Untamed

By Elizabeth Lowell
Read: June 2009
Rating: Cool?

Yeah, so, I’ve talked about how dangerous library book sales are, right? Right. I found me some romances. Proper swooning cover romances. I mean, check this inner cover out. Pink satin sheets, hair spread wantonly across pillows, limbs tangled and toes curling.

Oh yeah, and he’s got a mullet.

You might be a little surprised, after looking at that image, as to the actual setting and plot of the story.

It’s the medieval era of Crusades, and our hero Dominic has just returned from the Holy Land, heaped with praise and rewards from the king. His prize is a bride–the only daughter/heir to a hefty chunk of land in the north of England. He’s not too concerned about never having met her. See, he’s an illegetimate son himself and he just wants a parcel of land to call his own where he can found himself a little dynasty. Sons. Lady Margaret knows her duty, but she also knows that the one thing she can’t give Dominic is those sons he wants. You see, there’s a curse on her family line, the women can only concieve if there’s pleasure, and they can only concieve sons when there is love. (Convenient curse for a romance novel, no?)

Now, you might be questioning how a bunch of medieval knights managed to get bright pink satin for their beds. But I’d rather shake my fist at the artist for giving blond hair when he’s supposed to have BLACK hair and a beard. I swear, romance cover artists are the laziest people, ever. Or maybe it’s the arts department at the publishing house. Either way, SOMEONE is not reading this manuscripts OR notes from the authors.

Author: BTW, my heroine has raven hair and her definitely lover is tall, dark and handsome. Please give him yummy shoulders cuz I mentioned that they are really really hawtt. kthnxbai!

Art Director: *deletes* Mario, give me something with red satin. Caucasian. No hair on the man, that’s not selling well.

Intern: Uhhh I’ve got red satin and a white nightie.

Art Director: Send it in.

Intern: Um, this book is titled Black As Knight. …I don’t think they’re Caucasian.

Art Director: What? Bitch, where is my coffee?

Sorry, imagination got away with me there. Anyway, the book isn’t terrible. It’s good reading for when you’re too sick to really focus on anything but you need to keep reading for distraction. I wasn’t sick, but am keeping it for when I am.

In other news, there’s a great little snark summary from Publishers Weekly listed on Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
Lowell ( Only His ) opens her medieval trilogy with a fanciful but banal story of Lady Margaret, who marries the Norman knight Dominic le Sabre in the hope that he can protect her Saxon home, Blackthorne Keep, during troubled times. In marrying him, she defies the dying wish of John of Cumbriland, who raised her: that she wed his illegitimate son, Duncan of Maxwell. Meg and Dominic are surrounded by threats: Duncan is poised to disrupt the wedding; Eadith, Meg’s attendant, hates the Normans, who killed “her husband, father, brothers, and uncles” (women relatives seem of no concern); Meg’s powerful home-brewed medicine has been stolen and her “Glendruid” psychic powers indicate impending danger. Lowell’s clumsy tale appears to glorify a system that ranks females as less valuable than males. Dominic seeks a male heir, but Meg’s eccentric Glendruid reproductive system may deny him his wish: Glendruid women are not known for producing sons. If Dominic gives Meg “great pleasure” in bed, he will earn himself a daughter, but it takes “great love” to produce a son. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc

I don’t think the woman-bashing was as bad as all that. I do agree that it was banal and clumsy. Very, very clumsy. Don’t think about it too hard. Just like bad cover art.