I hope you’ll all forgive me for getting a little close to home with this week’s Forgotten Book. Actually, I sleep with the author, so you can’t get much closer than that. But I think YESTERDAY’S FLAME qualifies for this series. It’s an excellent book that didn’t draw much notice when it first appeared several years ago.Livia wrote several romance novels for Berkley, of which YESTERDAY’S FLAME is the last and in my opinion the best. (They’re all good, of course.) This one is a time travel yarn in which a female firefighter from modern-day San Francisco is mysteriously transported back to San Francisco in 1906, a few weeks before the famous earthquake. There’s plenty of romance, of course, as the heroine meets and falls in love with a 1906 fireman, but Livia throws in some other good stuff, too, such as tong wars, secret passages, mysterious assassins, and a very neat little time travel paradox that’s a beautiful example of an author planting something early on in a book that doesn’t pay off until much later. And then of course, there’s the earthquake itself, which gives the whole book a nice epic feel, and another little twist at the end . . .
I’ve read quite a few romance novels over the years, since Livia was working in that field and I try to help out with the editing and plotting. I especially enjoyed the ones I’ve read by Marsha Canham, Teresa Medieros, and Amanda Quick (who’s really Jayne Krentz), because they usually include plenty of action, adventure, and mystery to go along with the mushy stuff, as we used to call it. I think Livia’s romances meet that same standard. She wrote four for Berkley: MENDING FENCES, under the name Livia Reasoner, a Western about the Fence-Cutting War in Brown County, Texas, in the 1880s; and three paranormals under the name Elizabeth Hallam: SPIRIT CATCHER, a contemporary Western mystery featuring an extended cameo appearance by a series Western character we both worked on years ago; ALURA’S WISH, a medieval novel featuring djinn, noble knights, and plenty of swordplay; and YESTERDAY’S FLAME, the subject of this post. All well worth reading, in my opinion . . . but of course, I’m biased. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, though. Trust me on this.
10 comments:
What wonderful idea for a time-travel tale. And a great title to go with it. Thanks, James.
Wow, I'll give this a try...Tong wars, sex, time travel, and a writer who isn't likely to undermine herself on every other page (I've noted that some romance fiction writers seem to fear they're getting a bit too Intense with the non-romance aspects of their books, and try to suggest to the reader that they really need not take this aspect seriously, never fear, the romance and/or sex will be back around shortly). While I've definitely read some work that avoids this pitfall and would credit any crime fiction line or magazine (I remember a novelet in the Harlequin magazine FIVE GREAT ROMANCES that could easily have fit into the same month's AHMM), only with more sex than one usually sees in the cf category.
Livia's plot sounds like fun. I'm a real nut for time travel books and movies of any kind. Heck, I just finished watching the Time Tunnel which I'm sure is not on anyone's top ten list.
You know, I've seriously been wanting to read a romance novel that isn't written by J. D. Robb. And Time Travel! I am there. And thanks for that short list of romance authors who write action and mystery. That's my kind of story. Nothing wrong with the Jane Austen type. Just, if I'm going to write one, it'll have some adventure in it.
This has got to be the first review where the reviewer is sleeping with the author of the book reviewed. LOL.
Maybe in the Friday Forgtten Books series, Archavist...[several bad jokes of various sorts suppressed.]
Scott,
I should have mentioned Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb as another author who does some good mystery-oriented romances.
I don't recall the title, but I read a Marsha Canham medieval romance novel in which Heads Roll, as Joe Bob Briggs used to say, arrows fly, and the heroine has her hand impaled by a spear . . . and that's all in the prologue! Good stuff.
I've heard before that there's quite a bit of science fiction (time travel) and fantasy in romance fiction. As well as finding a number of detective novels which are heavily romantic. One in particular I think even lacked a death so technically it isn't wasn't a mystery.
It's amusing that so much SF has moved into romance because it seems like the only SF being published today is war porn.
The medieval romance with djins, etc. sounds fun. Worth digging up.
Silhouette had a whole line of action/adventure romances called Bombshell. I read a bunch of these and enjoyed most of them. Some of them had a lot more action/adventure to them than they did romance. I've also read some good books in Silhouette's Romantic Suspense line and Harlequin's Intrigue line. Currently Silhouette is doing a line called Nocturne which features mostly horror and fantasy elements along with the romance, as well as the occasional SF plot. Most of these I've read have been okay, with a couple of them really good. I tend to like historical romances better than contemporaries, but I'll give almost anything a try. As long as I get a good story, I don't care about the trappings.
My one big pet peeve about the romance genre is how some of the heroes are supposed to be such bad-asses -- the fastest gun, the deadliest swordsman, etc. -- and yet they never actually do anything. Several years ago I read a historical romance novel set during the Crusades where the author kept setting up what should have been some great fight scenes between the hero and his old enemy, and every time, without fail, instead of drawing their swords and doing a little hacking and slashing, they sat down and talked about their issues. Drove me nuts.
"...and movies of any kind." !! Ha! That's what happens when I don't edit before publishing.
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