Ballantine, $6.99, ISBN 0-449-00296-9
Historical Romance, 2001 (Reissue)
To Love Again, by the late Bertrice Small, first came out in 1993, so it’s actually quite tame compared to her early offerings. No doubt the editor must had wrangled the story to be a bit more… shall we say, acceptable by the norms of that days.
Yes, this is not something that can be published today unless it comes with a page of lengthy trigger warnings, but believe me when I say this one is actually one of the author’s less outrageous offerings!
This one follows a recognizable formula set by the author’s past books, though.
Our heroine is Cailin Drusus. Her father descended from a Roman soldier that opted to stay in the land now known as England after sustaining an injury that made him impossible to carry on his military career, while her mother is disowned by Cailin’s maternal grandfather, a powerful chieftain of the Dobunni tribe for daring to marry a man with, eek, Roman blood.
All is well, and Cailin is a teenage girl allowed to be headstrong and wild because that’s the perk that comes with being the heroine. Alas, her father inevitably invites a snake into their idyllic lives by arranging for a bloke to come marry her. Cailin naturally hates him because he doesn’t make her underage-by-the-standards-of-today horny senses tingle, but it’s okay, the man marries her bitchy hateful friend Antonia for the girl’s wealth.
This man, Quintus, soon develops an ambition of wanting to amass as much lands and wealth as possible, and as it happens, Cailin’s father has a lot of both. He arranges for the family to be murdered, and he would have gotten away if it weren’t for Cailin having plot armor. Drats!
There’s an unnecessary scene of Cailin’s mother getting raped before she is killed, which I suppose is included because of realism or something, who knows. That’s the early red flag for folks troubled by that scene to best put the book down and edge away slowly. There are things in here later on that will be just as, if not more, disturbing.
Alone except for her grandmother that won’t for much longer enough anyway, she seeks out her mother’s people, only for the grandfather to go eeuw and only reluctantly takes her in because of the grandmother. He eventually offers her to a passing warrior, Wulf Ironco… er, let me check again, ah yes, Ironfist.
Fortunately, he’s hot and he’s a gentleman. Cailin sees at once the practicality of an alliance with him: unlike her grandfather, Wulf can be persuaded to take vengeance on Quintus, as doing so will allow her family holdings, now rightfully hers, to be Wulf’s to establish his own place in this neighborhood. It works too, with Quintus getting Wulf’s shaft in a fatal, non-sexy way.
All is well, and Wulf and Cailin are happy. They are even expecting a child… and this is when bitter Antonia, already furious when Wulf rejects her sexual advances (he’s hot for our heroine and only our heroine—indeed, a rarity in Bertrice Small’s stuff), attacks. She has Cailin drugged right after she’s delivered her daughter, and has Cailin sent to the author’s favorite land of the sexy: Byzantium. Meanwhile, she tells everyone else that Cailin and the child died together, how sweet.
So, Cailin is now forced to star in her own 1,001 Nights of Assuming the Position show, as she is forced to take part in a pornographic stage show alongside other people in similarly unfortunate circumstance.
Yes, this is where people that hadn’t put down the story earlier when they were squicked by the rape scene will start to really question their ability to make good decisions in life. However, as someone that have read quite a number of this author’s books, I find those things pretty tame if I were to measure them against typical erotica. In fact, I’ve read far more graphic stuff in erotic romances published around that time!
Back to the story, naturally our heroine soon attracts the amorous attentions of a powerful lord. Will she ever find her way back to Wulf… will she even want to?
I like that Cailin has a clear character development, from being a brat that thinks she knows everything to someone that becomes more circumspect and cautious in making decisions. However, this transformation takes place tad too abruptly if you ask me, and hence I don’t find it completely believable. Still, our heroine never lets herself stay in the victim position for long, always finding a way to claw back out, and I like that tenacity.
However, the author negates quite a bit of the heroine’s fighter status by making it way too easy for the heroine to overcome her issues. Sure, she loses her child and she is sold into the sex trade, and it’s not purely a bed of roses for her. At the same time, every man in a position to protect or rescue Cailin immediately falls for her and goes extra lengths to rescue and protect her. Our heroine has the spirit and tenacity to be a tough as hell heroine, but she doesn’t have to fully walk the walk, as there is no shortage of admirers willing to let her step on their back to ascend out of her plight the moment they catch wind of her problems.
This reduces a lot of the suspense and hence my emotional engagement with the story, as I never get this feeling that our heroine is in any shape or form never going to find a happy ending. In fact, when she chooses the guy to spend the rest of her life with, the other guy just lets her go and throws her and her chosen beau lots of money to start a new life as well. My eyes roll up so hard at that moment that I could almost catch view of my brain as a result.
I’m going to talk about Wulf only here, because to talk about other blokes would be spoiling the story. So, Wulf. He’s a pretty nice guy for a hero in this author’s stories. Let me put it this way: when Cailin is lost to him, he can’t bring himself to move on—the dude just drops everything as he feels that his reason for living is gone. Sure, that may be a dumb thing to do and feel, but still… how sweet.
Also, instead of going all “Me! Hero! You! Submit!”, he quite sneakily seduces the heroine into wanting it bad by showing her bits of his naked body slowly and convincing her that she really wants a physical demonstration of how people reproduce right there and then. That scene, I have to confess, is hot. Sadly, that’s the only scene here that I find hot. The other naughty scenes feel very by the numbers.
Another nice thing about To Love Again is that it has a larger than life feel to the history and setting, one that is hard to find in the romance genre these days as most stories are confined to a single locale or maybe two or three at most.
On the flip side, many characters here are one-dimensional in how good or nasty they are, and there are way too many female characters here that hate one another over a man for my liking.
My biggest disappointment, perhaps, is how this story is so low in the usual tawdry bawdiness that the author’s stuff is usually known for. Oh hush, you really think I read this author’s stuff for the plot? It’s not like Ms Small were holding back, either, as she certainly didn’t when she came up with those Brava stuff a few years down the road. I bet it’s the editor’s fault, and I hope they are suitably ashamed of themselves to this very day!
All things considered, this one is a pretty uneven read in that it has as many high as low points. The low points are related to characterization and plot development, so these are pretty significant. Still, there are also many things to enjoy as well. It’s probably not something most people will enjoy, and it may disappoint folks looking for senseless joyous sleaze, but who knows, folks looking to take a walk on the wild side of romance may find this a just-right, not-too-scary first brush with the underbelly of the genre.
