Customer Reviews

The Blonde Samurai

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Set in the late 1800's, The Blonde Samurai traces the story of Lady Katie Carlton from the beginnings of her marriage in London to the end of it in Japan.

In what I suppose would be called historical erotica, the book begins with the marriage of Katie O'Roarke to the dark Lord James Carlton. Left to her own devices in the weeks leading up to the wedding at the home of one of Carlton's friends, Katie is enchanted by the treasure trove of erotica she discovers in the absent man's library. Unfortunately, Katie finds out her husband is a debauched BDSM addict and blackmails him into leaving her alone - and a virgin. Various social connections end up leading to a position opening up for Katie as a sort of liason in Japan, just as Katie's father is looking to expand his railway interests, with James as his envoy (and Katie keeping an eye on James).

Katie grows increasingly fearful of a violent James, even as she grows increasingly lonely. She has friendships with various Americans as well as the Japanese workers she's assigned; she has a particularly nice relationship with the Empress. During her initial visit to the Imperial Palace, she runs into (literally) a samurai who intrigues her, whom she later tracks down in what translates to the Japanese sex district, where she loses her virginity to him.

What follows seems more a tale of obsession rather than the warrior-like all-consuming love the author would have you think. Told in the first-person narrative, while there are trips in and out of Katie and James' story, this is mainly a book about Katie's sexuality and her experiences with Shintaro, the head of a Samurai clan. From the beginning, she is the one obsessed with him; she searches for him after their initial encounter and only ends up finding him after her husband practically kills her. Even then, Shintaro tries to send her back and ends up keeping her in the Samurai village because - well, I don't know. What follows is just.. a lot of sex. It's kinky, and I suppose, if you want to put it into a cultural context, it has some interesting references, although nothing that I think you have to have specific knowledge of Japanese sexual customs to write.

A couple hundred pages in, the story takes a couple of head-tilting, unexpected detours involving Shintaro's relationships with both a female Samurai and the male Samurai that initially rescued Katie, which is indicative of some odd and unwelcome tendencies the author has to yank the reader out of the story. There are some strange asides Katie keeps having with the reader that are uncomfortable, generally about masturbation, insertions of household items into places they're not supposed to go and bodily fluids. Also disturbing is that the whole time she's screaming at her husband to leave her alone, she's aroused by the thought of him whipping her; this continues off an on not just at the beginning of the book, but at various points throughout, even after he actually hurts her.

The story culminates with dramatic battles, personal and literal, as simmering tensions between opposing political factions boil over and the estrangement between Katie and her husband finally needs to be addressed. Despite the ridiculously overwrought sexual passages that came before it, the author manages to crank it up a notch and toss in a few cliches for an eye-rollingly improbable end.

The beginning was too convoluted, the middle was not at all sexy or intriguing and the ending was trite. I've read my fair share of erotica, contemporary and historical, and know that there's definitely a distinction in terms used and a general feel and tone. This just missed the mark for historical, and yes, "Victorian" erotica, not because of the way the acts were technically expressed or because I didn't like the way the narrator addressed the "dear reader," but because without the ability to write affection between the lead characters, you're left with nothing more than thinly veiled soft porn. Katie wasn't very likeable, Shintaro was cold and truthfully, sort of icky, the situation wasn't believable and the narration was poor.

The cover was gorgeous; I only wish what was inside lived up to its promise.

For anyone sensitive to it, there are MM, MMF and MFF scenes.

It's too bad this book doesn't live up to its intriguing and beautiful cover. The truth is, it's pretty bad. I love historical novels set in exotic locations and I enjoy well-written erotica. Unfortunately, this book fails at both. Other reviewers have summarized the plot (what plot there is), so I'm not going to do that. My purpose in reviewing the book is to provide a heads up to potential readers.

If you like a slow book that takes over half its pages to get to the samurai village, which is ostensibly the point, this might be the book for you.

If you like erotica-by-the-numbers, introducing every conceivable variety of kink for kink's sake, this might be the book for you.

If you like being addressed as Dear Lady Reader, taking you out of what little story there is, this might be the book for you.

If you enjoy spending money on trade paperbacks and consider a) throwing the book against the wall or b) cheerfully shredding it when you're done, this might be the book for you.

Jina Bacarr should study Emma Holly's erotica and learn a few things about how it's accomplished by a master. In the meantime, I am chagrined at being reminded once again that you can't judge a book by its cover. In the case of The Blonde Samurai, the cover is one giant tease promising a story that doesn't deliver.

The Blonde Samurai is an "erotic" novel about an irish american woman named Katie O'Rourke who is married off to a "cold and cruel" man. Katie is a virgin, of course, which sets up the reader initially to think that this novel might be full of sexual experiances in the point of view from an innocent naive young woman, a promise of sorts to have descriptions of slight pain, and wonderment and eventually non virginal ecstasy.

Katie talks to you as a reader, as if she is Ferris Bueller on her day off, but less witty and not even as interesting and original. It was annoying from the get go. Having been wed to a callous and cruel man, she hides in a armoire or closet and spies on him having scandalous sex with other women and what she witnesses shocks her, the reader on the other hand isnt so shocked, I was bored to tears. When her hubby finds her spying, he wants to take her then and there but not our Katie! she is defiant and head strong and he will not have her ever~!!!! Frankly, I dont think the dude cared, he just wanted to scare her, and then continue on with his sex fest.

Katie then gets kidnapped by a Samurai, which is complete BS. If anyone knows anything about history, Samurai were rumored to kidnap women and ravish them, but in reality they had a strict code of honor and most married women from a samurai family. They were aloud mistresses BUT these womens backrounds were checked by higher ranked samurai, and kidnapping was considered a shameful act, even a crime in that society. I understand that this is a work of fiction, but it was very hard for me to imagine a white westerner woman being a Samurais love interest, and the way it was all written was super cheesy and not the slightest bit sexy.

I wouldnt recommend this book to any woman looking for good erotica. It was just too far fetched, the writing was lazy and trite, and the characters were over the top and unbelievable.

The story takes place in the latter 19th century, right around the same time as the movie The Last Samurai (Two-Disc Special Edition) is set. Like the Tom Cruise film, this novel centers around an epoch in which the Samurai found themselves becoming obsolete in between the development of rifles and a changing political landscape in Japan.

The heroine of the story is Katie, a feisty Irish American who finds herself in a disastrous arranged marriage to a British businessman. She travels to Japan, both to be by her husband's side as well as to ensure that her father's $$ is not swindled by her pernicious spouse.

Along the way, she becomes enraptured by a Samurai named Shintaro. As a guy, I've always been drawn to erotic fiction that is written by women. It's good to see eroticism as it's approached by the other gender.

This book does not disappoint in that respect. As a spice novel should, the author doesn't pull any punches when describing to us Katie's erotic interludes with Shintaro & her indoctrination into the Samurai culture.

The major negative of the book is the premise for who it's written for. As it is set in the 1870s, it is written as though the target-audience is high society female Londoners of the late 19th century.

This is all well & good, but the narrative constantly seems to "apologize" for speaking of naughty bedroom deeds. Back in the 1870s, this book would have surely caused many readers to be shocked & moritified. Nowadays, the lustful descriptions are far less scandalous & are, in fact, almost commonplace.

Other than that, I was very satisfied with the storyline and the twists & turns of the plotline. The sex scenes were graphic and Bacarr doesn't shy away from crass words. That's an asset in a book like this.

On a personal note, I was based in Japan while I was in the Navy, and the love of my life was a Japanese translator. On top of that, I'm a big fan of Japanese porn! Hence, this book was up my alley on several fronts.

Whether Japanese culture or the Samurai code-of-honor have ever interested you, I would nonetheless recommend this book. If women's erotic fiction wrapped in the cloak of a plot that incorporates the mystery of the far east sounds like a fascinating combination, then you can't go wrong with The Blonde Samurai.

The first third of the book talks a lot about whips and chains, so if that's your thing, you'll like this book. At first, I felt somewhat sorry for Katie, for being married to this bastard of a husband. However, while in Japan, Katie starts an afair with a married man. I was a little disappointed in that. She, of all people, should know how it feels to catch your husband cheating on you, but she does it anyways to this other woman. Then, it turns out her lover has a male lover on the side, who also joins Katie and her lover from time to time. The whole story turns into a historic "Jerry Springer Show." I felt bad for Katie, when she had to leave her newborn baby behind, in order to finally straighten her life out for good. It all ends well, however. This book was alright. It jumps back and forth in the story a lot, but overall the book wasn't a bad read.

I finished the book in the early hours of 04/21/2010. I know it's supposedly a book specifically for women, but the initial storyline interested me, so I obtained a copy and read it. In my opinion, Ms. Bacarr's writing style has some flair, and she described her scenes very well (in my mind, at least). I do credit her for that. Erotica? I would term some scenes from the book "somewhat erotic," but nothing to "write home" about. Tension, fear, passion, love, hate, jealously, joy, are all here in the book. The downside? Some pages struck me as unnecessary. The ending was not as predictable as I thought it would be, but how realistic was it? I just don't know...

Overall, a decent read. Get a copy at a good price and try it for yourself!

My rating: 3 stars...

The first and foremost problem with this book is the style that Jina Bacarr chose to write it in. The conceit of the novel is that her heroine, Katie, is writing this in book form to be released in 1870s England. If a book is written from the first-person perspective, I'm not a particular fan of the narrator being aware of the reader to begin with, but then Bacarr completely piles onto this because Katie the author is *constantly* referencing the reader. There are uncountable, "Ah, but my dear lady reader," or "You, my reader, might question this, but," and even more annoyingly, "Reader, you probably remember this dress that I wore." It is extremely annoying to wade through.

The second issue that I had with this book is that Bacarr clearly didn't trust her reader to wade through the first section that is set in England. So rather than risk the reader going through a few chapters and saying, "I don't see *any* hot Japanese sex yet! Screw this!" she shoe-horns in *constant* references to the samurai action yet to come. Literally, Katie will be recounting a scene with her husband, then the action will screech to a complete halt so that she can spend three paragraphs detailing the samurai lover she will meet, the lust he inspired in her, and the crazy positions they have sex in. This wouldn't have been horrible if Bacarr had just done it once at the beginning to set the stage, but she does it over and over and over. It is incredibly annoying and obnoxious, and also left me at the point where the character had just arrived in Japan, and I honestly wondered if there was any point in continuing, since I'd essentially already learned everything about the encounter yet to come. The author needs to leave some mystery, or at least have a bit more faith in the reader. It constantly felt like she was stepping all over her own plot.

Overall, I have no desire to read any more of Jini Bacarr's work, just on the offchance that everything else is as clumsily and off-puttingly constructed as this was.

This is a poor quality book - the type that gets self published.

The erotic content included a almost humorous focus upon spanking with riding crops a historical use of vocablary that I certainly took issue with. They were not called riding crops in those days(the 19th century) but quirts. The book is full of such mistakes. Modern terms are used with impunity as if the author thought a historical novel consisted only of a different setting, but no - language its self is different when you go back in time.

People in those days spoke a much more flowery form of English and there was an acute religiosity and a navivite' that were true to that era, but should seem quaint to the modern ear and there was none of that. This was a time frame when women visited doctors for tretment of female hysteria, which doctors treated using manual masturbation on said female patients. The patients relaxed and felt much better (who wouldn't after continued sexual activity in marriage and no orgasms) Now relaxed they felt much better and it assured an steady stream of repeat business for the doctor.

However, things were very subtle with words like "her sex" or "center of her being" used in erotica of the day. The reproductive organs where not well understood by most people, hence the use of such terms as clitoris and even worse the repeated use of "clit" just destroyed any crudulity the novel had.

The story line is contrived, and does not make much practical sense in some areas. In short this is more of a verbal wet dream from someone with an interest in pain combined with erotic activity, but to me it is not erotica and I am no prude. Authors should use sex to produce profound changes in their characters reflecting what takes place in real life when sex enters the picture. Instead we have a disjointed fatasy romp where there is sexual awakening, but no significant soul in the characters.

From the blurb I expected an erotic romance. I did not expect a salacious "spank book" written in a vintage porn style.
Not quite hard core porn, not actually erotic, this book is written in a breathy first person in the character of the Virginal bride who has read way too much smut. Married to the stereotypical evil noble marrying for money she refuses to submit to him at the same time as she is generally obsessed with sexual longing of the most diverse sort. This character refers to her imagined reader as "dear lady reader" over and over again an recites a repetitious litany of body parts and imagined fantastical envy and lusting of her presumed gently born readers. Having at one time actually read a fair amount of Victorian porn and found it off putting I'd say that this book is not an improvement over the original. If you are really into S and M etc. this book will be too plain vanilla and discrete, if you are not into bondage and other extreme kink the this book will probably not appeal to you either.

I really feel badly about this review. I didn't finish this book; I couldn't finish this book. According to the pr, this author has written other best selling novels. I was looking forward to a historical novel in the model of Ms. Laura Joh Rowland where excellent research is combined with a great mystery or story. This isn't it. I would say this book has its place. It is what I would call a bodice or maybe a kimona slasher. This is the type of book where the characters come complete with pneumatic breasts and genitals. It is described as erotic - that fits pretty well.

If you like this type of book, get it by all means. It is not for me to tell you not to. However, I will read descriptions of the books I request a lot more carefully from now on.