I can not express how annoyed I became while finishing Whispers of the Night. Honestly, I can not believe the left turn Lydia Joyce took and RUINED this book. Okay, I've taken a deep breath and maybe I'll be able to pass on a decent review.
The heroine, Alcyone (Alcy), is brilliant, a true mathematical and engineering genius and the daughter of a rich English industrialist. Alcy travels across Europe to marry a man she believes is a Hungarian Baron. Our hero, Dumitru, is a poor Rumanian Count, trying to hold together his little fiefdom as Austria, Russia and the Turks seem to want control of his little world. He basically steals her away and marries her before she realizes he's not the Hungarian Baron she's been corresponding with, but being the brilliant soul that she is, she figures it out on her wedding night, confronts him, he fesses up and their attraction is so strong they have a fabulous wedding night and 2 months of wedded bliss. To this point the character development and writing is page turner fabulous.Then the book tanks, completely.
Our intrepid heroine over hears a meeting between the hero and his steward. Her father has set up an unusual marriage portion. She controls 1/2 of it, and our hero wants it to help protect and improve the life of the people in his care, and devises a plan to steal it. She already knows how desperate he needs money to make these improvements. Instead of confronting him and having a big, "all you needed to do was ask" blowout fight, she does the mostTSTL, moronic, unbelievably stupid thing!! She runs away. Yes, she runs away into the wilderness of Eastern Europe, without a single clue as to where she is going, the political climate, the actual climate. How the heck does she go from genius to moron in the matter of a few pages? I have no idea, but from there on the book becomes a spy/road story, of course he goes after her. She continues to do stupid things which gets them caught up in all sorts of political crap and are ultimately helped by some English diplomat/spy. Who cares, the book is ruined as soon as she becomes a moron.
The first half of the book is an A, the second is an F, average the damned thing and give it a pathetic C. At least it's a well written pathetic C.
*Edited* Okay, the book is too well written to say the second half deserves an F. But I would still say it's an overall C, simply because the plot and characters stopped working for me in the second half of the book.
8 comments:
Good god tara you just don't understand
you silly lil reader you
Well now you know! I would like the books more if the author would stop posting in public.
Yikes! I suppose it's not a horrible thing for an author to tell what she thinks of her own work, but to say that someone is seeing something that's not there? How condescending! There's never just one interpretation.
Devon, it's my thought if they have to explain to you what they wrote, they didn't convey what they wanted to start with.
Don't you just hate it when a good book spirals downward? That is the pits.
As to the author's comments, I tend to believe she was hoping she was conveying things the way SHE describes but it's evident that more than one reader didn't see it that way or she wouldn't feel the need to explain. So something is out of whack, somewhere.
too true Tara! My first thought upon reading her post was the Taming of the Duke thing, where Eloisa James had to explain everything to the poor slow readers who didn't get it. Apparently there were a lot of them, including me.
Bev, spirals downward would be a good description or maybe completely hit a wall, then sank to the ground would be a better one.
Devon, Taming of the Duke was what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment. I never bothered to go back and follow her "trail". Normally, I love EJ's books, that was probably the first I didn't. And like this one, it's wasn't completely horrible, the writing is good enough to keep them from being really wallbanger bad.
I couldn't finish this book. I thought it was boring. We she left I was hoping she would get eaten by a back of wolves! That is what she deserved!
I guess I am stupid, too! Whatever!! I'm so stupid I can't find $7.00 to buy her next book.
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