The Windflower by Laura London (Sharon & Tom Curtis)

The Windflower lgNarrated by Christa Lewis

The Windflower was published in 1984 under the pen name Laura London, the husband and wife team Sharon & Tom Curtis. The Windflower appeared for many years in the Top 100 at All About Romance, and according to the author of the review there, it’s “one of the most beloved historical romances” – and it’s got pirates too! As I started reading it several years ago, to be honest, I thought it was a joke. The prose is so overwhelming as to be quite deep purple. Indeed, many of the metaphors are either manifestations of “old skool” romance or so blatantly sexual, I found myself laughing out loud. Were these two authors laughing at the reading public, trying to see how far they could go with lush, never-ending sentences, layered adjectives, and parenthetical phrases galore? Another reference at AAR calls it a “cult classic” which I find apt.

No, maybe the Curtises weren’t actually laughing at us, although the pirate ship is named The Black Joke… It took me a while – and it’s a long book, for romance: right at 500 pages – to get into the mood and the essence of the book on my first reading. Yes, I do believe they tried to push the very limits of what the romance reading public would tolerate, and in doing that, apparently exceeded their goal while at the same time pleasing the hordes. Yes, by the time I got to the end, I was thoroughly in love with both the hero Devon and his heroine Merry, and Cathcart, and Cat and even Rand Morgan.

It’s loads of fun too – swashbuckling adventure almost as wonderful as Marsha Canham’s (but not quite). The virginal heroine Merry doesn’t start out brave and courageous, wanting to protect all mankind. In fact, she’s scared out of her wits all the time, constantly thinking “this is it!” about her virtue and her very life. It could be subtitled “The Perils of Merry Patricia” for all the scrapes she finds herself in – drawn into the political intrigue of the Napoleonic era and the War of 1812 by her American activist brother, she finds herself accidentally [*cough*] captured by pirates, one of whom is awfully cultured for such a rough way of life [*ahem*hint*]. Devon holds her captive as a way to force her to give up her secret – who she is and how she managed to get caught in his sworn enemy’s bed. Although she grows to love Devon, she’s also scared of him – it does smack of Stockholm Syndrome, saved only by her fascination with him at the beginning of the book, before he’s become her captor.

The characters are richly drawn, if you can blast your mind through the prose with multiple adjectives, adverbs, clauses and other grammatical excesses. Reading them myself was difficult enough, but hearing them spoken really drove home the complexity. Narrator Christa Lewis did a good job with the almost 19 hours it took to read the story aloud. Lewis is new to me, with a short list of narrations at Audible that spans a little over 1 year. Her acting skills were well tested, and she took every opportunity to use them to maximum effect, with fully developed characterizations complete with pitch, accents, tone, timbre and emotion for every one of the many, many secondary characters. She was consistent with each member of the large cast – she did well differentiating men from women, American from British, pirates from aristocracy. Her “tick” that annoyed me throughout was her numerous, ill-timed inhalations. Often it seemed she paused and breathed for dramatic effect and it happened with great regularity after the word “and” which preceded many, many long clauses in the Curtis’ repertoire of compound sentences. Maybe she really did need the breath, but it happened so often I wanted her to turn off the microphone, take a break and catch her breath.

I know this was a much-anticipated audiobook, and I think the real “cult” followers will find this rendition at least passable if not an automatic favorite. It didn’t have the professional polish of Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels narrated by Kate Reading, or the raw satisfaction of Kate Russell reading the cracktastic Kristen Ashley Dream Man series. Nonetheless, it’s a credible entry.

Melinda


Narration: B-

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fantasy pirate violence – abduction, lashing (off camera), near drownings, a scene with a gun, a death by natural causes ending badly for the body – nothing really too gruesome or graphic

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Hachette Audio

 

 

 

 

The Windflower was provided to AudioGals for review by Hachette Audio.

1 thought on “The Windflower by Laura London (Sharon & Tom Curtis)

Comments are closed.