Back, and reading

Back from vacation. It was terrific until the guy and I both caught the same Cold Virus from Hell that laid us out flat and feverish for the last two days. There's nothing more strangely pathetic than sitting by a beautiful blue pool on a hot tropical day, watching the frolicking adults and laughing children, while you mop your face and burn with fever. (For extra points, try going to a Mexican pharmacy and miming what you want since you can't read any of the labels.)

So, first five days = best vacation I ever had. Last two days = Just shoot me.

I did do some reading, though. I'd heard a lot about the Roselynde chronicles by Roberta Gellis, so I ordered the first one off Ebay a while ago. To my surprise, perhaps the ugliest cover in history arrived on my doorstep. I looked everywhere on the Internet to find a rendition of it, but it seems to be mercifully forgotten. So I snapped a picture of it myself. Behold:




Yes, it is a medieval. Yes, the hero - a medieval knight - is wearing an open shirt with pointed collar, and a Partridge Family haircut. Yes, he's bending her backward in that "has anyone ever actually done this?" romance pose.

The book, however, is terrific. It was published in 1979 and is a reminder of how romance publishing used to be, back in the wild wild west of the 70's and 80's.

To wit: The hero and heroine are apart more often than they are together. There are tons of politics and medieval history mixed into the plot. The hero is 30 years older than the heroine. He hires prostitutes while he's on campaign, away from the heroine for months at a time. The heroine isn't just "spirited" - she smacks her maids around mercilessly and is happy to manipulate to get what she wants. The violence is harsh, including a great grisly scene in which the hero kills some ten men by smashing their heads and chests with a morningstar. Oh, and it's 500 pages long.

They literally don't make 'em like this anymore. Anyone writing something like this today would hear the "it won't sell" refrain. And that's a shame.

It helps that Gellis is an unbelievably skilled writer, and her research is not only thorough but masterfully used (as an aside, there is a five-page afterword in which Gellis notes her sources - another extinct idea in romance land.) In case the whole thing doesn't sound very romantic, let me assure you that Gellis pulls it off.

My favourite quote:
"My love, my love, when I find who has done this to you, it will take him ten years to die."

The only downside is that there are tons of sequels, all of them out of print - and I really, really want to read them now...