot is pretty basic. The heroine, Mary, is a petite little woobie muffin of a character who you will be reminded is teeny-tiny fit-her-in-your-pocket-and-carry-her-home sized several times. The hero is a foot taller than her, and one hundred pounds heavier (yes, we're told this explicitly), and she can wear his son's clothes from when he was a preteen (also). When she's not moonlighting as Polly Pocket, she's the local elementary school teacher, and she's extremely concerned that Joe has dropped out of school. So concerned that she marches out in inclement weather in seasonally inappropriate attire.
As Mary gets involved in the Mackenzies' lives, she becomes aware of the animosity they face from the townsfolk. Wolf is an ex-con (unjustly accused) and Joe is treated as a bad influence. Mary advocating for both these men ends up changing the way the townsfolk view them, however, and her saviorism seems like it might just lead to acceptance-- until bad things start happening to the women in town, and the police naturally turn to Wolf, because, you know, plausible deniability and all that.
I started getting annoyed with this book about halfway through and skimmed to the end because I wanted to see whodunnit. Whodunnit was disappointing, I must say. I also really didn't feel the chemistry between Wolf and Mary, although they seemed to like each other, so yay, I guess. The ending was sweet-- it's always nice to see a positive spin on blended families-- but lord, was Mary naive. She's a full-grown woman and she's never heard anyone say the F-word in real life? Is this Wyoming she's living in, or a LDS space station? HOW DO YOU NOT HEAR THE F-WORD EVER?
I don't think I'll be reading the rest of the books in this series...
The prospect of a romance between a Seminole war chief and a half-black slave seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, despite that terrible, terrible cover. (Seriously, what is that girl wearing? And I'm pretty sure that those are belt-loops that I spy on the man's pants. Anachronistic, much?) But despite its solid start, SEMINOLE SONG really fell flat for me in the second half.
**WARNING: spoilers**
Calida is the slave of a man named Reddin Croon. Well, his wife's, actually, although that doesn't keep him from "borrowing" her. Reddin has a really creepy sexual obsession with Calida and whenever his wife goes out of town, he rapes her. The wife has been suspecting this was going on and one day she catches them in the act and threatens to tell her father (who owns the plantation). Reddin loses control & kills his life, and suggests that he might implicate Calida and cut out her tongue so she can't talk.
Calida flees and ends up in the Everglades with a man named Panther. Panther has encountered Reddin before, for various reasons. He's also familiar with slaves because a lot of the runaways seek asylum with the Seminole tribe. Panther's best friend is an escaped slave from Reddin's own plantation named Gaitor, and the Other Woman, Winter Rain, is half-Seminole, half-black.
Reddin realizes that the death of his wife is a major problem. His father in law, Isiah, comes down to micromanage things, and Reddin has to convince him that his daughter was killed by Seminoles (and he kills a few more slaves in order to keep them quiet). Reddin ends up waging a major war against the Seminoles, getting the military involved, all because he wants to punish the Seminoles for harboring Calida and get her back so he can have sex with her without the inconvenience of his wife.
I didn't really like the relationship between Panther and Calida. Panther was interesting but didn't have a lot of depth. He felt like a Marty-Stu character. Calida really annoyed me. Most of her dialogue was "No! No!" and crying. She was constantly running into danger, falling for just about every trap that came her way. This felt like an excuse to introduce Reddin Croon back into the narrative and show what a creepy pervert he was. She was also fetishized by Croon, who was super pleased that she has a "white lady's mouth" and described her as "high yellow." Ugh.
Three things I did like about this book:
1) The love interest was full Seminole. So many classic romance novels about Native Americans have the hero being "half-white." There is nothing wrong with this in principle, but it happens so frequently in romances that it does kind of feel like a cultural cop-out.
2) Winter Rain, the OW, isn't a bitch. She loves Panther and resents Calida, obviously, but she isn't catty about it. After reading THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER, which featured the Queen Mother of shrewish, antagonistic romantic rivals, I really appreciated that.
3) The heroine is hesitant about having sex with the hero despite being attracted to him because of the rape. He is very nice about it, and doesn't force her at all; he waits for her to come to him.
Despite those benefits, I didn't really like SEMINOLE SONG. The premise ran too thin too quickly, and I didn't identify with any of the characters. Reddin Croon is a rapist creep, I get it! Panther is a dreamboat, okay! Calida is really, really good-looking! Give me some dimension. Give me some depth.
I was looking at the premises for some of the author's other books, though, and some of them seem intriguing (there's one about the Donner party!), so I might give her books another shot at some point.
P.S. This book flings the N-word around like rice at a wedding, so if that is something that upsets or offends you, take heed.
P.P.S. While we're on the subject of Native American romances, does anyone know of any good Choctaw romances? I'm of Choctaw descent, so it would be cool to see a romance novel about that group. :)
We buddy read SAVAGE ECSTASY as our first bodice ripper theme read in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group. I've read a number of bodice rippers over the last couple years, and SAVAGE ECSTASY has been near the top of my list for years because it's supposed to be the OG of Native American romances.
SAVAGE ECSTASY opens with a series of very long info dumps introducing us to the tedious bore that is Alisha. She lives at a fort that has captured a Native American. He's been tortured by three men who live at the fort, one of whom has the hots for Alisha. They're enraged when Alisha attempts to intervene, threatening them with a gun to make them leave him alone. But all is for nought, as the men make sinister plans to torture the poor Native American dude even more, and the guy who's Team Alisha makes even more sinister plans to compromise Alisha later so she'll marry him.
Then Gray Eagle has his men raid the fort. Everyone is butchered except for Alisha, a couple women, and the three men who abused Gray Eagle. They're brought to the Oglala/Sioux tribe, and either imprisoned to await torture or turned into sex slaves.
I should note here that it's very, very important to remember how beautiful and innocent Alisha is. It's only mentioned about 1,000,000 times. Every single man in this book wants to have sex with her. About four of them try to rape her at one time or another. Oh, and there are no nice women in this book, apart from St. Alisha. All of them are jealous of Alisha, and attempt to use their womanly wiles to seduce other men into getting their way to seeing her ruined. I can only assume that the endless descriptions of innocence and purity are meant to distinguish Alisha from the Other Women, who, unlike Alisha, don't seem to feel any embarrassment about their bodies.
SAVAGE ECSTASY is pretty typical for an early 80s bodice ripper. There's rape, and the hero, Gray Eagle, tries to pin the rape on the heroine, arguing to himself that the heroine forced him to it by not being willing in the first place. There's also some truly gruesome torture scenes that take place at the camp that surprised me, because it's usually the books published in the 70s that have the torture scenes. By the time the 80s rolled around, that started to get phased out of the books.
The writing isn't very good, sadly. I get that this is a debut effort, but it really shows. The pacing is uneven and exposition is delivered in huge infodumps that tend to go on for pages. Point of view changes randomly and without warning, and whenever a character is expressing their thoughts, the writing switches from third person to first person, which can be distracting. I also noticed that there are a lot of typos in this copy (I have the Kindle edition). Some of them almost looked like conversion errors (random special characters inserted where punctuation should be), but there were some typos and misspelled words, too, which was odd. Did an editor look at this edition?
One thing in this book's favor is that the story is relatively engaging. Despite its flaws, I couldn't put the book down and found myself with a perverse desire to endure and find out what happened next.
Edited 8/22 because I was a dumbass and got the hero's name wrong. #Fail
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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Books:
native-american-romance
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