(no subject)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=192045&l=9f933&id=560930252 <---More photos of Spot. It has been a while. He is not getting less cute. Somebody just has having less time.

I am still really tired, but I did get a fair amount of work done and another book read, Book Three, "To Love and to Honour" by BJ Hoff. 192pp

I opted for a bit of fluff to give my brain a break from the weightier subject matter I've been feeding it the last week or so, and since I'm planning to re-read the rest of my BJ Hoff collection at some point this year anyway, I thought I'd begin at the beginning with Jess and Kerry in their pre-Emerald Ballad days.

I'm not going to say a lot because I think I'll have more insight after I've gotten all the way through all seven books, but I will say this:

She's not the worst writer in the world, but like most Christian fiction authors, she's found a formula that works for her and she uses it pretty much in every series she's done. You will always have all, more than one, or some of the following:

1. A male character who is very tall with wild hair.
2. Somebody with a handicap of some kind.
3. Some sort of baby crisis.
4. A history of personal trauma.

In the two Jess and Kerry books, Jess provides #1 amply. In the Emerald Ballad, Jess and Morgan both provide #1 - on both sides of the Atlantic! In the Cloth of Heaven books, Gabriel provides #1. Usually the #1 type is a little bit of an oddball, too, albeit not necessarily in a bad way, unless you resent your men having hands like dinner plates. Personally, I would find that a tad disconcerting.

In the Emerald Ballad, you have poor paralysed little Morgan, stuttering Evan, and Finola's strange muteness. In a couple of the other books, there was that Daniel dude who was blind (The Captive Voice?), and in one of those two with Daniel there was Whitney who was deaf! Double whammy of #2 going on in that instance.

As for #3...in the Cloth of Heaven books, Terese nearly has an abortion. Finola conveniently has a baby after she's raped. Kerry and Samantha both lose babies due to Unusual Abuse, and Can't Have Any More After That.

And #4? It abounds. Thusly:
a. Finola was raped.
b. Annie was almost raped.
c. Finola was raped again.
d. Sandemon loses his family in some voodoo thing.
e. Lucy is an ex-prostitute.
f. Finola nearly gets raped a third time.
g. Patrick Walsh cheats on his wife, who shoots him (by accident, naturally).
h. Numerous characters escape outright squalor in Ireland to find outright squalor in New York.
i. Finola is, for some strange reason, reluctant to consummate her marriage.
j. Some child drowns to death. Name not recalled.
k. Finola has amneeeeeeeeesia!

And that's just in "Emerald Ballad" (Finola scores highest, with 5 out of 11!), and I'm probably forgetting a lot. It is quite a breathtaking stream of trauma.

Honestly, I can't wait to read these again to see if I just laugh myself to death. And yet... somehow I don't think I will. They are not all bad. They just could be better.

And I haven't even finished the Jess and Kerry books yet. I think I should not do premature reviews any further just now.

(no subject)

OK. Book 4... Whisper in the Wind.

191pp

Since I got sidetracked talking of Hoff generalities, I should mention that To Love and to Honour is, really, a bit mediocre. It is thrilling to a teenaged girl who has not experienced love in any real fashion. It is a bit passé to someone who's married. I had enough of my own fiddle-string tension and conflicting emotions and whatnot during our dating days to last me the rest of my life. I don't really need to read about it any more. It is not that well-written, and as I mentioned to eattheolives, it felt a bit like a practise run for some material later used in the Emerald Ballad. At least that's how it struck me - perhaps paving the way and testing the waters for these characters that would later come back in another book?

Anyway, Whisper in the Wind is definitely the better of the two Jess/Kerry books (The Dalton Saga, I guess it's technically called). The courtship angst is over and we can move on to a plot that has more substance, about Jess taking on Washington, with a good lesson in the end that instead of moving the mountain on the other side of the valley, how about moving the rocks that are right in front of your feet first? It is full of drama and trauma, yes, but it at least has some more substance and some good character development. And the backstory of Casey-Fitz, that I don't recall being in Emerald Ballad, and a letter from Casey to Jess and Kerry during the Civil War era, which brings the Emerald Ballad forward in a way. It's hard for me to separate the two series-es. It really is. This only means that I can't really stop now. I am doomed to read the Emerald Ballad next.

But not tonight. My head hurts and my husband is hungry for gardenburger and I am hungry for bed.