The Shadow and the Star, by Laura Kinsale

Despite the hideous cover, typical of supermarket romance, in this case depicting a black-haired Fabio clone in bare chest and leather pants, this extremely strange book cannot possibly be typical of the genre.

While reading it, I tried to figure out if its aura of surpassing weirdness was solely because it was a genre romance with plot elements that (I assume) do not normally appear in the genre, or if it would have been peculiar no matter what genre it had been written for. But I was unable to think of any genre that might normally feature a blonde ninja in recovery from childhood sexual abuse who was trained by a Japanese butler in Hawaii in the late 1860s and is nicknamed Mano Kane (Man Shark)-- there's a long o which I can't reproduce here, but Kinsale uses a bar over the o, which makes it even crazier, though I can't explain why.

The closest match would be Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise series, but those are set in the present day and would not have had an excruciatingly proper heroine whose highest ambition is to become a typist, doesn't know what sex is, and gets saddled with someone else's baby. Though I could certainly see O'Donnell writing the scene where she smuggles a sword out of a sleazy boarding house (where the ninja had previously climbed up into the rafters to hide it, _after_ she had accidentally broken his leg with her sewing machine) by hiding it up her voluminous skirts.

One of the things which makes this book even odder is that Kinsale appears to have meticulously researched everything, even the Japanese and ninja stuff, so there's a sense of solid background despite the completely ridiculous goings-on. Also, the hero says he knew he wanted to marry his sort-of adopted sister since he was eleven. Later he mentions that he's ten years older than her. He wanted to marry a one-year-old???

Unlike, say, Jennifer Crusie or Georgette Heyer, Kinsale doesn't transcend the genre in the sense that I would recommend her, at least going by this book, to people who wouldn't normally read romance or don't have eccentric tastes. Though there's a very interesting loss of virginity scene, most of the sex and romantic scenes are generic and use generic description rather than being particular to the characters. The book also loses momentum at about the four-fifths point, despite a later scene involving sharks, seppuku, and a cursed sword. (The plot elements, in this case, are more fun than the scene is.)

But I liked the way that the heroine's attitudes were of her time rather than ours, the chemistry between her and the hero, the sheer weirdness of the story, and the cast of likable supporting characters.

So, you readers of genre romance, is this sort of plotting actually more common than I realize, or were readers across the country picking up the book and saying "What the hell...?" Also, does the genre ever have interracial romances other than those between white women and Native Americans?

The Shadow and the Star, by Laura Kinsale

Despite the hideous cover, typical of supermarket romance, in this case depicting a black-haired Fabio clone in bare chest and leather pants, this extremely strange book cannot possibly be typical of the genre.

While reading it, I tried to figure out if its aura of surpassing weirdness was solely because it was a genre romance with plot elements that (I assume) do not normally appear in the genre, or if it would have been peculiar no matter what genre it had been written for. But I was unable to think of any genre that might normally feature a blonde ninja in recovery from childhood sexual abuse who was trained by a Japanese butler in Hawaii in the late 1860s and is nicknamed Mano Kane (Man Shark)-- there's a long o which I can't reproduce here, but Kinsale uses a bar over the o, which makes it even crazier, though I can't explain why.

The closest match would be Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise series, but those are set in the present day and would not have had an excruciatingly proper heroine whose highest ambition is to become a typist, doesn't know what sex is, and gets saddled with someone else's baby. Though I could certainly see O'Donnell writing the scene where she smuggles a sword out of a sleazy boarding house (where the ninja had previously climbed up into the rafters to hide it, _after_ she had accidentally broken his leg with her sewing machine) by hiding it up her voluminous skirts.

One of the things which makes this book even odder is that Kinsale appears to have meticulously researched everything, even the Japanese and ninja stuff, so there's a sense of solid background despite the completely ridiculous goings-on. Also, the hero says he knew he wanted to marry his sort-of adopted sister since he was eleven. Later he mentions that he's ten years older than her. He wanted to marry a one-year-old???

Unlike, say, Jennifer Crusie or Georgette Heyer, Kinsale doesn't transcend the genre in the sense that I would recommend her, at least going by this book, to people who wouldn't normally read romance or don't have eccentric tastes. Though there's a very interesting loss of virginity scene, most of the sex and romantic scenes are generic and use generic description rather than being particular to the characters. The book also loses momentum at about the four-fifths point, despite a later scene involving sharks, seppuku, and a cursed sword. (The plot elements, in this case, are more fun than the scene is.)

But I liked the way that the heroine's attitudes were of her time rather than ours, the chemistry between her and the hero, the sheer weirdness of the story, and the cast of likable supporting characters.

So, you readers of genre romance, is this sort of plotting actually more common than I realize, or were readers across the country picking up the book and saying "What the hell...?" Also, does the genre ever have interracial romances other than those between white women and Native Americans?