Katherine Kayne

Letty Lang is a suffragist of the most fearless kind, with a bullwhip, big dreams, and ancient powers she doesn't understand. Can she save her lover from her own lethal passions?

Bound in Flame

b.andherbooks

I will be doing a full review for Library Journal so these are my messy thoughts for a mess of a novel. 

I was assigned this book to review as for Library Journal. I review specifically "Historical Romance" novels for Library Journal. This book looks like a historical romance novel, has back copy that reads like a historical romance novel, and even has a Hawaiian language glossary at the back, all things that indicate this is a historical romance novel. But. The author's note at the beginning makes sure to specifically point out:

Bound in Flame is not intended to be an accurate portrayal of history, but rather a re-imagining, a consideration, of what might have been...Is this a romance? Is this a fantasy? Or merely the ramblings of an old woman who has spent too long in the sun? I leave that for you to decide. 

No thank you. I don't want to have to guess whether this is a romance or a fantasy and the story doesn't embrace any of these genres in any satisfying way.

1900s Hawaii is a time period fraught with colonialism and racism and if you aren't ready to do the work besides following your own personal research rabbit holes, than don't write a historical fiction novel. Don't use historical figures. Don't make your blurb sound like you are writing about a real person (as far as I can tell Letty Lang is made up).

Most readers and book clubs are going to pick this up and think oh, how lovely, this will lead to such interesting discussion, but will not have the wherewithal or the prior knowledge to understand that this book is at best badly written and misleading and at worst highly problematic.

Letty Lang is 18 years old, is a budding Suffragette, an aspiring veterinarian, and SHE'S MAGIC. I hated that Letty's skills were made possible by magic she barely understood and that wasn't fully comprehensible to me, a white lady who is very unfamiliar with Native Hawaiian mythology. I just felt uncomfortable about it all.

And if that weren't enough, Letty is also best friends with the former Queen of Hawaii, rides at least fifteen different horses with different names throughout the story, interacts with other Native Hawaiians who seem to only be able to speak stilted English, and falls in love with an older English "nice white guy" who owns a sugar plantation. But she might kill him with her fire powers you know. And of course it is the MAGIC that is keeping them apart, not the fact he's a White plantation owner and she's a Brown Native Hawaiian who gets to experience casual and forthright racism throughout the story. Oh and there's a polo match, and a ball, and some other sort of horse race, and a magic white donkey riding lady who appears sometimes, and a dog named Rosebud, and a bad guy who wants to sabotage the nice White Guy for some reason and is mean to horses and kidnaps Letty and tortures her. SO MUCH STUFF. And the Hawaiian Ladies' Riding Society is barely mentioned, and again should perhaps been the focus of the story?

Basically this felt like it should have been a YA fantasy novel that took inspiration from Hawaiian myth, took more responsibility for not being "own voices," and just really shouldn't be out here masquerading as an Adult Historical Romance novel (there is one explicit sex scene).

Erin 

Part of me just wants to admit this book is not for me, and it was never going to be for me. Knowing this I should not have read it, and I should just rate it and move on without really going deep into what did or did not work. Then again, I'm tempted to say that any book that isn't within the parameters of what I usually read has the potential to convince me otherwise. I've picked up books on scientific history knowing full well I had no interest, and ended up loving it. I've not read many romance novels, but I have the full confidence that if I read the right one, I'll be on board in no time.

That's a long-winded and frankly unnecessary way to say this book wasn't the one. It’s not for me, it was never going to be for me, and despite my hopes and dreams, didn't sway me to the dark side. I don't know if this is a good romance novel. Maybe it is. But I can still tell you my observations and from that, you can decide if it's up your alley.

My first point is that I still do not understand Letty’s powers (neither does she, which is another problem) even after reading the book. She has flames that run up and down her back, although I am unsure if they are metaphorical flames or actual ones. According to the book summary, she's a "Gate to the healing fires of the land", but nowhere does it describe what that actually means? She also has an intimate connection to animals and can apparently speed up and/or assist in their healing, which I assume is related to being a Gate, but it's never exclusively said that is what Gates are supposed to do. Considering that the Princess Kehokulani (annoyingly referred to as Princess K throughout the book) also is a Gate, but for truth instead of fire, which doesn't clear it up at all. Truth and fire are two very different categories of things. Letty doesn't understand her powers or her role at all at the beginning, which is fine, but she almost knows even less about it by the time the book ends, which made it feel like nothing at all had been accomplished over the course of the story. 

I didn't find that the story or the characters were all that riveting. For a historical fantasy romance novel, by the halfway point we should be somewhere, but by Bound in Flame's halfway point, I was ready to fall asleep. And you can't tell me that it goes slowly because it takes place in 1909, and life just went slower then. I've read hundreds of historical novels. I feel comfortable enough to call myself an expert on them. It did not need to be this painfully boring. What is interesting though is that I have a bit of conflicting opinions on the writing. On one hand, it was exhausting. We read from both Timothy and Letty's perspectives, but often it switched from one to the other mid-page. I don't mind multiple perspectives, but I need more of a distinction between the two if you are going to flip back and forth. The pacing of the story is also a bit touch and go. Whole chapters are dedicated to one scene or conversation, but then whole journeys go by in a few sentences. Part of me wants to chalk this up to the time period, but it still felt unnatural. But on the other hand, this book doesn’t need to be the next Great American Novel, so perhaps none of this matters at all and my expectations are unfairly high.

My final gripe is the Hawaiian-ness of it all. It's clear to me that the author is a big fan of Hawaii and its culture. She clearly has spent a lot of time there immersed among the locals, more of an expat than visitor. But it feels like now she's trying to prove it which isn’t necessary. I'm worried that the ridiculously broken English and "savageness" of her native Hawaiian characters border on stereotypically racist. She also shoves in Hawaiian words wherever she can, in places in conversation that I know it would never come up naturally. It felt like in movies when characters have explanatory dialogue that is in no way natural, but instead is supposed to provide context to the viewer. I don't think the author had any malicious intent in doing this, but it felt a bit overboard. I think she was trying to immerse the reader and make sure they never forgot where they were or what her characters' heritages were, but instead it felt excessive and unnecessary. No one is going to forget this book takes place in Hawaii, I promise you. The language itself, apart from what I mentioned above, is too modern for the time period, which is a critique I have for a lot of historical novels. You cannot include modern words and inflections into historical dialogue. Language evolves and they don't speak like we do. I also had a problem with the exorbitant number of sentence fragments in the text. Prose cannot have sentence fragments. Dialogue, sure, but not your narratives. Speaking and writing are two different forms of communication and need to be treated as such. It made the book feel amateur and unfinished. 

As far as the romance goes, I'm going to leave that largely up to you. It didn't feel like there was much romance going on, even if its 1909. Everyone kept saying they saw sparks fly between the two main characters, and all I read between them were a handle of friendly gestures. And if you're looking for explicit, sweaty, Hawaiian smut between the two, you won't get it here. Letty and her beau don't even kiss until two thirds of the way through the book, and the only explicit scene is at the end. It honestly makes me wonder who this book is supposed to be for? Romance readers will be disappointed in the lack of descriptive romance. For a fantasy novel, the magic is never explained or elaborated upon. And as for historical fiction, the writer makes it clear (both in the writing and in her afterword) that it's entirely fictional and not based upon anyone at all - despite certainly feeling like it’s supposed to be. It makes the overall experience disappointing. 

Anyway, I think the perfect audience for this book are those who like to travel back in time with a little bit of “will the won’t they” while on holiday at the beach. In other words, I think the ideal reader who will appreciate this book are retirees with a holiday home on Maui. Essentially, the author wrote what she wanted to read and that’s great. I wish it didn’t have so many stereotypes, and I wish Timothy Rowley didn’t have a white saviour complex to him. 
I won’t read the rest of the promised series, but if this sounds like your thing, feel free to pick it up.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Bound in Flame

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