Thursday, October 09, 2003

Website
Laura Kinsale

This is a really good website for reading about the writer, getting updates on her current work, chatting with other Kinsale fans, and posting messages to Kinsale herself. The site is pretty and really easy to navigate.

Truly enjoyable.


Book Review
For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale

Laura Kinsale amazes me. I read novels for the characters. I want to meet characters who are complex and not easily understood on the surface. I want the entire book to be an unravelling of the personalities involved -- I want to know the hero as well as I know my own husband, and I want to know the heroine as well as I know myself. And I want to love them both.

This book does not disappoint.

Kinsale shows an incredible sense of compassion for people by the way she portrays human frailty. I don't think many writers could create a character like Ruck -- puppy-like in his loyalty to a woman who didn't even know he existed. Or Melanthe, beautiful, cold and cruel.

How could a doormat like Ruck be a hero we could fall in love with? How could an unfeeling, selfish heroine like Melanthe be someone we could identify with?

Only Laura Kinsale could weave a story around these two characters that allows us to understand them so fully. She reminds me of the basic goodness of people, and she reminds me that sometimes there is a lot more to people than meets the eye.