One of the complicated things about romance is that it speaks to all sorts of desires PC and otherwise. In real life, we want men to be gentlemen. We like to be paid large salaries ourselves, and we’d prefer that our men are not collecting welfare. It’s great if they can whip together a pasta primavera, or at least hold their own in front of the dishwasher. We wouldn’t want them to be overly aggressive or wildly mysterious. In real life, wildly mysterious probably translates into something tedious like an addiction to on-line porn, or three wives he forgot to tell you about.
But in fiction?
It’s all different. There’s a part of every woman, a little corner of her heart, that harks back to the time when we were hanging out in caves waiting for hubby to bring home a saber-toothed tiger for dinner. Paranormals, more than any other genre, speak to that particular desire.
If you’re reading a paranormal, you don’t have to worry about mystery or politics (rednecks are certainly alpha, but, um?). You can simply relish the presence of a gorgeous, utterly alpha male who happens to be a wolf part of the time. But it’s just the wolf-like quality that gives him force and mystery and makes him into a wildly desirable man.
Christina’s newest book, Scent of Darkness, gives us a hero to die for perhaps even more importantly, a hero who would unhesitatingly die for his beloved. She’s set up a whole family of them, in fact. An ancestor centuries ago in Russia gave away his soul and the souls of his descendants to the devil. In exchange, he gained the ability to transform into a predator, to be the best hunters in the world.
Jasha Wilder is just that: a wolf. A wolf with the face of a fallen angel: “dark hair, dark brows, long dark, curly lashes that framed eyes a most peculiar shade of gold, and a tattoo that rippled down one arm from his shoulder to his wrist. The eyes, the tattoo, and the height made him look dangerous.”
If you meet someone like this in real life, just let him hop onto his Harley and scoot in the other direction, OK? But meeting someone like this in fiction, oh, it’s wonderful! Jasha’s innocent secretary Ann ( Christina writes the best modern-virgin stories in the world you have to admit, its hard to carry off) anyway, Ann doesn’t have a chance to escape him.
Not that she’d want to.
The great thing about a truly alpha book is that the heroine is simply swept away in a fashion she would never allow in real life. Jasha’s passion is “like a blast from the funeral of hell.” When he kisses Ann, she gets weak knees. But the real pleasure here is when Jasha falls in love, when he realizes that he loves her.
Damn civilization. Damn proper workplace behavior. He wanted to go back into the forest with his mate and show her the way of the wolf.
Don’t miss this book!
-Eloisa
