This review contains vague spoilers, and was written primarily in defense of Shanna.
I was very young when my mother handed me this book. I was an avid reader at the time, and I ate through romances as if they were chocolate (I still do today, but being an English Major, I've had to cut back). "Shanna" captured my heart like no other romance ever has. It was Belgian chocolate. Call me sensitive, because I am, but this book has been and will always be my favorite.
When my best friend was bored and looking for a good read, I offered her "Shanna". She was doubtful, as she had never been into romances, but she read it if only to please me. She enjoyed it immensely, despite the flowery prose that is characteristic of Kathleen Woodiwiss. We're both huge fans of fantasy fiction, and while there is no magic, there is plenty of action and adventure.
Like myself, my friend believed that perhaps one of the greatest parts of the book is Ruark, a handsome, amber-eyed, and terribly clever prisoner with a mysterious background who is meant for the gallows. Most people love him just after his first scene in the jail cell, when Shanna comes and strikes a dangerous deal between the two of them. He's catching fleas - so attractive! No, truly, to this day, my mother and I still swoon over him. And like a previous reviewer mentioned, he is shirtless. A lot. We like this.
Anyway, the deal gets the story rolling.
The plot moves along wonderfully, and the middle section is probably the most exciting bit, as Ruark and Shanna fight for their lives to escape pirates. It should be noted that pirates, in this book, are accurately depicted. While the romance of pirates is fun, Woodiwiss shows us why they were, indeed, greatly feared when they did sail the seas. We love Captain Jack Sparrow, but pirates were rarely that handsome, funny, and endearing. The story is artfully structured, beginning with an introduction to Los Camellos, Shanna's island, and the jolting the heroes into danger, and finally sliding into a warm and fuzzy - but not too fuzzy - ending. There is never a dull moment between the pirates and murderers and Shanna. Not that she should be grouped with them, but I'll get there in a moment.
The side characters are just as lovable - Pitney and Shanna's father, Orlan Trahern, become like old friends. Pitney acts as Shanna's conscience, which she rarely listens to, and through the loving, if temperamental, character of Orlan, we see why Shanna has become the way she has.
There is no denying it - Shanna is one of the most spoiled, selfish, infuriating females I have ever read of in a romance novel. That being said, she is my favorite heroine. People might expect something more of her, since the book is named after her, but what do they expect? Would the book have been as wonderful had she not been spoiled, selfish, and infuriating? Who else would be a better match for Ruark--Heather, perhaps, from "The Flame in the Flower", or Elise Radbourne from "So Worthy My Love"? Shanna tries his patience, and our own, time and again, but could we see Ruark or Shanna with different people? No. There is something wild and lovely about Shanna - riding along beaches, cutting through the island forests, visiting jail cells, tending infected legs, breaking glass bottles and tying the neck to a long strip of cloth to use as a bludgeoning weapon against an enemy (Hello, badass?) . She has many attributes a woman of her time in her position would possess, and yet still, she is different. We have all dreamed of the perfect love, and that is Shanna's greatest flaw - that she can't see that the perfect love is right in front of her because she's too busy dwelling on what she wants, rather than realizing what she needs. But who can fault her for that? Ruark is flesh-and-blood, dark and dangerous. Were any of our first loves like him, in our minds? It wasn't until I was older than I stopped picturing a sweet-faced lead singer of a boy band as my prince and began seeing the tall, dark, reliable, handsome man who possessed as many aspirations for himself as I have for myself.
Shanna grows. She changes. Stick out the book, stick her out. It is not that Shanna defies Ruark at every turn and makes herself look silly more than once that makes us love her--it is that she changes, a great ability that has been granted to all of us as humans, that makes us love her. She matures. She begins to see the world through love's eyes, not through the eyes of a high-society woman. Granted, it takes her time, but she gets there. And in the end, they, like we, can sit around a table and laugh at how long it took for them to reach happiness.
I, for one, am not always happy to read of heroines who are always witty or perfectly sweet or immediately loving. Granted, those are all wonderful qualities, but not all women possess them in their entirety. Sometimes, I like to think of Shanna as myself in a crabby mood. And yet, still, someone loves her. That means something, you know? She's not perfect, no. None of us are. And so, she is every bit deserving of the title, and she is every bit worth Ruark's love.
Read it. Fall in love.
