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I suppose it's a bad thing when the opening paragraph of a historical romance novel kicks your mind into anime-mode ("...her russet hair snapped in the high winds as her silver eyes flared with fury."), and you picture all characters drawn thusly for the remainder of the book. Perhaps that helped Beyond the Wild Wind make a little more sense--but then again, I'm not entirely sure.
Nineteen year old Istabelle O'Bannon captains her own ship and gleefully robs from the rich, claiming to protect coastal villages from pirates. She's out to settle the score with Horik, the sorriest excuse of a villain I've encountered in recent books, yanking his manhood here and there. Istabelle finds him more daunting, for when she attacks him "his massive muscles prevented a fatal thrust." Can you hear the clang from here?
Istabelle sends her cousin a letter, begging him to help her resolve a problem--a problem readers aren't privy to until page 220. Cousin Mangan doesn't care to leave his monastery, so sends Ruark in his stead; Ruark owes a debt to Mangan, being that Ruark brought his brother to the monastery to be healed.
Despite the fact that Istabelle and Mangan are the same age (nineteen, remember), she effortlessly mistakes thirty year old Ruark for her cousin, and plunges him into her antics--refusing to tell him why she needs his help. Ruark goes along, seemingly because she's hot like a hot thing and he just can't tell her he's not who she thinks he is. That would ruin the reveal later. ("...I curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" Firefly's Wash said it so well.)
Present is the love-at-first-sight gambit that many such romance novels employ; Istabelle and Ruark burn for each other and get hard and pebbled in the usual places. But when they get down to the nitty-gritty, Istabelle cries no and has the nerve to get testy with Ruark. He seeks a whore to ease himself, yet is caught by Istabelle, who is outraged and attacks the whore.
When they finally do the deed, this reader wondered where they were. On Istabelle's ship, surely (likely near a porthole, oh yes), but...on a desk? On the floor? Against the wall? Oh who cares, take me you, fool! "Her maidenhead disintegrated under his onslaught with minimal pain." Because an onslaught is a tender act.
Bodices are ripped, shoulders bulge until this reader feared the hero was a shape-shifter, and the purple prose flows like wine. Later, Ruark takes her again--right after she was almost raped by poor Horik, who's having some trouble with his manhood. What with all that yanking, a girl can understand.
With an improbable plot, and mindless characters who exist only to serve that plot, Beyond the Wild Wind was my last (as well as first), Lord novel.
