I'd never managed to read through the pdf version of anovel within three or so days!
Thoughts after reading:
Just, . . What The Hell Had I Just Read!
Link: sitelink deviantart. com/art
That that's just mindblowing in a crazy manner!
It's a damn difficult book to rate, on one hand I'm intrigued by the outstanding, sensual writing, the vivid sense of dread expressed through said writing, the fine details and the roller coaster ride which is the main story.
On the other hand, I rolled my eyes with a few 'No it can't be!' exclaims at how the plots go overthetop at times and the ending is ways too unrealistic and the hero, a.
k. a the main love interest in this book, is an irredeemable asshole,
To spice things up, this guy is also a torturer, a coldblooded killer and a rapist, Although I can almost appreciate how unapologetic this guy had been for an entire book,
I mean, when comparing with Domenico Giordano della Raffaelle, Lothaire the Enemy Of Old from sitelinkImmortals After Dark series suddenly looks like he is Mr, Nice.
To be very honest, if you didn't happen to have a morbid curiosity over this book, if you didn't happen to have some sort of sadistic threads within you yes I have some within me, shocking, I don't think you should be reading this book.
One of my Goodreads friend commented that "reading this book is like watching Caligula", . . and she is right.
However, I have to tell you that is exactly part of the fun of reading The Silver Devil, Teresa Denys push everything to the extreme and she didn't hold things back, she went into places where other romance novelists rarely visit, and OMG I just love it!
As to the late Miss Denys, we know so little about this lady, but by reading this book I at least can tell she had a lot of guts, a fine taste for Gothicstyle writing and a lavish imagination.
I must wonder how the ending of this book would have turned out if Miss Denys didn't have to limit herself to the typical romance cliches of a
And here's a damn good review from Bgurl, with splendid jpgs: sitelink goodreads. com/review/show Preread impression Ok. After reading that this book has been put on shelves varying from recommends to: Girly girls to "tall, dark and psycho", I'm crazy curious as to what my beloved ringleader Searock is getting me into, No matter, with her leading the charge, it'll be fun, :
.Stars
So, we're takin' it back, That's right ladies and gents, cats and kittens! All the way back to a book written inabout a story in, Bringing you today's hits and yesterday's favorites! Especially if those favorites are "forced consent" and "hemorrhagic virginity loss" and one of my favorites "gang rape", I don't know technically if it's considered gang rape if four guys hold you down while another does the raping, but they're all complicit, so I'm calling it gang rape.
So, stay right where you are, don't touch that dial!
So you might be saying, "Michele, why are you reading a historical bodice ripper with FADE TO BLACK LOVE SCENES when you could be reading Breathe by one of your favorite authors, KA" I'll tell you why, in one word, Searock.
And I'd do it again, If Searock asked me to group read the Bible cover to cover, I'd probably do it, but I'd beg for the children's version, Searock please don't call my bluff on this one,
So historical is not my thing and this book made me realize why, Battles. Christ on a crutch. Like I give a flying ape shit if they came from the west or the north, That he hit him with his spear and he parried with his knife, that the horse was running, galloping or cantering, that blah, blah ,blah, blah, blahboring,
The intrigue is another, Siblings betraying one another. Your Uncle the archbishop is not to be trusted, he has his own agenda, Who doesn't in this book Your father's third wife poisoned her own husband because she thought it would make you happy and land you in her bed, But instead, you send her away without tupping her, Tsk tsk, a woman scorned, That will come back to bite you in the balls, Duke,
Felicia, is our heroine A bar wench who one night, very unusually, was given a "cordial" or two by Antonio, the half brother that detests her, You know, the one that makes her work as a bar wench at his inn, scrub the floors, clean his house top to bottom, for room and board, How's this for intrigue At one point, I thought Felicia was The Duke's half sister! Felicia thought it too, And this was after the schtupping had begun! But alas, no, It was a lie perpetrated by current handmaiden to Felicia/last whore who warmed the Duke's bed and now warms Sandro the bastard Brother's bed, as she was casted off.
She wanted back in the Duke's bed, I mean, who wouldn't The man must have a prized cock, that's all I can figure, She got sent to care for lepers for that tall tale, And that was getting off easy, Felicia smiled at a footboy and it got him tortured and killed, I was rooting for Felicia to run away with the footboy, Seriously. Make your way to the New World together, Ask for the Indians. They'll be nice to you, just be nice to them back, No more intrigue! No more backstabbing! Eat Maize and live in peace, Sure! One of you will die on the journey, but what the hell!
Oh! As an aside, Felicia drinks those cordials from her brother and wakes up in a strange place and soon finds out that she is to be the Duke's whore, Well, yay! A girl can't ask for more than that! I mean the first question out of my mouth would be, "I beg of you sir, have you any pudding" No, just kidding, it would be, "I beg of you sir, how the fuck did I get here Is there a Wizard and an Emerald City nearby Where's Toto I could sure use a field of poppies right now.
I'm not even scared of flying monkeys, Bring 'em on!" Then sir would be like, "She's batshit crazy! She'll fit right in amongst royalty, Good show!"
So shortly after Felicia has a "forced consent" loss of her virginity, . . I'm going to parlay this into a minidiscussion about that term, "Forced consent" to me, means rape, But in this instance, in a different time, when a woman's only other choice is to become a beggar or a whore, I'd call it "forced consent", Because better to be the whore to one, than whore to many, Unless that many is a pack of sexy shape shifting werewolves that want to share you and keep you in sexual bliss/, Then, I say bring it on! I'll be your whore! But I digress, . . Shortly after she is stripped of her virginity, she comes to love the Duke, A moment after she realizes this, he shows her pictures of women and asks her to help his pick his new bride, Stage whispers to Felicia "Pick the ugly bitch! Wait! Sometimes the ugly ones are good in bed! Pick the manliest one, Oh no, wait, the Duke had an affair with a man for a dozen years, Shit! Pick the the one that looks like a shrew, Well, you were kind of a mousy shrew at first, Now look at you! Ah fuck it! Close your eyes and point or do eenymeenymineymoe, Wait, do you have that yet in Eenymeenymineymoecatcha tiger, . Huh rears back incredulously What's a tiger Oh forget it! Close your eyes and point, "
But the Duke is just so darned lovable, For instance: When they are in the tavern and the innkeeper's wife is being raped, Felicia begs the Duke to make it stop, but he refuses, And holds her tight so that she can't interfere, Ah, but she still can't help but love him, What a gem!
You see, he has nightmares that only she can soothe away, Oh, his tortured soul. If only he'd let her care for him, From the beginning, other men at court say that when the Duke tires of her, which should say, be in a day or two, they will ask that she be given to them.
Because that's what he does with his castoffs, he gives them to other men, What's not to love about this guy Right I mean, I could see why any girl would fall for a guy that slept with her in a pool of her own blood, the night he took her virginity, then made her ride with him the next day on the hunt, side saddle.
Another discussion sidesaddle is bullshit! Who comes up with this stuff You're just a woman, So what if you break your neck Just don't hurt the horse, wench, . That Duke, he's a keeper,
One thing that bothered me, haha, was that when Felicia was barwench at her Brother's Inn, she had no self confidence, Took all manner of abuse that her half brother and his wife could dig out, But once she came to court, she instantaneously knew how to behave, how to dance, when to kneel and curtesy, And she was never a wallflower in dealing with these other men pursuing her, Maybe it was borne out of necessity, but it was quite a transformation, Maybe it 'cause she was getting a little sumpin' sumpin', works wonders on the self esteem to be the whore of a Duke,
To entertain myself, I took on the language of the book while reading it, As in, "Dearest husband of mine, would you be so kind as to gather the soiled livery so that I may tend to it" My hubby just rolled his eyes.
But livery is such a weird name for clothing, I always think that livery must smell like onions, Does anyone else think that
But hey, it had a happy ending,
I can't wait sink my teeth into some KA, All I know is Breathe better contain the words: cock, suck, thrust, mouth, pussy, come, clit, knees, and maybe pounding, Or I am going lose my mind! It may be lost already to the Silver Devil, One can't help but to love him,
What a delightfully odd book, :
There's much here that's traditional bodiceripper material, The heroine Felicia is raped by the hero Domenico, yet she reluctantly comes to love amp adore her captor, Her circumstances are more akin to slavery than courtship she's a bought woman from common background, which gives her no standing except as Domenico's bedwarmer, But whether by choice or necessity, Felicia follows her abusive hero through thick amp thin much of which includes violent happenings amp "no, no, yes!" sexual encounters, While dealing with the downsides of her troubled relationship with Domenico, she comes to know the many sides of her lover's personality, . . which ultimately leads to the confrontation in which our emotionally challenged hero must admit he's equally in love with her,
Yeah, I know, . . some people get their knickers in a twist over these tropes, Like Christine Monson's excellent but brutal Stormfire, this is a touchstone work in the bodiceripper genre and there's a reason The Silver Devil is branded as such.
It incorporates all that makes some readers shriek amp rant about women's rights amp toss the book aside in favor of bland Regency romances with their cuddlebug woobierakes, But as I said in my review of Stormfire, this ohsonotorious book has much to be appreciated by a more openminded or less squeamish reader,
Denys' style is lyrical amp lush more dense than the average BR, but not wordy per se, It's a very dark, gothic style violence amp beauty coexist in close confines, often in the same scene, . . or even the same paragraph, There are some gruesome images in this book, amp they're described in picturesque, loving detail the same as the instances of beauty amp love, Example: Felicia's virginitytaking is brutal amp bloody, yet so elegantly written, But despite a sweeping backdrop of grandeur amp battle, each scene is claustrophic amp intensely personal, sitelinkKarla's review describes the story in terms of an opera, amp I'd agree with that, Each scene has the feel of a gloomy, isolated stage piece that highlights the cast amp their melodramatic antics, And yes, I can imagine the dialogue in
song, complete with uberdramatic Italian solos amp grandiose hand gestures, :D
Furthermore, The Silver Devil is narrated firstperson by Felicia alone, There are no infodumps on history or culture, Unless the reader has already studied up on Renaissance Italy culture, they'll flounder until the names, places, amp relationships become more familiar which is no accident, I'm sure, Like Felicia, the reader is forced to rely on context amp dialogue to gain their footing,
Bottom line: it's not a book for stupid people, looks askew at the current crop of Lowest Common Denominator romances Would I recommend it for general audiences Probably not, Beautiful writing amp style points aside, Domenico is a jerk of the highest order his commanding neediness drove me nuts, amp lowered the rating to four,
But would I recommend The Silver Devil for more daring readers of romantic historical fiction Absolutely especially those who are tired of the modernizedandsanitized army of cuddlebug woobierakes.
Blech.
N. B. Much thanks to Karla for lending me her copy, :.