Helpful Score: 8
Call me a feminist, but obedient wives and feminine submission have just never done it for me -cutting me, sadly, off from a large selection of romance novels, I might add- so imagine my surprise when, finishing this roughly eight hours after I started, I set it down and exclaimed out loud, "That was a Really good book!" I even bounced up and down in my seat a little.
Okay, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, which was some vague notion of our heroine languishing on stuffed pillows being pleasured endlessly by a devoted priest while making the occasional ritual protest.
What I got was a remarkably touching story of characters with genuine faults, and people who still love them anyway. Well, alright, the sex scenes were a little disappointing and Lydia was just a tiny bit too perfect, I would have been more touched if it hadn't been so danged easy for her to forgive Ru Shan Every. Single. Time. But, it did impress me that their actions were their actions, and no extenuating circumstances were revealed to make it all better. They had their problems, (or, rather, he had his- boy oh boy did he have his!) and in the end they truly loved each other anyway.
This is much more romantic than it is erotic, and if I weren't such an incredible sap, I might have rolled my eyes at the "the power of love solves all" bit at the end, but isn't that what romances are for? I have to admit, I just kind of melted into a gooey puddle...=D
Okay, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, which was some vague notion of our heroine languishing on stuffed pillows being pleasured endlessly by a devoted priest while making the occasional ritual protest.
What I got was a remarkably touching story of characters with genuine faults, and people who still love them anyway. Well, alright, the sex scenes were a little disappointing and Lydia was just a tiny bit too perfect, I would have been more touched if it hadn't been so danged easy for her to forgive Ru Shan Every. Single. Time. But, it did impress me that their actions were their actions, and no extenuating circumstances were revealed to make it all better. They had their problems, (or, rather, he had his- boy oh boy did he have his!) and in the end they truly loved each other anyway.
This is much more romantic than it is erotic, and if I weren't such an incredible sap, I might have rolled my eyes at the "the power of love solves all" bit at the end, but isn't that what romances are for? I have to admit, I just kind of melted into a gooey puddle...=D
Helpful Score: 1
Hot, sensual, sexual. Lydia arrives in the Orient early to surprise her fiance' but instead she is the one who wakes up not only surprised but figuring she was drugged and chained to a bed.....
Helpful Score: 1
very sensual and very erotic
Not your typical romantic reading if your looking for something a bit different this is it!
Not your typical romantic reading if your looking for something a bit different this is it!
Helpful Score: 1
Interesting premise...Didn't like it, though. I can see why it would appeal to a lot of women, but I guess I have some serious mental blocks when it comes to certain themes because when it came down to it, I really couldn't get invested in this couple and therefore I ended up skimming to the end.
The setting is Shanghai, 1897.The main character Lydia wants to surprise her fiance' by showing up at his door. She falls prey to trickery and winds up being sold as a slave to Ru Shan who wants her for her yin. Which is where it gets a little...weird. Yin in this context means (as I am understanding it) female sexual energy. He promises that he will let her go, with her virginity in tact, if she does as he says so that he can extract her yin. Thus follows a muddled series of somewhat erotic/interesting/disturbing encounters. Personally, submissive females tend to irritate me. I couldn't get into that.
Whether you like this book or not depends on taste. For me, it was minimally romantic and erotic.
The setting is Shanghai, 1897.The main character Lydia wants to surprise her fiance' by showing up at his door. She falls prey to trickery and winds up being sold as a slave to Ru Shan who wants her for her yin. Which is where it gets a little...weird. Yin in this context means (as I am understanding it) female sexual energy. He promises that he will let her go, with her virginity in tact, if she does as he says so that he can extract her yin. Thus follows a muddled series of somewhat erotic/interesting/disturbing encounters. Personally, submissive females tend to irritate me. I couldn't get into that.
Whether you like this book or not depends on taste. For me, it was minimally romantic and erotic.
Helpful Score: 1
An unusual love story set in 19th century Shanghai. The Chinese hate the "white ghosts" and the English hate the Chinese. An English woman is thrust into the politics of China and sold into a brothel. She is bought by a strange young man trying to attain immortality through a strange sect of Taoism.I liked this story it was a different setting not too many romance books are set in China. The characters are interesting.I would give it 4 stars
