Customer Reviews

Night Of The Phantom (American Romance)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I very much liked this Anne Stuart early novel. I would call it Gothic in nature. It is indeed a modern Beauty and the Beast which is a favorite theme of mine to read. The beauty is Megan and the beast is Ethan. This short Harlequin volume did not allow for complete character development, but you do come to understand much of Ethan's psyche. Megan is left a little more undeveloped. The side characters are an interesting group! I liked the flow of the story but it was disturbing on several levels.

Megan visits Ethan to mediate some trouble her father caused. I won't spoil the novel by delving into that very far but even from the beginning you can tell her father is manipulative. Well, Ethan is just as manipulative! He keeps Megan in his bizarre mansion with multitudes of rooms and moves her every night to a different "themed" room. I believe any woman would be frightened by being held prisoner, no matter the luxurious settings or gourmet food. So I was a little put off by the fact that Megan just accepted it. There was an escape attempt at the very beginning which led to Megan getting seriously ill with pneumonia. Ethan caring for her during her illness was my favorite part. Another disturbing picture was the in-bred townspeople - they actually refer to them many times as inbred! OK, it is fiction but that went a little too far!

Put those aside and the descriptions of the mansion, Ethan's right hand man (Sal), and the seductive Ethan makes for a different kind of read. The love scenes are intense but handled very well. Fascinating ending. Will they really end up together? Is Ethan a beast? And WHO is the mysterious Joseph?

Night of the Phantom has all the gothic melodrama you could ever wish for. It manages to be a bit tongue in cheek about this, while still remaining dark, twisted, and very sexy. Megan Carey works for her father's building firm. Ethan Winslowe is the reclusive, mysterious genius who designs a lot of their buildings. She finds out her father is a criminal who's wronged Ethan and cost people their lives in the process, but she agrees anyway to drive out to Ethan's home to plead on her father's behalf when Ethan threatens her father with ruin. Upon arriving at Ethan's mansion, Megan gets trapped in a weird, almost otherworldly nightmare straight out of a horror movie, and she gets to play the Victorian virgin. Ethan, bent on revenge, or simply seeing something that he wants, imprisons Megan in his mansion, and the games begin.

Night of the Phantom offers an interesting blend of edgy eroticism, gothic horror, and undermining facetiousness. The latter is mostly thanks to Megan, who's very aware, and in turn makes the reader aware, of the gothic parody paying out. She can't believe she's actually acting the Victorian virgin in Ethan's manipulations, derides herself and the melodrama, and even gets to puncture Ethan's posturing and angst a bit. At the same time, she can't help but fall under the thrall of Ethan and his seductions. And Ethan is very enthralling. He's tortured and scarred, literally and psychologically. He's ruthless and borderline diabolical, a very over the top character who instantly grabs my interest. His over-the-top nature is both a good thing and a bad thing in this book - bad in the sense that he sometimes seems like a cartoon or caricature, and doesn't get much of a chance to progress beyond the overblown dramatics that define him. For one thing, his history, his reasons for being a recluse, for living in the dark (he only comes out at night - so we get a beast, vampire, and phantom of the opera all rolled into one,) remain kind of vague. He really doesn't belong in the real world, and this detracts from the credibility of the supposed romance between him and Megan.

Megan, for her part, becomes a gothic heroine in the fullest sense of the role - even to the point of doing a stupid thing at the end so that some bad things can happen to her. But since, as I read, I'm going along with (i.e. devouring) the book as a homage to the gothic, I expect this behavior from her. So I don't find her as irritating as I would have within a different context. I also have to keep in mind this is a pretty short book, so there's not much chance for really in depth character development - and Anne Stuart does an amazing job with what she has to work with here, regardless. Despite taking the story with more than a few grains of salt, I really enjoyed The Night of the Phantom.

This book was somewhat controversial when it was first published. First, I should note that the Romance landscape for the individual reader was a lot different when this book was published. There were some BBS romance groups, Genie and Prodigy and that was about it for trading opinions electronically. However, there were book stores and some readers groups, where people commented on the book. I found it through the UBS I frequented which luckily had a very clever and interesting clerk as a clearinghouse for opinions. She recommended this book to me, knowing I had an Anne Stuart jones, and commented that a lot of her customers had been talking about it and many of them hadn't liked it.

It's quite clear that Stuart in this book was doing her usual homage stuff-- her books often echo specific genres, well known movies, and/or television shows. In this case it is a bit of Phantom of the Opera and a bit of Beauty and the Beast and a bit of the British 1960's cult tv-series The Prisoner.

The manipulation of her heroine is more direct and physical than in her more recent books but if the reader is willing climb aboard and cling on for the duration it is wild ride. I've seen Stuart quoted as saying that she wrote this book in no mood to play by the rules and it shows.

However, check your brain before reading, you won't need it. Stuart makes no more than a token effort at explaining things. The hero is an early effort at her current dark and borderline psychotic male leads. The heroine is far too passive to fit my taste but not quite as neurotic as her more recent female characters. But is very clear that what is playing out here is an erotic fantasy without the explicit sex.

I think if anyone ever writes a study of Stuart's writing this book will be seen at the watershed moment when she tilted away from her quirky and interesting category romance heroes and began her slide into a very dark hole indeed.

If you like Stuart's recent books you must give this one a shot.

"Night of the Phantom" by Anne Stuart is a wonderful gothic romance set in the United States circa 1990s. In a story reminiscent of "Phantom of the Opera" and "Beauty and the Beast," the reader is drawn into the spooky mansion with the reclusive, brooding hero, and the small town full of creepy people. I read this little book in one day, and was sorry to see it end! Brava, Ms. Stuart!

The heroine is a spirited young woman named Megan Carey, who after years of working for her father's architectural firm, has declared her independence and is soon to leave on an extended trip to Europe. On the eve of her departure, her father, Reese Carey, informs her that he is facing imminent financial and professional ruin, at the hands of one Ethan Winslowe, and only Megan can save him. But who will save Megan?

I loved this book so much that I bought 2 copies
of it. Every time I pick it up I read it again!
This book rests in a special spot next to "The Sheik" (my all-time favorite). "Night of the Phantom" convinced me to go out and buy everything
I could find by Anne Stuart.

I was running out of books about the Phantom Of the Opera then found this one. I was very enjoyable. Read it in one day.

I just loved it, one of my favorites by Stuart. The hero is just superbly well written and his physical description is great, even the deformity lends to his attractiveness. A modern day gothic in my opinion. wonderful.

This is my absolute favorite Anne Stuart by far with poignant story and very well developed characters (expecially the tortured hero). It's simply perfect!

Such an unforgettable book that I also bought 2 copies! THE best romance, Anne Stuart is at her finest here. It is one of my all-time favorites along with Victoria Holt's "Mistress of Mellyn" and Mary Higgins Clark's "A Cry in The Night". The ending actually made me cry!