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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A family and a saga begins, February 22, 2009
This review is from: The Proviso (Tales of Dunham) (Paperback)
It is ironic that one of Ms. Jovan's central characters is constantly informed by his family that "he always does things the hard way." The author does also.
She writes well. Her plotting is excellent as is her character development. But she has clearly picked out the hardest row to hoe.
Jovan has written a Latter Day Genre book that is looking for a genre. It will piss off just about anyone who wants to read the same book over and over again, with only a different title to differentiate each one on the bookshelf.
Readers looking for bodice ripping will find it too churchy. The churchy crowd will be way too upset at the steamy bits. The Ayn Rand freaks will be confused that that this bunch of Objectivists are waxing nostalgic on wanting to rejoin the authoritarian culture that they have run away from.
While the book is steeped in Mormonism, it is about the culture not the creed. It also makes for a wonderful backdrop not unlike the wonderful life-style shift with the Amish setting in Witness.
I am a guy. I don't read romance genre literature. The last book I read was about the massacre in Tiananmen Square. I was introduced to this book through a weird series of events, but I read every word. And I look forward to reading the next in the series.
Well done, Moriah Jovan.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An exploration of power in all it's permutations, December 20, 2008
This review is from: The Proviso (Tales of Dunham) (Paperback)
This was a very satisfying read, and it's one of the best books I've read this year. In many ways one of the most meaningful books I've read, ever.
This book is very intelligent and multi-layered. And it is LONG. I don't normally go for super long books, because it's a rare author who can handle writing a long sprawling tale without going off on tangents that are self-indulgent and don't contribute to the story. Jovan doesn't do this.
It's long, but it's all necessary.
The basic premise is as follows: Knox Hilliard will inherit his family's Fortune 100 company on December 27th, 2008 (his 40th birthday), if he fulfills the terms of the proviso. He must be married and have a child by that date.
At the start of the book the company is in the hands of his uncle Fen who will stop at nothing to keep Knox from inheriting the company. He's already killed one woman, and made a couple of murder attempts on another.
This is a book that's hard to classify. It's about Mormons, but I wouldn't describe it as LDS fiction, partially because of the fearless use the F-bomb, as well as the descriptive sex scenes. Unlike many books with religious characters, these characters were all very human and easy to relate to.
The best way I can describe this book is as a family saga. There are 3 different romances going on in this book, and everything intertwines and connects. These are characters that you grow to know very intimately and even though there was over 700 pages written about them, I could certainly stand to read 700 more.
I can't really do this book justice in a review. There are so many complicated themes and layers going on here that to say this book is an exploration of power and all that it entails, is kind of lame. But that is what the book is about. Who has power. What kind. How they use it. Or don't. When they use it for the right reasons. When they use it for the wrong reasons. Different kinds of power.
Since this is one of my favorite themes in fiction, I was in literary heaven. I especially loved to see it played out in the relationships with strong female characters and the men strong enough to love them and rise to the challenge.
This is a fabulous debut novel, and I can't wait to read more books about the Dunham clan.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forget your stereotypes, December 20, 2008
This review is from: The Proviso (Tales of Dunham) (Paperback)
I don't do romance novels or soap operas, and I sure as hell don't do religion, so it may be odd that I would end up reading this at all. Luckily, it's not really packaged as any of those things--though I suppose it could have been. However, it somehow manages to defy categorization completely. It's not exactly a murder mystery because we know who the killer is and are simply left to wait and see if he gets away with it or strikes again. It's not a romance novel because, though it has the basic formula (in spades, since there are THREE main pair of star-crossed lovers), it's full of actual sex (which I thought was a big no-no back in the heyday of Barbara Cartland). It's got politics, art, crime, philosophy, fashion, and music, but only as much as any of us might find in real life. No, it isn't a book you can pigeonhole. . . it's more genuine and three-dimensional, and this is obviously a world that wasn't conjured up carelessly overnight.
Oddly enough, I see a lot of talk of it being specifically Mormon, and though I found that lent an interesting thread of morality you don't see every day, it's also ALL about the sex. Surely, this didn't come from the same ideology as those fanatics who spent a fortune trying to manhandle CA politics or force feed us the Osmonds as paragons of virtue. . . The religious undertones didn't even strike me as odd until I stepped away from the story and realized how much the rest of it doesn't fit with the stereotype. I'm still not sure how to integrate the two, though I have it down to a couple theories.
One: Repression. I find it amusing that the Japanese have "decency" laws (no, I'm not really digressing--just bear with me) that prevent anyone from selling sex toys that look like actual genitalia so as a result, they are probably the world's biggest supplier of cutesy cartoon character vibrators (go look closely at your rabbit right now and see if I'm not right). Their porn has crucial parts blurred out or hidden behind bars. Repression does strange things to people. Outwardly, it is a country of mild-mannered workaholics who would never consider tossing a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, but it's obvious that this has driven the subculture to obsess about sex and violence (watch Bible Black or Ichi the Killer for disturbing proof of both). I'm left to wonder if the LDS have a similar phenomenon happening--generations of living by rigid cultural mores (The Rule Book) that gave us the saccharine plasticity of Donny and Marie and as a result, perhaps fostered an identity crisis among members who recognize that they live in a real world where it's just not terribly fulfilling to wear a halo every day. A clue is the weird fascination I've seen online, message boards rife with Good Mormon Mothers all atwitter because they've got their daughters reading such a "wholesome" series as The Twilight Saga--and many of them slobbering over it like teens, themselves, apparently oblivious as to what a vampire story is really all about (clue: S-E-X). I guess the message of saving yourself for marriage trumps the (eventual) wild sex, killing, and supposed "damned for eternity" crap. And hey--kids are reading, right? Then it's all good! I'm not sure they all realize they're pushing the limits, but vampirism as a theme seems to resonate specifically with this culture, so something's percolating in the collective subconscious.
Second theory is that the Mormons we see in the media (i.e. the little contingent cocooned in Utah) just don't have a whole lot to do with the ones anywhere else. Maybe Molly Mormon is as big a fantasy as the good little Catholic or Baptist girl, i.e. an ideal that only serves to set an impossible standard from which to rebel. The biggest irony is that if you are under the impression that Mormons as a whole are repressed prudes who have little clue about the real world, you'll have a hard time accepting that this is where the author is coming from. I doubt Jovan is the only member of the LDS who can cuss like a sailor. Impossibly white teeth and Laura Ashley? That makes me uncomfortable. THIS, I can relate to.
Whilst I think throwing off the chains of cultural repression is probably a good chunk of what's behind this book, I think the latter theory is probably the predominant explanation. What most of us identify as "Mormon" just doesn't really factor into the story. It's more of an interesting little sidebar and to focus on that aspect ignores the fact that in general, it's just a damned good story.
I'll always have a problem with religion, but not with people who use theirs as a touchstone for REAL morality--not the stuff you do so the people at church don't look down on you, but the stuff that makes you live your life in an honorable fashion whether anyone notices or not. That's the undercurrent in this story. It is deliciously ironic that an LDS author should single-handedly pen the most blatantly erotic story you may ever read--we're not talking about an occasional passage, folks, we're talking wall to wall sex. Deviant sex. Brutal, even. No matter what's going on in the rest of the story, in the end it all really revolves around this. You might want to keep an air freshener handy to keep the stench down so people don't know what you're reading, because it is all over the place. Women's erotica has come a long way from skanky stag films and titty magazines, but the majority I've seen is still quite one-dimensional. This is erotic--but only because it IS, not because that's all it aims to be.
I usually become so engrossed in a book that I will see the characters in my mind's eye as a movie--always kind of disappointing when Hollywood does its thing and never quite as you imagine. In this instance, though, I'm not so sure it lends itself to a movie version. I think it's much better suited to become the next Showtime series, which would allow the characters to develop over a couple-three seasons and all the sex to be front and center. Hey--Dexter and The L Word won't last forever, and this is just weird and wild enough I bet viewers would eat it up. Might even be good PR for the LDS--if not in membership, certainly in making them seem a lot less outside the norm.
Thumbs up on a freewheelin' good ride--even if it is a romance-y soap opera at heart.
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