Reader’s Corner: Romance and Angst: Rediscovering Laura Kinsale

I will dis­pense with the “graphic novel” fea­ture for now and just spend time dis­cussing one of my favorite gen­res: romance. So, with­out fur­ther ado — I feel like I have to re-introduce this author to some of you “new” romance read­ers out there.

Yeah, some of the new authors out there are doing a great job [cough] with writ­ing his­tor­i­cal romance fic­tion but Laura Kin­sale is by far the best his­tor­i­cal romance writer bar none when it comes to telling sto­ries about rakes, high­way­men and other char­ac­ters (to me). I under­stand that the crown must be passed on but still, her sto­ries are still worth a look today.

Source­books have reprinted three of Laura Kinsale’s books sans Fabio on the cover: Mid­sum­mer Moon, Prince of Mid­night and Seize the Fire (listed as Octo­ber but they are avail­able now). All three books are get­ting a “fresh look” and are being re-introduced to romance read­ers. I’ll briefly go over my favorite Kin­sale titles and I have dis­cus­sion ques­tions for read­ers at the end.

If you’re a romance reader who enjoys angst and flawed heroes then you should give Laura Kin­sale a try. My first intro­duc­tion to her work hap­pens to be the book that I favorite the most: Flow­ers From the Storm. It’s about a pow­er­ful Duke, who is a genius at math who inad­ver­tently suf­fers a debil­i­tat­ing stroke and is sent to an insane asy­lum. To make mat­ters worse, his fam­ily is more than will­ing to snatch away his ducal rights and have him com­mit­ted forever.

Lucky for him, he finds an ally in Mad­die Timms, who works at the asy­lum with her uncle. Maddie’s spir­i­tu­al­ity is a big part of who she is and she sees help­ing our hero, Chris­t­ian, as her “call­ing.” Also, she real­izes that Chris­t­ian is still cog­nizant and reluc­tantly helps him escape the asy­lum. Ulti­mately Mad­die becomes the life line between him and his greedy fam­ily mem­bers. The romance is elec­tri­cally charged and the end­ing rocked as only Kin­sale knows how. You all need to thank the pub­lish­ing gods that this book is still around today. It is one of the best romances I’ve ever read. This book is cur­rently avail­able as an ebook and paperback.

The Prince of Mid­night is another favorite Kin­sale read. It’s about a ex-Highwayman, S.T. Mait­land, who is forced to be reclu­sive because he has a bounty on his head. He also has a seri­ous con­di­tion– a hear­ing imbal­ance where any sud­den moves makes him nau­se­ated and dizzy. The hero­ine, Leigh Stra­chan, is not very lik­able in here. I was often very frus­trated with her myself because of her treat­ment of the hero. She is often cold, cruel and cal­cu­lat­ing but deter­mined. The two go off on an adven­ture together in search of jus­tice and revenge.

It is Leigh who is look­ing for revenge for her fam­ily and has sought out S.T.‘s assis­tance based upon his rep­u­ta­tion as a feared “high­way­man” but when faced with the man she sees before her eyes, she finds him sorely lack­ing. Need­less to say that win­ning Leigh’s love at the end was hard won by our hero. Not many read­ers like this story very much but I loved read­ing it, you just have to give it a chance. This book is also avail­able as an ebook.

The Shadow and the Star Look­ing for a vir­gin hero? — then look no fur­ther than this title. Often The Shadow and the Star is listed as a favorite by romance read­ers but for me it ranks a close sec­ond next to — you guessed it — Flow­ers From the Storm. Samuel’s story actu­ally started in another book, The Hid­den Heart. In it, Samuel was a young, sex­u­ally abused kid who was even­tu­ally adopted by a well to do fam­ily. Kin­sale her­self has often said that this is by far her favorite book. It took me a long time to fully appre­ci­ate this story as it was one that I didn’t read until a few years ago. Miss Leda Etoile, Samuel’s love inter­est, fits very well with him and I enjoyed their many scenes together. Their rela­tion­ship unfolds nicely and it is an emo­tional jour­ney one doesn’t soon for­get. Avail­able as an ebook as well.

As much as I love Laura Kin­sale, there a few of her books that remain unread: Mid­sum­mer Moon, The Dream Hunter (I know Janine loves this book), Seize the Fire, Uncer­tain Magic, Shadow Heart and For My Lady’s Heart. Kinsale’s sto­ries are almost always pop­u­lated with char­ac­ters who are flawed or who carry around plenty of bag­gage. The biggest rea­son why I am drawn to her work is because I love read­ing about dam­aged peo­ple. Per­fect peo­ple bore me. Give me angst and con­flict any day of the week.

Kinsale’s sto­ries are mem­o­rable (at least to me). I dare any­one to try her work and come back and describe it as “trash.” Hav­ing said that, if one were to ask me to pick out a romance nov­el­ist who best rep­re­sents this genre, I’d pick Laura Kin­sale in a heart­beat. YMMV. Among many oth­ers of her writ­ing cal­iber, I could prob­a­bly list sev­eral more. Another appeal­ing fac­tor for me is that many of Kinsale’s sto­ries are often very sen­sual and the chem­istry between her char­ac­ters is smok­ing hot. Kin­sale hit her stride mostly in the 90’s but her work is still vibrant and emo­tion­ally sat­is­fy­ing reads for the that savy romance reader in today’s mar­ket. If you haven’t read a Laura Kin­sale novel, you should. Admit­tedly, her sto­ries tend to unfold slowly but if you stick with it, you are rewarded with a very sat­is­fy­ing and mem­o­rable read.

Laura Kinsale’s Backlist

Uncer­tain Magic (1987)
Mid­sum­mer Moon (1987)
Seize the Fire (1989)
Prince of Mid­night (1990)
Flow­ers From the Storm (1992)
The Dream Hunter (1994)
My Sweet Folly (1997)

Apart of a series, quar­tet or trilogy

The Hid­den Heart (1986) and The Shadow and the Star (1991)
For My Lady’s Heart (1993) and Shad­ow­heart (2004)

The Shadow and the Star, Flow­ers from the Storm, Seize the Fire, The Prince of Mid­night, Mid­sum­mer Moon are avail­able in ebook at Fic­tion­wise are here.

Reader’s Dis­cus­sion

Ok, I’m through talk­ing. So Kin­sale is the queen of angst for me. What authors do you enjoy that write with plenty of angst today? Do you enjoy emo­tion­ally or phys­i­cally flawed char­ac­ters? What are some of your favorite angst writ­ten sto­ries? Who are some of your favorite tor­tured heroes? Heroines?