You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
Lynda, better known as FishWithSticks, is seeking a book that, well, kind of defies description, except she manages it.
Let me start by saying this book was HORRIBLE. Even back then I recognized how bad the writing was. Lots of locked garden gate euphemisms for her virginity, etc. I only kept it because it was SO full of WTFery I couldn't let it go.
Here's what I know:
I read it before 1999, but it could be an older book because I bought it after I discovered used book stores. It absolutely is NOT a category. LOL.
I have NO Idea if its contemporary or historical. I'm leaning more towards contemporary because it was pretty rare for me to read historicals. It might have something to do with she and the hero going off to save her sister? There's some suspense plot there, but my memory is so faulty on this it just can't be trusted.
Hero and Heroine finally have sex, and he uses a sword. No. Not a euphemism. An actual sword. Because what virgin wouldn't like that? LOL It seems to me to make it “easier” for her, he ties her up for her “safety” so she doesn't move, and uses the super ultra sharp blade of the sword to cut off her clothes. I think he did the “silk scarf cut in half by drifting down onto the blade” test to show her how sharp it was.
Once she's ready, he puts a potion on the tip of the handle of this ancient ceremonial sword which he uses to pop her cherry. Seems to me the potion is actually a poison, so he can't use too much, or she'll die. He's just using it to make it “easier” for her. I also think the hilt of the sword was designed just for this purpose. And “Quon yin” keeps running through my head, but I don't know what that has to do with it.
Gotta love a book where, to make losing her virginity “easier” and “more comfortable” the hero ties her up, poisons her and then stabs her. WHOO HOO! What woman doesn't wish she'd had THAT experience?!
GARDEN GATE. You'd think that kind of euphemism would still be in use as a writer's tool (heh heh). Anyone recognize this book?
Thank you NOT, FishWithSticks, for telling me about something I won’t be able to get out of my mind. Good God, they really published this…?
Sorry, Vasha. And they not only published it, but there might have been a sequel. Lol
Can I just say, I LOVE HaBos!
O_O Wow… Just…wow. That’s some kinda special there.
Snickering uncontrollably and hoping someone recognizes this book because, wow.
Okay. So who doesn’t want to read this book. WTF. Someone better recognize this, because I need to know.
Hmmm…makes me think of Beatrice Small’s Adora, but I know that’s not right. Must…find…out….
Pass the mind bleach, please.
I have no bloody idea what this book is called( but I was thinking Beatrice Small or Susan Johnson), but I really want to find out what it is , because I have to read it …. I know WTF, but call me strangely intrigued !
It might—might, I say—be Shibumi, by Trevanian? I read it eons and eons ago, so I could be wrong, but that description rings a faint bell.
Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.
Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other
Man, I really feel like I’ve read this one, but I can’t think of what it might be. Maybe The Chalice and the Blade by Glenna McReynolds? Just for euphemisms alone it could be that one, but I don’t really remember much of the content.
Losing my virginity hurt enough without being tied up, poisoned and…um..deflowered by a sword handle. Had my first experience been like that, I would have become a nun.
Still, I would love to know what book this is so I can avoid reading it. LOL
I’m also on the have no idea what this is but want to read it for the sheer WTF-ery train. The sword bit is new; haven’t run across that trope yet!
There’s also Surrender to a Wicked Spy by Celeste Bradley. Not a sword though. I think it’s ivory dildos of varying sizes.
It’s not Beatrice Small (Adora or otherwise), Susan Johnson, Shibumi, by Trevanian, The Chalice & The Blade by Glenna McReynolds, or Surrender to a Wicked Spy by Celeste Bradley.
I’m 99.9999% sure its a contemporary romance. I would have read it between 1993-1997, but I might have bought it used, so it could be older than that, but almost certainly no younger.
And can I just say I love that half of you are “EWWW! Brain Bleach!” and the other half are “OOOH! WTFery I MUST READ!” LOLOL. Yes, if I can figure it out, I’m totally buying it again. And reviewing it, because HOW COULD I NOT?! LOL.
Hopefully someone can put me out of my misery.
Innocence by Suzanne Forster.
YES!!! THANK YOU, SABRINA!
That’s it! I totally forget she had been expelled from a convent.
Oh, and BLUSH is the sister’s book. I wish they were e-books. LOL
Oh, well then, if her only sin was desire for carnal knowledge, those nuns were totes crazy to expel her!
(I would never read this crazy stuff, but I love reading *about* it on SBTB. Can’t wait for the review!)
There is an excerpt here http://www.suzanneforster.com/excerpt.php?filename=february1997
Oh my god, the review is class act asshattery. He’s worried she will break a champagne glass with her naievete, so he grabs it from her and cops a feel. I can already feel he is going to be making fantastic choices later in the book.