Title: Kismet's Kiss
Author: Cate
Rowan
Release Date: August 2010
Price: $3.94
This is an unlikely tale of love. Our hero, Kuramos, is Sultan of
Kad, father of three children, and husband of six women. Our heroine,
Varene, is a royal healer from Teganne, where they don't practice
polygynous marriages (yes, polygynous, the people Kad aren't wild
about a 'multiple husbands' scenario). She is brought to Kad after a
mysterious illness strikes the people closest to the Sultan—his
wives and children—as well as certain other members of the royal
household. With his own physician dead of an unrelated accident,
Kuramos must turn to his enemies, requesting that Teganne send their
own healer to aid him. Soon Varene and Kuramos find themselves
intensely attracted to each other, but both are struggling with the
vast cultural and social differences that separate them and challenge
their ideas of what true love should look like.
This is another story that I began as a free read on my kindle, and
purchased after reading the first 10%. The price is a bit higher than
the other tales I have reviewed so far (in fact, at $4.00 it is close
to what I pay for my beloved Terry Pratchett books when they are on
sale) but I think it is worth the cost. This romance was unique and
surprising. The story is told in the third person, typically from
Varene's or Kuramos's point of view. At first, while in Varene's
point of view, I bristled a bit at her sense of superiority over
Kuramos's culture. I feared that this book might simply endorse old
colonial stereotypes. But I was pleasantly surprised. Those colonial
views were Varene's, not the authors, and they slowly changed over
the course of the book. The book neither endorses nor outright
condemns polygyny, though over the course of the book the general
sense is that a monogamous relationship is preferred. However, Rowan
explores the vast cultural web of her fictional country of Kad,
creating a society in which the reader can see the logic of accepting
multiple wives, even if this is not endorsed as a positive
arrangement. Rowan demonstrates that things are rarely black and
white.
There are, however, several things that bothered me about this book.
The first is very minor. All the characters in this tale are hundreds
of years old. Kuramos, for example, is over 200. But there doesn't
seem to be any real point to this longevity. It doesn't serve any
function in the story, leaving me wondering needlessly about it for
far to long, only to realize that this aspect of the fantasy world
Rowan has created is essentially inert in the story. I say this is
minor because Rowan has written other tales in the same universe, and
in those tales it may well be that this longevity serves a purpose.
If not, it seems to be difference for difference's sake, which I
found mildly annoying. It was as though the author was whispering in
my ear 'see, this is a fictional world' every time someone's age was
mentioned.
The second thing that bothered me was more substantial, and more
problematic to blog about; the ending. I don't want to give the
ending away, since I found this to be an entertaining read and I
don't want to spoil it for others, but I must express some of my
dissatisfaction here. The main plot arc of the mysterious illness
striking members of the sultan's family mostly wraps up surprisingly
early in this tale. Basically, that plot arc is all but finished by
the time you are a little more than half-way through the book. As I
looked at my Kindle's indicator and realized that I was almost 60% of
the way through, and the mystery was mostly solved, I was puzzled.
What was the rest of this book going to be about? Just the romance?
Basically, yes. Not that there wasn't a lot to explore in the
romance. There was cultural differences, scars from previous
relationships, and six wives to deal with. That's a lot. But I felt a
bit cheated. Romance novels without story-lines just seem a bit
boring to me. I was losing interest as I flipped through the pages.
Near the end, there are some surprise plot twists, but they felt to
me as though they came right out of the blue. There was little
foreshadowing of these events, and I began to feel as though these
was less of a coherent story than an attempt to rekindle my interest
late in the game with some stuff pulled out of thin air. I think the
mystery could have been handled in a more suspenseful way than it
was, and I got the impression that the story was somewhat sacrificed
to the romance.
Finally, the conclusion of the romance story arch also left me
feeling a bit dissatisfied. I wanted another chapter or two
illustrating how things would play out. And I'm not entirely
convinced that I buy everyone's motivations and decisions. We are
dealing with eight people in this relationship, effectively: Varene,
Kuramos, and the six wives. I don't feel that I got to know all the
characters well enough to accept their decisions (and with one in
particular, I don't buy the decision at all as fitting with the
character I came to know).
However, Kuramos was a strong, sexy and appealing male lead. Varene
was an enjoyable and sympathetic female lead, and the surprise of
having a romance in this unique situation kept me reading. I'm
impressed with the angle, and with how effective it was.