Customer Reviews

To Burn

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

 

 

I have long admired Dorchester Publishing, finding I read more and more of their writers such as Melanie Jackson and Trish Jensen. They are fresh, super storytellers and Dorchester gives them the leeway to shine. And Claudia Dain not only shines in this novel, she burns!!! What a super read!!

There is a trend toward the light whimsical historicals and I utterly adore to leader of this pack Lynsay Sands. But while I cannot wait for one of her new books to come out, I also love 'heavy' historicals such as Danegeld by Susan Squires (both Dorchester writers), and Claudia Dain gives one super strong historical.

Writing of a period that many have overlooked in the romance market: the void left as the Romans pulled out of England and the Saxons rose to power - she paints the canvass not only with strong bold, sure strokes, but with vivid colours.

I have been in writers chat several times with Dain, and found her a lively person with a super sense of humour, but she also loves history, and being a history lover myself, I was intrigued recently as she discussed To Burn. So naturally, I rushed out to buy it and am very glad I did.

She gives us two very strong alpha leads. She is Melania, the roman woman who detests the loathsome Saxon. He is Wulfred, the Saxon who kills her father and destroys her villa and hates all things Roman. She calls him Oaf, he calls her snake and they utterly HATE each other. He finds her hiding in a bolthole, and sets it afire to force her out. In Valiant, almost Viking mentality, she accepts dying there, because it would be on her own terms, not his. He plans on killing her, but sees that is just want she wants. A quick death in warrior fashion. And since he hates her and all she stands for, he perversely denies her the death she so wants, and makes her his slave intending to break her spirit before he grants her death.

But he finds breaking her spirit an impossible task. She is constantly provoking him with diatribes against him and all things Saxon, she scratches, kick and bites anytime he gets near, deliberately trying to provoke his temper into murdering her. She continually tries to kill herself. Not as a Ophelia whiner I-cannot-face-life, but as a strong warrior wanting life and death on her own terms, and if she cannot have life as she knows it, then will faces death with open arms. So Wulfred spend more time tries to stop her, than breaking her spirit.

These are two well-drawn, uncompromising characters for an uncompromising period in Britain's history. And this will be a book you will remember long after you put it down.

Thank you the super book, Claudia!! And I am off to buy the rest of your works!!

WISE Writers and Readers Book of the Month for June 2002

I've only read two of Claudia Dain's books. The first one varied widely in its pacing and the writing style; this one has a smooth pace and is consistently written with an ear tuned to the music of language.

Unfortunately, the characters in "To Burn" are beautiful but not sympathetic. They spend a huge amount of time inside their own heads. I'd rather see them doing something that would make me begin to like them.

Logic holes abound. Our heroine professes to be Christian but her sporadic observations of the religion only scratch the surface when the plot deems it convenient and even more, quite unforgiveably, result in a sudden deus ex machina for the ending, a sure sign of lazy plotting and possible disregard for the reader.

In the future if I pick up another Dain novel, I'd like to see her give us real motivations for her characters. Why does the hero linger here? It's never convincingly explained. I'd like to see her set her novels in the real time, where people had to work to survive instead of loll about -- especially when their world has just been destroyed. I'd like to see the dialogue written as if real people could have said it. Barbarians shouldn't speak like college professors. I'd like to see logic holes cleaned up: how is it that one person in this novel can learn fluent Latin from a year's stay in a very confined and limited environment, but the heroine's pitiful grasp of Saxon varies from scene to scene and never improves despite being surrounded by Saxons and put in a situation where it is to her advantage to learn what they're saying?

Most of all I'd like to see characters whom I could care about and not people who seem to still reside only on the flat surface of a romance novel cover. (Although the gentleman on this book's cover is a fine sight to see. Too bad he was posed so awkwardly.)

Okay... let me get this straight. Wulfred kills her father,destroys her Villa, and is a rapist and murderer. He hates all things Roman because he was once enslaved in Rome.

Melonia watches her father's murderer take charge of her home, she is enslaved, and has to share her home with the "unwashed Saxon masses".

There's even a line where Melonia thinks about her father's face was fading from her memory to be replaced with Wolfred's face.

Can anyone else say Patty Hearst?

It really troubles me to give this low of a rating to an author I've grown to love. Between "The Holding" and "The Marriage Bed", I was hooked.

But "To Burn" did nothing for me. The conflict in this book is HUGE. Insurmountable. Beyond resolution in this one book. Both characters hate each other. They're on opposite sides of the fence. North vs South. East vs West. Whichever - they are totally opposed to the other's lifestyle, religion, language, and very existence.

I've thought of trying to compare this to a "Romeo and Juliet" kind of story, but that didn't work. Romeo may have killed Juliet's cousin, but he didn't do it in cold blood. The Montague's and the Capulet's may have hated each other for years, but Romeo and Juliet themselves didn't hate each other.

So, they hate each other. That's the conflict. Where's the resolution? Neither character grows, accepts, or adapts to the other. She still hates all things Saxon... except Wulfred. He still hates all things Roman... except Melonia.

"To Burn" was not what I had hoped for with Ms. Dain's latest book.

In my opinion this was a decent novel, as far as romance novels go. However, there were a number of holes in the plot that were never addressed. One being the death of Melania's father. Just because it was not Wulfred himself that killed him makes it acceptable?? Was he not the commander? Were people not killed on his orders? He had Melania laying next to her father's mutulated body for some type of perverse visual effect, but she still falls in love with him? Second, Melania constantly tries to kill herself to avoid torture and abuse, but Wulfred never really did anything to her! He stopped her from working, made sure she had good food & rest, no one touched her and then he married her, for crying out loud! For all his talk of making her suffer and such, how does that make sense? And finally where is the dialogue in this book? Most of conversation took place in their heads. I would probably pick up another book by this author, but "To Burn" was just warm at best.

Claudia Dain is proving to be an excellent writer -- intelligent, exciting and fun to read. I loved this book except for one thing -- it's one of those "I hate you" plots where both characters hate each other's guts and everything they stand for. I "hate" this kind of plot -- it is just too depressing, but of the many times I've read this type of storyline, Claudia Dain has done the best job with it. There were no boring spots and the book was hard to put down. The ending was very satifactory and there was even a cute romance going with secondary characters (I love that). It deserves 5 stars.

To Burn is the first book I've read that takes place such an ancient setting. I know nothing about the time period, but I was hooked from the very beginning and couldn't go to bed until I finished the book. The battle of wills between Melania and Wulfred was something to watch and revel in. This pair was well-matched from the beginning and I loved Melania's strength of spirit from the beginning until the end.

This was the 1st book I've read in this time period and the title is SO appropriate! The two leads literally HATE each other-and with good reason. But as time passes, anger turns into something else.

Wulfred takes over Melina's home. Hating him, hating all of his kind, she'd rather take death. Hers...or his. While Melina is Wulfred's prisoner, anger slowly burns into another passion. They are always aware of the other, they always affect the other. They can't ingore each other even if they tried-which they really don't. Wulfred's punishment to Melina is close proximity (not that either of them like it) and it affects them both. When they are forced into any kind of contact with each other, even when they aren't-they feel fire.

And then they touch each other in the way they both have been wanting to...and that passion turns into something that will last a lifetime.

Try to get your hands on a copy, this book is one of my favs and I've re-read it countless times. The chemistry is HOT and the dance they do around each other is scorching.

A test of wills to the death between a Saxon barbarian and a Roman spit fire lead to a most unusual love story. If you're looking for something different in the way of romance...read TO BURN. A totally unexpected page turner from beginning to end. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

I've only read Claudia Dain's "The Temptation", so I thought I'd give this book a try. "The Temptation" was pretty awful (see my review), and, well, after reading this book, I'm still not impressed.

The main problem with this book is the looooong inner monologues that go on in the heroine's head. Someone will ask her a question, and there will be a page and a half of her thoughts before she can get out a simple yes or no, for Pete's sake. I like to know what a character is thinking -- indeed, it adds to a book to know that characters ARE thinking -- but not to the point of annoyance. And by about 1/2 through this book, with this inner monologue constantly going on, I was becoming very annoyed.

Also, the romance between the hero and heroine is just not very compelling. Admittedly, I don't know much about post-Roman Britain, but I felt that using that setting for this romance was not well thought out.

Cannot recommend TO BURN, but still hope to find a book by this author that is better than the two I've read so far.

Ah, one of my favorite Dain books! I love the period and the setting and this book sucks me right in. Two super alpha characters engage in a battle of wills that slowly evolves into a deep and abiding passion. I love Dain's characters--they are strong and uncompromising. They recognise each other's flaws and strengths so that you really believe in their future together.