The AAR Good Time Book Club: Elizabeth Hoyt’s The Raven Prince
Hoyt’s The Raven Prince, her debut novel, got a DIK from us when it was released and has a 4.4 rating on Amazon.
Here are some question to think about:
1. Every chapter starts with a snippet from an original fable, also called The Raven Prince. The first one is:
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived an impoverished duke and his three daughters. . . .
What do you think about this technique? Does the fable support the story in meaningful and enjoyable ways?
2. The way that Anna seduces Edward is unconventional. Were you comfortable with it? Was her honestly or the lack of it justified?
3. What did you think about the villain?
4. Were you comfortable with the way infertility was handled in this book?
These are just a few–I’m sure you have other things you’d like to discuss. So, type away!
I just finished listening to this, so I came to read the comments. I reviewed The Leopard Prince for Audiogals many years ago and rated it the same as this one: B+ for story and A+ for narration. I haven’t read the The Serpent Prince, although I own it on audio.
I didn’t have a problem with the first sex scene(s). Although it was a contrived plot, the scenes themselves and the situation didn’t pose any ethical problems for me. I do like the way Hoyt writes sex scenes in general.
The book is full of fun and interesting characters, and the villains weren’t really all that villainous, so it’s not an angsty book. The plot doesn’t bear close scrutiny, imo, but I enjoyed the book enough overall to roll with it.
I enjoyed the fairly tale in this as I did in The Leopard Prince. For me they add a lot to the enjoyment.
Moira Quirk is the narrator here, as she was on The Leopard Prince, and she does a marvelous job! I love her character voices and her emotional expression for the characters feel just right.
Thinking about my favorite Hoyt’s.
The Raven Prince
The Duke of Midnight
To Taste Temptation
Scandalous Desires
Mine would be:
The Raven Prince
To Beguile a Beast
Thief of Shadows
Lord of Darkness
I see a reread in the future!
My favorites (i.e. “A” grade for me):
Thank you – no universal favorite beyond Raven Prince :-)
Which is interesting because it was her debut.
Yes – I would have expected differently – her books getting better = more beloved at least for a time.
I love this book. It was my first EH and I immediately wanted to read book 2 leopard prince. Again excellent. Two from two. Hoyt is funny, banter and dialogue and has good character development. I didn’t like the fable part of the chapter beginning…. I skipped them completely after a while. Her sex scenes are a strength as well. I need to read the maiden lane series and hope they live up to this. I have been researching Elizabeth Hoyt since reading this and find that whilst this is almost universally loved her newer stuff is less highly regarded. I want to buy/borrow more. Thanks for the discussion.
I definitely feel her older stuff is better than her newer. I think she took more risks back in the day.
I agree. I read The Raven Prince when it came out, and it’s still my favorite of her books.
I read it for the first time for the book club.
actually, I read EH for the first time. Had fun overall, though skimmed a bit, I did not care to spend time on felicity and the villain, and focused mostly on the H/h times together which were excellent – the liking, spending time, getting connected was so well done. And I really like the sex, and how the heroine enjoyed her wanting and her active part.
Deception by heroine:
he goes to a brothel and does not even choose who to be with. She arranges to be that woman. Why is that so bad? It hurts their relationship? Because he does not know it is she?
I mean, the whole thing is plotted with a bit of a heavy hand, and some logic gaps in how she gets there, and how it all just works out, but strictly emotionally, in her connection to the hero, I find nothing reprehensible in her acts that is not the totally normal weird behavior we come up with when dealing with strong emotions and limited choices. And it resolves quickly.
what is her best book?
What is her best book?
Judging from some posts here, we all have different favorites (except it seems most of us do like Raven Prince).
If you enjoyed Raven Prince, I can recommend Leopard Prince. The story is pretty good. Lower-class male land steward and aristocratic female land owner develop a relationship.
I also loved Wicked Intentions.
The fairy tale quotes did not bother me as such, but I spent a bunch of time searching my fairy tale and myth collection for the “real” story, trying to figure out the original language.
The chapter headings that I do recall being irritated with were in Sophie Jordan’s This Scot of Mine. I thought they were too cutesy, and I did not particularly care for their function as a partial spoiler for each step of the story. In addition — and my guess is that this was a personal idiosyncrasy — I kept having mental flashbacks to the cover of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Wolf and the Dove, which was … nothing like the Jordan book in my mind.
I read & enjoyed all three Hoyt Prince books in 2007, and have bought more than 20 other Hoyt books since, but haven’t managed to read any of the others yet! I just finished rereading The Raven Prince, and enjoyed it again. I liked the fairy tale as well as the main story. I’m not sure I would call their first sex a seduction, but I didn’t boggle at it in the flow of the story. I thought both villains (female & male) were nicely dealt with. The fertile epilogue to infertility is an unfortunately common romance occurrence.
I agree on the first sex not being really a seduction.
I actually liked how earthy and “technical” their first sex was – I enjoyed the heroine who just goes for what she wants in that area and accepts that it is different from what she imagined, and then keeps at it to make it better for her & him. And I totally liked how he reacted to that, getting into this and expanding on it once they were clear about their mutual identities.
That was the part of the book I felt was special, putting it outside the common mould, the approach to sex by both H and h. So commonsensical & lusty while still being very much about making sure the partner is on board and as much into it as they are themselves. A very good mix to me.
Funny thing about this book, whenever I re-read it I feel like it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure. Like, why am I okay with Anna’s farfetched masquerade? What’s with the coffee breath? But I don’t care, I can’t help cheering these two on! And while the prose may not be the most elegant, the mood in the book is very upbeat for me, even when the protagonists have issues. There is a sub-current of positive energy that propels the story and that I really enjoy.
I did not like the “fable” snippet at the start of each chapter. Fairy tales don’t really do it for me.
I enjoyed Leopard Prince, BTW, though not quite as much. And I had to do a bit of fan-wanking (which consisted of imagining a specific scene that did not actually occur in the book) to make the HEA more believable.
I don’t remember anything about Serpent Prince, except that I was not particularly impressed with it.
I like The Leopard Prince although not as much as The Raven Prince. The hero in TLP is lovely.
TLP is a story that needed a “one year later” epilogue, IMO! It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember wanting to see Harry thriving in his new status as Lady Georgina’s husband, discovering that certain “perks” are not unwelcome after all (while other necessary changes still remain baffling and apparently only make sense to those “to the manner born”). I really wanted to see Georgina and Harry making their marriage work, even though they are of different classes.
“co-sign”
I understand calling it a ‘guilty pleasure’. I enjoy rereading this as well. Probably my favorite Hoyt. Fun, sexy, unusual characters. A great read.
OTOH, I loved “The Serpent Prince”. It’s been a long time since I read it so may not remember all the details, but I liked that the H/h were married before they had sex. I liked that Simon’s SIL (his brother’s widow) found happiness after great tragedy. I thought the villain was all too realistic, and his ability to justify his evil made it all the more horrifying. My heart broke for Simon’s grief at his brother’s death, for his brother was himself hero material. Yet despite the angst and intensity, Hoyt also managed to fill the book with wit and amazing chemistry between the two leads. Her later novels have been more hit or miss for me, and the last two, imo, had more boinking than character development – nothing against sex, but I prefer it to somehow advance the story in the romances I read, not simply fill pages that I then skip. For example, in “The Sweetest Scoundrel” the hero masturbates in front of the heroine very soon after they meet, and it’s a powerful and appropriate scene, but in “Not the Duke’s Darling”, I was bored by the characters and bored by the sex.
I need to go back and reread The Serpent Prince. After reading your comment, I realize I recall nothing about it whatsoever!
I reread this a few months ago after originally reading it around 2007-2008, and I still love it just as much as I did then. I’m not surprised that Hoyt ended up becoming one of the top historical romance authors since then, but I’m still shocked by how prolific she is and the high quality level over so many books! I’m also surprised that I still haven’t read The Serpent or the Leopard Prince yet. I should get on that, though I know they’re nt as generally beloved as the Raven Prince.
I love the fairy tale conceit, and the setting of the h&h working side by side in the office library together is so vivid in my mind. I also think the villian is appropriately fairy tale-esque, but not so much that it gets silly or childish. The Raven Prince strikes such a lovely balance of atmosphere and tropes, and I think it was an ambitious tone to pull off for a debut. Thankfully, Hoyt seemed to know what she was doing from the start!
(I wish I still had the signed Raven Prince bookmarks I got from her around the time this first came out! I do still have a Julia Harper one, which was her pretty solid foray into contemporary, but I think she definitely naturally shines in historical.)
I’ve reread this book multiple times and it always makes me smile.
For starters, it’s really funny. Hoyt’s humor has an irreverence to it–she gently mocks everyone in the book at some point–and she finds humor even in stressful situations.
It’s also a lovely love story–Edward and Anna are damaged by their pasts but not limited by those backgrounds.