This story had its good and bad points. I liked the alien world with a touch of magic, and the idea of there being ancient keys and stones of power that represented the different ends of the spectrum. However some other aspects of the story were less satisfying.(view spoiler)[The hero, Ridge, had extremely chauvinistic opinions about women, especially wives, and their role in the world. And the heroine, Kalena, more or less fell in line and played the dutiful woman. She occasionally tried to assert her independence but those moments are short-lived and she frequently let Ridge just have his way because deep down she actually liked the role of subservient woman.These issues are pretty typical for a romance novel written in 1987 but what made it harder to take in this book was that neither character started out behaving that way. When we first meet Kalena she's on an assassination mission and looking forward to having freedom for the first time in her life. She makes use of the brief period of freedom she has prior to marrying Ridge to go to a tavern, get into a brawl and ultimately get arrested. She's having reckless fun for the first time in her life and is completely unapologetic about it. Ridge is feeling protective and possessive toward her but appreciates her good qualities and passionate nature. He can't resist sleeping with her the night before their wedding because he's so drawn to her. Kalena is a willing participant in the passion and, even though it's her first time, it's a great experience because Ridge is sweet and attentive to her needs.Unfortunately everything goes downhill after that. They get married but the time has come for Kalena to perform the assassination she was sent there to do. It's been hammered into her brain constantly since she was a child that her sole purpose in life is to kill the man who had her family murdered, who happens to be Ridge's boss. Ridge catches her going to the boss's chamber on their wedding night and he assumes she was going to sleep with the man. Kalena had already come to the realization that she couldn't kill her intended target and she feels like an abject failure because of it so she confesses her true plan to Ridge, assuming that he'll kill her and be done with it.From that point on Ridge turns into a jerk. He belittles Kalena all the time, usually using the fact that she's a woman as the sole justification for his contempt. How could she possibly have thought that she'd succeed as an assassin? She's just a woman! Why does she believe his boss killed her family? Just because some other woman told her so? Women don't know anything! And didn't she ever stop to think how her assassination attempt would reflect on HIM, her husband of all of 2 hours?? Sure her family is dead and she just met Ridge but honestly, how self-centered is she to not realize it would damage his honor to have his wife kill his boss! Now that she's his wife (by an all-business trade contract) her loyalty should lie 100% with him, not with her debt of honor to her family!It was irritating to read Ridge's constant comments on how women were inferior to men, and how wives should be completely obedient to their clearly much smarter husbands. Basically he felt that the husband should always be lord and master over the wife and the only duty the husband had was to physically protect his woman. Beyond that he could do whatever he wanted, including forcing himself on her in bed. Yes that happened. After the failed assassination attempt, Ridge and Kalena leave on their arranged trade journey. Ridge is extremely pissed at Kalena for her supposed crimes against HIM and sets a ridiculously difficult pace just to punish her. After three days of this followed by nights of not touching her, he decides the time has come to re-assert his "rights" as her husband and demand she do her "duty" to him in bed. He drinks a large amount of ale and then stumbles upstairs to attack the exhausted and sleeping Kalena. She tells him to go to sleep, that he'd clearly been drinking and stank of booze...and he rapes her. Because this is a JAK book, naturally our heroine "unwillingly" feels pleasure during the rape so that for the rest of the book it's never referred to AS rape, even though it was. Kalena didn't put up much of a fight after the initial refusal and isn't even that upset about the whole thing because she "understands" that Ridge has the right to demand sex from her and she in turn has the duty to service him.The next morning, Ridge is extremely pleased with himself for having reestablished the physical part of their relationship. It's only after patting himself on the back for a while that he starts to have second thoughts about his tactics. Not because he realizes that rape is wrong, but because it's occurred to him that it must have been "galling" for Kalena to submit to him when she has so much "feminine pride". He decides that he doesn't want her to just submit in bed because she has to, he wants her to be a willing participant so therefore he won't rape her again. Gee, what a guy. Kalena then spends the next few days wondering why Ridge isn't "asserting his rights" on her every night and becomes increasingly disappointed that he won't touch her. Sigh.When they reach their destination, a healer's commune entirely inhabited by strong, learned women, Ridge's chauvinistic side shines bright. He constantly makes comments about how the commune's magic and belief system are all a bunch of "feminine nonsense" and is disgruntled that Kalena doesn't serve him at the dinner table the way she does out in the male-run world. It seriously irritates him when he discovers his glass is empty and he'll have to refill it himself. Oh the horror! He's also rude to the commune women and wants to leave as soon as possible because he hates the feeling of powerlessness he has at not being a member of the ruling class there. It never, ever occurs to him to examine his feelings and recognize that this is exactly how women feel in the rest of the world. In point of fact, he's getting off easy at the commune. All he has to do is take care of himself. If the roles were truly reversed in this place he'd be the one expected to serve Kalena at the dinner table. Then he'd really get a taste of what it's like to be treated as subservient to half the population simply by virtue of one's gender.But no, Ridge isn't deep enough to consider all that. All he can think about is getting Kalena out of there as fast as he can because she "belongs" to him and he's worried she might be enticed to stay and become a healer. Obviously her feelings on the subject are completely irrelevant. She's his and he's not willing to let her go so that's that. It never crosses his mind that Kalena has a right to decide for herself what she wants to do with her life. Or that forcibly binding her to him is wrong and it would ultimately poison their relationship if she didn't stay with him willingly. At one point one of the commune women makes a full fledged pitch for Kalena to stay with them, citing how she'll be free to do whatever she wants in the commune instead of constantly forced into subservience by her husband and Ridge overhears the conversation. In a modern romance this would have been the point where the hero realized he was desperately in love with the heroine but that he'd been treating her poorly all this time so she might not want to stay with him. That she had dreams of her own and a right to pursue them and he might be forced to let her go. But not Ridge. He interrupts the conversation and drags Kalena straight off to bed to reassert his position of power over her. He seriously doesn't grow at all throughout the whole book.Aside from the romance, there's a mystery going on involving some ancient keys and an all-male cult bent on destroying all that's light in the world so they can reign supreme. For being such an alpha-male, Ridge is surprisingly stupid about picking up on the signs of danger involving this cult. At one point two members break into Ridge and Kalena's hotel room and after defeating them, the one who is still alive swallows some poison to kill himself before Ridge could question him. After that Ridge keeps suggesting that the men were just two random thieves. Seriously? Thieves don't commit suicide rather than talk. The men also have strange black-glass necklaces on them and Kalena insists that the necklaces are bad and Ridge shouldn't touch them but he scoffs at her. In fact, there are multiple times throughout the story where Kalena tries to warn Ridge that something all-black and sinister-looking is bad and he completely ignores her every single time because she's just a woman and is clearly letting her womanly imagination get the better of her. His lack of respect for her as a thinking, feeling adult really permeates every aspect of the story.Kalena was an okay heroine. It was irritating how she constantly caved to Ridge's will and that she seemed to on some level agree that her proper place in life was as the subservient half of the marriage, even though she constantly revealed herself to be the smarter of the two. I also found it to be strangely out of character that she kept calling Ridge a "houseless bastard" because his father had never acknowledged him. Nowhere else in the story did we see evidence of her being a prejudiced snob so why did she keep throwing that in his face? She handled herself well in most of the action scenes in the story and frequently used calming touches and soothing words to direct Ridge to do things. It would have been nice if she'd had enough backbone to stand up for herself and demand to be treated as an equal, but at least she got the better of Ridge in some situations, even if he didn't realize it himself.Overall the bones of a good story were in here. It was an interesting fictional world with neat ideas and decent action. If it had been written twenty years later and therefore with much more modern views of men, women and relationships, I think I would have loved it. As it stands now, the male chauvinist and willingly subservient female stuff really overshadows the whole thing.Oh, and I didn't think Ridge's other name, "Fire Whip", fit well into the story. It's not a name that really roles off the tongue so it wasn't realistic to think people would use it as a nickname or whatever. And it just sounded silly whenever someone called him that in the course of an otherwise normal conversation when it would have been faster to just use his given name. And we're never given an explanation for where the "whip" part of the name comes from. The "fire" half was explained but it in no way related to whips of any kinds so what gives? All in all it seemed like something JAK thought was neat so she awkwardly shoehorned it into the narrative regardless of it's relevance. (hide spoiler)]
1 ½ stars. Dull and boring. I wanted it to be over.I should have stopped reading, but I kept going for the purpose of writing a review, and hoping, maybe, something would be good later. It got a little better during the last part, but not enough. The characters didn’t intrigue me. The conversations didn’t interest me. The plot was based on a potentially interesting idea, but it was not developed well. I felt no chemistry between the couple. I wasn’t drawn to Ridge, the hero. I was bored during the first two sex scenes. Other sex scenes happened, but nothing special. Other readers may like this, but it just didn’t work for me.STORY BRIEF:Kalena’s parents were killed. Her aunt Olara brainwashed and raised Kalena to assassinate the man responsible, Quintel. Kalena wants certain freedoms and mistakenly believes she will have them after she kills Quintel. To get close to Quintel, Kalena must do a temporary marriage to Ridge who works for Quintel. These temporary marriages are common. The sellers of magic sand will only sell to the “wives” of traders. So Ridge marries her in order to take her on a buying trip. They are not in love. They have sex. They are influenced by traditions which say: Husbands must protect wives and give orders to wives. Wives must serve hot tea to their husbands in bed in the mornings. She likes doing that.DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person. Story length: 344 pages. Swearing language: mild. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: 7. Setting: a time when people rode animals for transportation and used swords. A place called Zantalia, similar to earth. Copyright: 1986. Genre: medieval fantasy romance.
What do You think about Crystal Flame (1994)?
I really enjoyed this story, but I was a bit confused at times. The author didn't seem fully vested in describing the world she had created. Eg. It took a while for me to realize the hero and heroine were riding a bird. She referred to it as something else (starts with a c and my Kindle dictionary wasn't able to define it), but she didn't say it was a bird until a few pages later.The whole plot seemed out there - secret cults, magical keys, etc, but it was fun and the alpha hero totally made the story. He was like me husband, you wife, bed now. I don't think I will be reading another JAK book though. I definitely like her Amanda Quick books more and I think this was just scanned. There were quite a few typos that take you out of the story as well as some missing punctuation (Kindle edition).
—Barbara
These Lost Colony books are actually not linked in any way. The only common theme being that they are people decended from colonist ships from some other universe.In this story, the world is still quite primitive and not very technically advanced. The High Healers are women who lived in a remote high mountain valley and provide a much prized medical aid. When they suddenly sealed themselves inside the valley and refused to deal with the outside world except for a properly married wife, the Trade Lord decided to get his most trusted Fire Whip to undertake the journey to deal with the Healers. Kalena is a niece of a Healer and is contracted to marry Ridge, the Fire Whip as his "Trade Wife" during the journey. Her real purpose was to infiltrate the Trade Lord's household to assassinate him for the murder of her father and brother. When Ridge managed to stop her, she was forced to accept that she had no stomach for killing and reluctantly agreed to accompany him on his trade journey.What they discovered on their journey is that they will each play a crucial role in the fight between the Dark and Light ends of the Spectrum and only their feelings for each other will determine the final outcome.Another enjoyable oldie from JAK!
—Paraphrodite
I am writing this review over three years after reading the book. I don't remember too many details, but I have some vivid overall images that have remained with me. I remember that it is sci-fi and takes place in another world. The hero and heroine come together to make a journey that they cannot make apart. Even though they are somewhat forced together, they eventually fall in love. I remember liking this book alot. I was new to Goodreads (and romances) back then and did not review my reads. Now I review them mostly to jog my own memory later on.
—Dawn
