The Plaid Pladd

Our favorite pastime while driving has inexplicably become reading trashy romance novels aloud in a variety of overly-affected voices. Here is our joint review of the one we finished today:

The Barbarian Princess

If you throw in a few Latin words, it's historical, right?

The Basic Plot
Lydda is the headstrong daughter of a Roman prefect in Britannia who is kidnapped by Irish pirates along with her childhood BFF. She escapes and swims back home while he appears later in the novel as St. Patrick for no real reason. After meeting a burly Saxon named Thel who foreshadows like woah that They Will Meet Again and He Will Do More Than Just Feel Her Up when they do. Then she is married to a Roman nobleman who is not-so-secretly gay and spends a few chapters torturing her for being a “disgusting woman”. Then, just when it looks like Lydda and Thel may have a chance to run away together, Alaric the Goth sacks Rome and kidnaps Lydda. After escaping from him, she visits nearly every major city in the Mediterranean looking for Thel, being kidnapped by various lascivious men, and forced to do “unspeakable things” to survive. Eventually she is shipwrecked on the coasts of Ancient Scotland and kidnapped by a druid who tells her that she is the reincarnation of a druid priestess and that she should lead his tribe against the Saxon invades. So she her army against the forces massed to the South who are led by none other than… THEL! Naturally the war immediately ceases and everyone becomes friends (despite all the dead bodies) and Thel and Lydda live Happily Ever After.

Patricia’s Review
So I was actually kind of impressed with this, when comparing it to other romance novels. Sure, the characters were all vapid and annoying archetypes, and sometimes I got sick of hearing about how earth-shatteringly beautiful the main character is, but the author simultaneously managed to have entire chapters involving ONLY (reasonably accurate) historical description and not sex while AT THE SAME TIME including a wide spectrum of sexual kinks usually not found in your average romance novel (because they offend the 1970’s housewife). I would say the author descended into drink-induced haze around three-quarters of the way through, when everyone EXCEPT Lydda dies on a ship during a hurricane and the sketch druid guy makes her a priestess/warrior queen.

Steven’s Review
Traditionally, the phrase “romance novel” has always made me picture long, drawn-out scenes of soap-opera-esque interpersonal drama with the occasional bland and overwrought “sex” scenes that vie with one another for the title of “most phallic euphemisms on one page.” Surprisingly, this book kept the soap drama to a minimum while throwing in every kind of interesting bizarre kink you can think of without completely ruining a romance novel. Lydda wends her way through an in-depth survey of the ancient world, randomly encountering notables like Emperor Honorius, King Alaric of the Goths, Hypatia of Alexandria (sliced to death by rabid Christians on the church steps in this version as opposed to her real-life stoning near the library), and various unknowns representing political and religious groups of the time. The meetings are pretty improbable, but fascinating, if laced with illicit sex. Light to heavy S&M themes underlie pretty much the whole book, as well as themes of feminism and an anti-Christian motif, only to all be resolved in the end with a loving, tender, Christian and remarkably rape-free marriage and simple peasant life. A little disappointing, at the end, but otherwise a fascinating read. If you like mid-Imperial Rome and drunken Florence King trying to get herself evicted from romance-novel-authorship with prejudice.

… and I can’t believe I just handed the computer to Steven saying “Quick! Review The Barbarian Princess!” and he took it seriously…