Windflower: early commentary & a WTF moment

Great moments from last night's reading

Book: The Windflower

Author: Laura London (a.k.a. Tom and Sharon Curtis)
Page left off at: 137/spoiler level: Low
Part of the Windflower World TOUR!

Okay, I'm not very far in this book, so I sort of don't have an opinion yet. But I do have observations! One is that this is an unexpectedly rich book with some stunning writing here. I haven't been tracking standout passages, but there are many. Here, from where I left off last night:

Far above the Black Joke the sun was a lonely stranger, a flat circle with sharp edges that were blue and phosphorescent. A breeze rich in sea spice ruffled foam from the slate-covered ocean waves and made the ship deck lively with furling shirts and pant legs, swinging lines, fresh cheeks. Under the uproar of the great wheaten staysails Merry watched bright, busy light skitter on the sailmaker as he mended. His knuckles were swollen and red, like candied cherries. His palm was so tough that he used it as a thimble...

I really really love the sun was a lonely stranger and bright, busy light and knuckles that look like candied cherries, and the artistic way the sailors are described via furling clothing and fresh cheeks.

I find when I want to slow down and dip in this book is a great experience. Sometimes, however, there is more description than I am used to, and I'll get impatient and want to get to the good stuff. Like, from pages 53-55 it's all description of the year passing. "As the days of September began to lessen..." etc. I mean, it went on and on. October, Christmas. Spring. Like THREE pages! It was the authors trying to put time between one event and another, but today, that would be one sentence: A year went by. And that's what I'm used to.

Reading it, I was reminded of when I watch an old Clint Eastwood movie or something, and there's a long scene-establishing shot and then a long shot of a bad guy pulling up in a panel-sided station wagon for a couple minutes. It's great movie making, but you're aware it's not today's pace.

My impatience with this long scene setting isn't just the pace, it also has to do with expectations. Say if I was reading somebody like Anita Brookner or George Eliot I would accept it. But I think because I know I'm reading romance here, I expect bawdy excitement. I read an MMF erotica recently and after a while, I couldn't be bothered to read the story parts at all. Did I just type that out loud? Do I have a point? Yes.

I realized that when I stop trying to compare this book to current genre and subgenre stuff, (which is like comparing apples to crack), and when I stop trying to decide if I like it, or figure out what it is and just let it take me, I have a fabulously enjoyable time with it.

(Frankly that goes for romance part too, but that's another post, which could be titled something like, healthy relationship politics vs a deeply embedded fantasy trope that secretly titillates me.)

WTF moment
Okay, the first night I was reading it, I had this total WTF moment. Is this sly humor, or are they seriously setting the stage in a psychological way? Imagine my surprise, if you would, when, on pp 1-2, I encountered this passage describing the virginal girl alone in the garden:

She would have been so much more comfortable, she thought, if she dared sit as the housemaids did on the back stoop in the evening, with the hems of their skirts pulled up past their knees, laps open, bare heels dug into the cool dirt. A slight smile touched her lips as she imagined her aunt's reaction should that lady discover her niece, Merry Patricia, in such a posture.

Setting down her pencil, Merry spread and flexed her fingers and watched as a tiny yellow butterfly skimmed her shoulder to light on the ground, its thin wing fluttering against the flushing bulge of a carrot. The beans were heavy with plump rods, and there would be good eating from the sturdy ruby stalks of the rhubarb. Merry looked back to her drawing and lifted her pencil.

The rutabagas weren't coming out right. The front one had a hairy, trailing root that jutted upward at an awkwardly foreshortened angle...

OMG. The garden is full of penises, and I think the butterfly wing is her hymen! Were the authors laughing in their sleeves as they wrote this? A paragraph later we learn about a dream that had invaded her mind: the unicorn had come again! What??? Does this unicorn appear elsewhere? It seems this unicorn is way different than the unicorn that invaded the dreams of her childhood. This one was:

...pawing and snorting, looking bigger than it had been before, its muscles white and glistening beneath its creamy texture, its chest broad and heaving, its horn poised and thick.

She hides under the covers, but then wants to look. He wants me to ride him, she thinks. Tell me, Windflower lovers, are these authors being funny? I have to think this passage was meant to be funny. At any rate, I found it highly entertaining. Opinions welcome.

Please don't think I'm making fun of this book. It is 9:26 pm right now, and you can't imagine how greatly I'm looking forward to taking it up again.