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reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2008-08-08 05:14 pm
The Keeper by Kalita Kasar
There is a main tag that I use to classify a very special type of romance, the Breeches Ripper romance. Usually an historical (but not always), I consider a breeches ripper a novel in which the main characters are dressed in those frilly garments. This may could explain the "breeches" part of the tag (a woman in bodice, a man in breeches...) but the ripper ones? A true breeches ripper should have also a minimum (or great) component of "forceful" love/sex, one of the hero should give up to the sensual mastery of the other ones, but giving up he should enjoy the act.
The Keeper is a truly Breeches ripper! Thomas is a cobbler apprentice in the late eighteen century London. During one of his few free morning he is kidnapped and sold to a strange man, a frenchman who lives in a secluded manor far from the city. The man is called the Keeper and Thomas soon discovers that he provides London gentlemen with pretty boys to use as they please. But before putting them on display, the Keeper, Leon, trains the boys to the art of pleasure.
Leon is intrigued by this particularly pretty boy. Usually who arrive to him are poor young men from the poorest side of the city, and innocence is something they lose many time before. Instead Thomas is still naive, completely unaware of the worldly pleasures. But even if he is enchanted by the boy, Leon will not save him from his destiny. But maybe, once in a time, the Master will become the slave...
As often in a truly breeches ripper, the most weak hero (in body if not in will) has to suffer a lot, to the hand of the other hero but not only. So poor Thomas will not get over his adventure unarmed... Thomas is not an invincible hero, who always finds a way out of his trouble; Thomas is that type of hero who needs a stronger partner to lead him; he was taught to despise the things he now has to do, but he not dares to risk his life to avoid his fate, in this case the fate is not worst than death. So, even if in his submissive way, he makes a choice, maybe one that he even knows to have done. And then I always find quite unbearable those bodice ripper heroines who never stay put and always arise trouble!
What maybe I found quite strange is that at 19 years old Thomas is still so innocent...
http://www.torquerebooks.com/zencart/
Amazon Kindle: The Keeper
Waiting Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
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The trouble with so many publishers is that they insist on protags being at least 18 (which is daft as this is historical fiction!! A 19 year old apprentice would be muscly and he'd be a man. He'd be a man from about 14-15.
I think this would have worked better if she'd made him more of an innocent rather than an apprentice, perhaps someone who was too weak to get an apprenticeship, or someone who had had a very sheltered life for some reason. But I couldn't get past the rape and the Stockholm Syndrome, which was a shame.
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