Here's my feeble attempt at expounding on Why I Stopped Reading Loretta Chase's Mr. Impossible.
Honestly, I was gonna say it's not her fault and instead blame my flakey writer-ly mind, all fidgety and the neural equivalent of a social butterfly - but I just realized: It is her fault.
I couldn't care less about these two characters. Not for an instant did I think they wouldn't get together. Nor for the length of a single blink of mine oft-envied lashes did I wonder Oooh, how're they ever gonna manage to make it to the HEA??? And here's howI explained it to a friend (who also got bored halfway through): Chase dispels the romantic tension by overemphasizing it, insisting on it. Constantly. When in the hero's POV, we never fail to hear about how much he lusts for her, how fine the contours of her bosom, how tempting the curve of her lip, how intoxicating her smell, how desperate he is to rip her clothes off. When in her POV, we never fail to hear how strong he is, how his hands might feel on her, how big and strong and warm and desirable and manly and blah blah.
None of those things is wrong to show. They're all quite right to show. Just take one-tenth of what there is here and that's enough. But no, it keeps getting hammered into my head so that by page 70, I was like Yeah yeah yeah - he wants her bad, she wants him too. Ho fucking hum - literally! She can be ho and he can be hum! And they shall be fucking!
See? I had to resort to entertaining myself, which is never a good sign.
(Okay and here is a completely writer-y aside. The end of Chapter 16 has the hero telling the heroine she should take some laudanum for her pain. Then the opening of Chapter 17 has the heroine taking just a lil dose, she ain't no junkie or nuttin. It opens with: Though Daphne took the laudanum in small doses, it helped a great deal. Then she spends five short paragraphs thinking about the hero and the current state of their affair, how their relationship has changed and what it all means, his soliticousness as regards her current physical discomfort, etc. Not a bad thing, and done quite neatly, instead of droning on for an entire chapter about her feeeeeelings - which is what a lot of romance writers would do. But her thoughts are tied up with this: She was also aware that, like laudanum, he could easily become a dangerous habit. And I read that and I think - how could any writer pass up the opportunity to start out the chapter with that sentence? Or not the exact sentence, but the sentiment? Is it just me, or is it far stronger to open a chapter with like She wondered if laudanum were as addictive as he, if it would stay in her blood as long, or rule her so absolutely or something - open with a line like that and go from there? That was the first thing I thought - but then I immediately said to myself that no, it's a matter of a writer's style. And her style and mine are quite different. But now I look at it and still think - what a wasted line, to bury it like that. So I dunno which it is - a difference of style or a fact that one way is better. Opinions welcome, of course, because I'm always gonna side with myself.)
I did like the hero in the beginning, but I stopped liking him as much after a bit. The whole point of it is that he acts like a dumb lummox, but he isn't really. Which I was totally into up until I got exasperated about how he oohs and ahhs over the heroine's Staggering Intelligence. And seriously? She's not THAT smart. Jesus. She studies Egyptology and she knows her stuff. She's good at languages and is sensitive to the culture she's in. La-di-da, as my ma would say. Is that any reason for the hero to get all starry-eyed and/or rock hard and/or desperately in love every time she explains that This One Is Thoth, That One Is Isis? After a while, it just felt like he was some slack-jawed yokel looking up at her with puppydog eyes and saying the equivalent of "I don't unnerstand them big words she uses, but she sure looks awful purty when she says 'em." It was especially annoying since I never really witnessed the heroine being all that brilliant. I just got to hear the author tell me how smart she was. Over and over and over and over and over again.
And here's another thing that could just be the writer in me, and maybe other people don't notice it. I really, really, really hate the short paragraph thing that Chase has a thing for. A HUGE number of paragraphs are only a sentence long. Most are 2-3 sentences long. It interrupts ideas and breaks up the narrative in the most distracting way and It. Drives. Me. Nuts. I keep mentally putting my cursor at the indent and backspacing and then again and again and ahhhhh... there, a real paragraph! Sheesh. Chase is the only author I think I've ever done this with, re-forming paragraphs in my head.
Look, here's an example from page 35:
Daphne was thinking it was very hard to think with Mr. Carsington in the vicinity.Gaaaaaaaaaaaah STOP HITTING THE RETURN KEY IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY AHHHHHH.
She was good at solving puzzles, usually. But the only idea she had about recent events was a ridiculous one, and no more ideas were forthcoming.
She was not easily distracted. One must possess tremendous powers of concentration, not to mention an obstinate and tenacious character, to contend with ancient Egyptian writing.
She might have easily ignored and earthquake or a barrage of artillery fire.
She could not ignore him.
She was aware of his abstracted expression while he calculated her height and decided what color her hair was.
One great thing is the language, the dialogue. She certainly has an ear for the speech, the vocab, the rhythms of British English - and that's something that is really difficult to come by in romance.
Okay, I'd think of more to say but am tired. I think what bugged me about this book most - and what upsets me about some others in the genre - is that it has SO MUCH potential to be more, to be better. All the stuff in this book that made it less than what it could've been? It's all stuff that can very easily be fixed. That's what's so frustrating: it's not a trainwreck. It's a smooth train ride. Not a scenic vacation train trip through the west, though, with mountains and all that, staring out the window and losing yourself in scenery. It's more along the lines of the train commute to work every day. And I don't mean the days when there's some drunk and/or Jesus-preachin guy smelling of urine and bellowing "YE ARE DAMNED" at all the commuters. I mean just one of those hmm yeah I need coffee is that a run in my nylons sigh we're almost to downtown now I wonder what's on TV tonight kinda rides.
And that's about the dumbest analogy/simile/whatever thing that I've ever come up with, but I think I mentioned I have a headache? Yeah.
