Saturday, October 21, 2006

In Praise Of Anne Stuart And Tielle (Pronounced 'Teal') St Clare...

I read Anne Stuart’s Black Ice a while ago, and I actually meant to blog about it at the time. I freaking loved it.

How fabulous was Bastien Toussaint? I love me bad boy anti-heroes. There’s something very sexy about borderline psychotic, sadistic, manipulative heroes, who generally have no heart, and no soul. They’re the ones who often fall the hardest. Bastien kinda reminded me of Diaz from Linda Howard’s
Cry No More. Know what I mean?

I even liked the heroine, and in any other author’s hands, she would have been as annoying as a fly that lands on your food, after rolling around in dog shit.

You’ve got to love a romance author who’s able to push the envelope as much as this woman has, and after reading her
interview at AAR, I think I actually might love her, even if she does like to use the C*NT word.

There was that hoohah a while ago about her creating a sexually ambiguous hero, but I couldn’t be arsed getting embroiled in the argument, because I actually thought that it was a bit of a non-issue. I think that most people who read erotic romance books, where anything goes, probably felt the same as I.

I’m not adverse to a hero who likes a bit of cock now and then, so I’m really looking forward to reading Cold As Ice. (Yes, I know that the hero, Peter Jensen is only Gay For Pay.)

Moving away from Anne Stuart, I’m currently on a Tielle St Clare glom. Even though she’s an EC veteran, I’d never read any of her stuff, but I read Matching Signs, the other week, and really liked it. So as I generally do when I discover an author I like, I went to EC and picked up all of her other full length books.

What I like about her books, is that if you take away the sex, you’re still left with very readable stories, unlike some that I could mention Fletchina Archer.

My fave book of hers so far is
Christmas Elf, which is basically a twisted take on Dickens’, A Christmas Carol. The main difference being that, instead of the ghost of Christmas Past, Future etc, etc, we have a whinging elf, who gets kicked out of Lapland (or wherever the hell she lives) for being too crabby and sarcastic. In order to be allowed back home, she has to teach another crabby soul, the joy of giving and love, etc, etc by Christmas Day. Very funny book, and hot too.

If you don’t like sexually explicit books, or books with lots of sex scenes in them, you probably wont like Tielle (pronounced ‘Teal’) St Clare’s work, but if you don’t mind the odd use of c*nt, p*ssy, and cock ok, these words are used a lot, then you’ll have a good time. I did. nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Erm, one more thing, if you’re looking for War and Peace, you might want to refrain from purchasing her books, because she does fluffy very well, and her characters tend to be a little one dimensional. Normally, this would be a bad thing, but I found that I was able to happily bypass the flaws, of which there were more than a few.

One thing that did annoy me no end was the fact that she doesn’t have a website. How can you be an e-book author and not have a website? Totally ridiculous if you ask me, or
other e-book readers.