TEST
I started reading romance late in the day, so I missed out on a lot of the books that most fans are familiar with. Occasionally I get curious, especially when the author was known for being a pioneer back in the day, but isn’t as popular now. So I tried one of the grand old novels of this genre, Bertrice Small’s Skye O’Malley.
Skye is born in Ireland in 1540, the youngest of six girls. Right away you know what you’re in for, since her father is a seafarer and adventurer who always needs a woman to tup, her mother is at death’s door from constant pregnancy, and her five older sisters are all plain, much to Dad’s disappointment. But Skye is a gorgeous baby who grows up to be a feisty beauty and her father’s favorite. When the story begins, she’s fifteen and about to be married, but then she’s introduced to the handsome silver-eyed Lord Niall Burke.
Skye and Niall are instantly attracted to each other, and since her betrothed leaves her cold, Niall tries and fails to marry her himself. Finally he resorts to stepping in after the wedding to claim the droit de seigneur. But their night of passion ends when her father’s men kidnap him, then convince Skye that he’s left her. Niall is likewise made to think that Skye intends to settle down with her husband, so he marries some woman of his father’s choosing.
Needless to say, these marriages are unhappy. Niall’s wife is frigid, while Skye’s husband hates the fact that she’s in love with another man. He takes it out on her with rough sex, including anal (I can see why this book made such an impact forty years ago), but after she’s had two sons, he backs off. This would normally be good, but Skye discovers that her husband’s interests lie with his sister, who drags Skye into their bed for a bondage-assisted threesome that would make Jaime Lannister blush. Skye pushes the husband down a staircase, rendering him a paraplegic. Within a year he dies and Niall gets an annulment so they can be married. Happy ending, right? Oh, no, dear readers. Their story is just getting started.
So Skye is kidnapped and taken to a harem in Algiers, where she marries again before escaping to England, and Niall marries again too (this time his wife is a nymphomaniac, so maybe the third time will be the charm in a Goldilocks way?). Amnesia, jealous other women, every man who sees the heroine lusting after her, sex resulting from watching his stallion mount her mare – this story has it all, and often comes off as a historical soap opera, with characters soldiering on despite events that would leave a normal person in desperate need of therapy and antibiotics. And Skye’s path crosses Niall’s again and again although they can’t be together until the end.
As a result, the book was oddly entertaining. I never for one moment cared about anyone in it, but I found myself reading to see what would happen next. The descriptions of clothes and food are lush and detailed, and I got hungry reading about the wedding feasts (the multiple weddings were good for this, at any rate).
That said, bodices galore are ripped throughout, and young maidservants tumbled by their (married) masters. Skye’s second husband owns multiple sex slaves, one of whom is a “gypsy” who is gang-raped, and Niall’s second wife is implied to be so promiscuous because her mother was not only molested by a priest when she was six years old, but later used for sex by an entire shipful of men during her pregnancy.
Basically, there’s a lot of rape, up to and including a scene where an enraged Skye storms in to save a twelve-year-old girl from a mastiff. Yes, you read that right. None of the rapes are mentioned in any detail and none of the women or children involved seem to have any long-term traumas from them, so they often seemed as unrealistic as everything else, but… well, they’re there, and they’re often grotesque. I’d have given the book a higher grade if not for these, especially since they’re hardly necessary. Even back in 1980, there were ways to show a villain was a villain without having him try to force a child into bestiality.
Still, I have to give Skye O’Malley credit for what it does well. Skye is a much stronger and more active heroine than her counterparts in, say, Sweet Savage Love or The Flame and the Flower. And this is definitely not a book with wallpaper history. But ultimately, a story where I don’t care about the characters isn’t a good romance for me, and the sexual assault was so over-the-top that I can’t recommend it.
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Grade: D+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Burning
Review Date: 18/12/20
Publication Date: 05/2011
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm Marian, originally from Sri Lanka but grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in Georgia and Texas, ended up in Toronto. When I'm not at my job as a medical laboratory technologist, I read, write, do calligraphy, and grow vegetables in the back yard.
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I read Bertrice Small’s “Enchantress Mine” years ago, and it was so unlike what I thought her books would be like that for years, I thought it was a Johanna Lindsey book. But looking back, it was wilder than Lindsey. Starting from the tragic Erik Longsword. For years, I had persuaded myself that I had never read a Bertrice Small novel. Until I asked for help in a book ID thread, and someone told me the title — and author.
I haven’t been able to read any of the Skye O’Malley books yet. (Or Adora or The Kadin.) But I really do want to have that WTF experience… And at least you know Bertrice Small wouldn’t put potatoes in Medieval Europe. ;-)
Only BS would have a hero called “Eric Longsword.”
Only he wasn’t the hero. He… had issues… Let’s hope the spoiler tag works…
I’m sorry, but I burst out laughing when I read this.
I don’t blame you. :)
And I want to start an indie rock band called Reed Penis.
Back in the day, I used to read a lot of Frank Yerby (one of the multitude of mid-century writers now consigned to obscurity) and I remember the “reed penis” being an element in one of his later books—AN ODOR OF SANCTITY, maybe?
Good lord. The reenis is on the verge of getting a TV Tropes page for itself.
Kind of digressing a bit, but Frank Yerby has long been on my TBR list. I love sweeping historical fiction, which seemed to be his focus.
I can’t understand why he’s fallen into obscurity considering he was the first black author to sell more than a million copies of his work. You think that fact alone would give him some attention in modern-day scholarship, or the fact Hollywood bought the film rights to his book, The Foxes of Harrow. Then, disgusted with racial politics in the USA, Yerby moved to France and, later, Spain. I mean, this guy is begging to have a movie made about his life. And yet, I’ll probably have to use Interlibrary Loan to get any of his books. It’s such an odd oversight…
There are so many mid-20th-century writers who have completely dropped off the map. One of my favorites was John P. Marquand, who wrote THE LATE GEORGE APPLEY, SINCERELY WILLIS WADE, and B.F.’s DAUGHTER, among many others. No one reads him today. Even John O’Hara, who single-handedly created what we now think of as “The New Yorker short story,” is probably remembered today only for “racy” novels like BUTTERFIELD 8.
I haven’t heard of John P. Marquand or John O’Hara, so your point about authors dropping off of the map sounds sadly true. Maybe they will have a resurgence of interest. It happens sometimes, especially if their works are adapted into movies.
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what I call “resonance.” As in, why do some artists resonate- regardless of the quality of their work- while others languish? Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a formula for determining popularity, otherwise a lot more authors would be wealthy and renowned. A lot of it, I think, is just an accident- a confluence of multiple factors such as current affairs, the right niche audience, or just plain luck.
J.P. Marquand also wrote the Mr. Moto series.Lighter spy fiction.
I read him, in the 80-ies I suppose, and remember nothing of it.
though the cover I just saw rather puts me off – don’t know if this link works:
I haven’t read FAIR OAKS, but mid-century books were never as racy as the covers made them seem.
True
Still a horrible demeaning cover to my today’s eyes
Heh. Interesting contrast to some books today, where the cover will be a close-up of a shoe or a watch, and inside it’ll be detailed BDSM.
YIKES! Can you imagine trying to read a book with that cover on a public bus?
I’m not the first person to suggest that the Kindle (and other e-reader devices) have made a significant contribution to the explosion of romance on the post-FSOG cultural landscape. Women no longer have to feel self-conscious or defensive about reading romances in public. When you’re reading on a Kindle, no one knows if you’re reading a bdsm extravaganza or BEING AND NOTHINGNESS.
Oh, yeah, Kindle is fantastic for that reason!
Back when I lived in Dubai, someone once lent me a Leon Uris novel that had a Star of David on the cover. I had to wrap the book in brown paper if I was ever reading it in public.
I had a little pleather book cover a secondhand paperback store (that dealt in mostly romance books) used to sell. You could slip it over any paperback so it just had a solid color cover instead of a bare chested Fabio and a half dressed swooning lady.
It was the old skool solution to “how do I read this in public”?
Yes! I remember wrapping books in brown paper too – embarrassed on the bus by the bodice ripper covers. And all the bare men on sexy books… kindle is great!!!
Whew! Whelp, I hadn’t read that one yet.
Yup, I read this too. I can confirm this crazysauce. I had actually forgotten about it until you posted here. What makes it crazier is that he um…verbalizes a lot while he’s pretending to do stuff.
Ann Bishop’s Black Jewels series has men who’ve been castrated by the evil witches who pee using a reed. Her series was the first time I’d heard of this, especially as a literary device.
Ahh, Bertrice. Queen of the WTF-sauce romance, may she rest in peace.
(The underage stuff and the rape stuff continued all the way up through her latter days erotica publishing, including the way she connected bondage to rape – Virginia Henley, her equal in WTF was bondage positive from what I can remember. This just reminded me that there was a LOT of bestiality in those mid-90s erotica novels that came out, including in Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series).
I read The Happy Hooker when I was 12. Xaviera has sex with her German Shepard in her bathroom. I remember thinking that was so weird. And that was in 1973!
I tried to read this back in the 1980s. Hated it. I haven’t read any of Beatrice Small’s books since then. I think I hated the convoluted plot more than I hated the overblown sexual dramas, but it’s been well over 30 years since I read it so maybe it was both. Supposedly, Small based the character of Skye O’Malley on a real life female privateer from Ireland named Grace O’Malley, but I don’t see much resemblance other than the time period and some of the settings. I did like Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s books back in the day, but I doubt I’d like them today.
Bertrice Small is an interesting author to examine.
I agree with every point you make in your review, the history is pretty solid, the food and clothes and jewels are described in amazing detail and it’s pretty much impossible to get attached to any character (despite a grudging admiration for their ability to bounce back from any trauma).
I had read some of her books back in the day, mostly out of a sense of shock and awe. She was an author who dared to go where no other romance authors would go (although I hate to characterize much of what she wrote as “romance”).
I personally believe that she had to write a lot of what happens to the heroines as forced or assault because there was simply no way at the time for a romance heroine to engage in those things willfully or even be seen to enjoy them.
Towards the end of her career and life she wrote a modern series where the heroines actively choose to have these kind of experiences and multiple partners (some as their fantasies). This would have been impossible to do back when she wrote her earlier books. Then an evil Sultan or King had to force the heroine into anything the mainstream would consider “deviant” or out of the norm.
I will say this for her female characters: they all enjoy sex, they continue to enjoy it well into their older years (I think in later books Skye is the grandmother matriarch and is still having a great sex life into her 60’s) and they are no wilting violets. A big part of some of the books is a discussion how women can still enjoy sex even if they don’t like their partner or the situation.
While I’d never want to experience what her heroines do, I think Bertrice Small slipped in a lot of forbidden information and experiences in her books that she had to present in a certain way to get mainstream publishing. I think there were a lot of women flipping those pages equally shocked and fascinated by what she was writing about. Some of them were certainly eye opening for me!
I read (well, skimmed or glanced through) some other books in the series, and it looks as though Skye’s daughter, granddaughter, sister-in-law and sister-in-law’s daughter also get kidnapped and taken to harems, so Bertrice Small must have hit on a winning formula there. I haven’t read the modern series, but I might check one of those books out as well.
Yup, they all end up in harems. I agree it was clearly a winning formula for her.
The modern ones are odd too. In one of the books I think the ex-husband ends up dying as revenge for his cheating on and mistreating the heroine. I won’t even go into who is running the “channel” -but the women have a lot of agency and they are almost all older, in their 40’s or so.
I seem to read Small more as an interesting study than because I emotionally connect with her work. I wanted to see what a “modern” Small story was like and she actually included many of her old historical tropes as the women’s fantasies.
I think she is interesting to examine and I give her credit for bringing erotica type situations into “mainstream” historical romance before things like Ellora’s Cave existed to tap into that market.
What?
…Maybe I should check this one out first.
I’ll try and figure out what one it is. Yes these modern ones go kinda dark.
It’s called “Private Pleasures” it’s interesting if dark.
Thanks! I’m going to see if the library has it.
I hated exactly this contemporary by Small.
The sadistic fun the group of women had and their righteousness about destroying him utterly for cheating made them utterly unsympathetic to me. I remember the “heroine” as entitled and privileged, living off his money, and then getting revenge to a point of horror.
Never touched another Small book after that one.
Agree with Chrisreader – the sex happening in those books, the amount of adventure these women had, and the well researched history – it was really wonderful books way back then, trailblazing. Nothing like them existed at that time. If you wanted women’s stories, then, they were mostly much bleaker – lots of starving Irish girls emigrating to US, three quarters of the family die, lots of abuse and maybe a potential of good life for her daughter… oh well, good to remember, good it has changed.
Yep, her first big book was The Kadin, which is about a white woman being kidnapped into a harem.
Which in those times was actually happening a lot. The Mediterranean slave trade of those times was huge, and the slave markets in Northern Africa a big economic factor – there was even a holy order specialized exclusively in the negotiating of ransoms for richer persons.
The Kadin, and Adora, are much more historical fiction than romance.
One good thing about some bodice rippers (including this one) is that they had a sense of adventure and rich historical detail. I wish there was more of that in the modern historicals.
The French counterpart of Bertirice Small and the like are Sergeanne Golon (husband/wife team) and Juliette Benzoni (with less explicit sex scenes). But at least Angelique gets to reunite with her true love.
Angelique gets to reunite with her true love
—>
.. in book 6 or so…
I loved both that series and Benzoni, way back then.
Yes, I knew more about French history from these books (and Dumas, etc.) than from school lessons. I even wanted to visit Versailles primarily because of Angelique.
I think the first books were great but then it got too over the top. Angelique’s adventures would’ve been enough for multiple series (Benzoni’s Catherine had the same problem). Bezoni’s other series, Marianne, is set during the Napoleonic wars and is quite good. She actually ends up with a biracial Italian aristocrat as her husband who she came to love but spends most of the series pining over someone else which was annoying as I thought her husband definitely had a more interesting background.
With that said, all these ladies and Skye were not passive at all, they didn’t sit and complain about the women’s plight in their times, instead they used their wits and looks to their advantage to get what they wanted. They also had multiple lovers other than the main interest and often enjoyed sex with them. In historicals today, the women are still often only allowed to have one or two sexual partner and typically they’re shown as inept in bed so the hero must teach her what an orgasm is. Gigi from Private Arrangements is still a rarity.
It’s not just historicals. I’ve read quite a few contemporaries where the heroine might not be a virgin, but she doesn’t enjoy sex or is inept at it, so the hero gets the thrill of initiating her anyway. That was one good thing about this book. Skye had a sex life independent of the hero, and she didn’t feel guilty about it.
I hated this book when it first came out and I still feel traumatized by it today. It was just endless suffering – you think she’s about to be happy then nope, more suffering. I never liked the hero or heroine either but it was really the endless one catastrophe following another that caused me to dislike it so much.
Please don’t feel the need to read SWEET SAVAGE LOVE. Lol.
However, as I’ve said before, for us “women of a certain age,” those sexually-explicit bodice-rippers—as casually rapey as they were—were the first time we had a body of work written (primarily) by women, to be read by women, about women’s experiences (sexual and otherwise), unfiltered by the male gaze. We can’t go back and be the young women we were, just having our first adult experiences (in any number of ways), so the books that informed those early steps into adulthood are now little more than time capsules.
I actually read Sweet Savage Love when I was seventeen or so, and that’s the reason I wouldn’t review it. I’d keep thinking “but when I was seventeen, the scene with the oral sex was wonderfully instructive” and “but when I was seventeen, it was fine to have the one gay character be a villain” and so on.
You can’t step in the same river twice.
I tried. I read it a year or so again and found it unreadable. But I still hold a place for it in my heart for how much I loved it at 13.
You read this at 13? I’m awed. :)
I read everything irrespective of appropriateness. The summer I was ten I read Gone with the Wind and Anna Karenina and six million Harlequins!
Where did you get exposed to romances? I didn’t even know Harlequins existed until I was an adult,probably in my mid to late 20’s. And I certainly never saw the old skool romances anywhere. My mom mainly read nonfiction and my dad read fiction and a lot of biographies. The closest I came to romance books were Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney in my teens. My dislike of Jane Eyre and Withering Heights meant I didn’t even try Austen until I was 40. My mainstay was always been mysteries and fantasy, at least once I read everything that contained a horse as a main character. :-) Romances didn’t really come on my radar until I was well into my 40’s. And it wasn’t even that anyone had bad-mouthed them,so it wasn’t prejudice on my part. I honestly never had anyone talk to me about romance novels or introduce me to them.It’s interesting for me to read how so many here started in their teens.
I had a very out there babysitter as well as progressive parents. And I babysat and pulled books from the shelves. I’ve always been an super fast reader and could knock out a Harlequin in a night!
It also infamous because the descriptions were used to falsely try (and convict) a man of rape.
https://www.injusticewatch.org/commentary/2019/the-novel-behind-the-dotson-case/