Fairest of Them All cover, Fairest of them all

Fairest of Them All

Ugly as the cover is I have to give it credit for two things: the reference, via the mirror and rose, the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, from which the story takes a certain inspiration, and the fact that the heaving bosoms and impossible clinch (amongst some flowers in equally unbelievable perspective) are hidden behind it.

As the title of this charming medieval implies, the story harks back to a couple of favorite fairy tales, Snow White, and Beauty and the Beast. Holly de Chastel who when she checks her mirror sees a woman so beautiful that she fears both that men will never love her for anything but her face and figure, and worse, that there isn't anything else to attract them. The character of her ridiculously indulgent father (who possesses more than a nodding kinship with the Prince's parent in Disney's Cinderella) immediately sets a light, humorous tone, and prepares the reader not to expect excruciating fidelity to the 14th ca.

Indulgent and foolish her father may be, but he is determined to keep the promise made to his dead wife to marry off his beautiful daughter. Desparate, he offers her (and a huge dowry) in tourney. Equally desparate, she disguises herself as a hideous old hag to avoid her fate. Enter Austen of Gavenmore, under a curse to follow his family's habit of marrying---and then murdering---a beautiful woman. He's also broke, and so he reluctantly jousts for the ugly, but well dowered woman, even though his heart yearns for the beautiful singer of Welsh lullabies who knocked him out cold the night before.

Their plans knocked askew, Holly and her father nevertheless carry on with the joust, and Holly marries the winner, who may be a huge Welsh boor, but at least fights with honor. She isn't ready for the more intimate aspects of marriage, however, and begs the assistance of her truly ugly nurse, Elspeth, and the family priest, the pious, priggish Nathanial, to help her continue her disguise. I must confess I got awfully tired reading about her the aching globes of her glorious breasts welcoming the gentle caresses of the evening breezes after being cruelly confined all day...the book does suffer from a good deal of purple prose, but at least it restrains itself from being turgid purple prose.

As Holly gets to know her barbaric spouse better, she comes to the conclusion that he's really a rather decent sort, and sets out to woo him with charm, hard work, and virtue. And, in spite of her ugliness, he slowly becomes more attracted to her, until, of course, he inevitably discovers her secret. This portion of the book was my favorite, and I thought the story was really shaping up to be your classic Beauty/Beast tale, wherein the beauty (Gaven, we discover, cleans up rather nicely) discovers the Beast is wonderful after all.

Alas, the second half of the book took an abrupt turn: Gaven, fearing that he will kill her as his ancestors have killed---or driven to suicide---all his maternal forebears, locks her up in a tower. (Shades of Rapunzel...I enjoyed identifying the various fairy tale references) However, this drove home two of the problems I tend to have with medieval romances---one is that I read some in the 80s, and though I mercifully forgotten most of the details, vague memories of hapless, helpless heroines and brutish, rape inclined males still permeate my memories. The other is that I belonged to the SCA just long enough to get a sense of how dirty, nasty, brutish and short life was back then. I can more or less suspend my disbelief about that when reading regencies; it helps, I suppose that some aspects of life during the 1800s, such as hairy armpits, don't bother me, and I figure by the regency period technology had improved adequately that hot water for baths was relatively abundent, at least for the upper classes. I don't think the same held true for keeps.

This book, by having some characters so broadly drawn that I figured the author had to be writing them tongue in cheek, helped me step past that. (Gavin chews wintergreen to keep his breath fresh, too. I have no idea how realistic that is, but it certainly helped my imagination during all the kissing.) However, I get antsy when I miss my jog for even one day, and though there are days when I don't leave the house at all, they're pretty few and far between. And Holly, not surprisingly, spends a lot of her time moping. After having spent so much of the book scrubbing, waxing and polishing,---as well as building trust between Gaven and her, along with her erratic forays into housework---(and thereby finally working enough to realistically get herself into shape) then I had to watch all that fitness melt away again.

(Actually, her imprisonment wasn't nearly so bad for her as it would be for me, as she wasn't allowed to let the sun on her creamy complexion during her adulthood. Of all the words Medeiros over used, `creamy' or variants had to be the absolute worst. Besides which I tend to think of creamy as sort of a yellow or ivory, not the pale white that the author was obviously striving for. However, so far as I could tell she never did anything to get into shape, so why was her figure so wonderful? So it's sour grapes---but if I have to bust my butt even to maintain my quite mediocre figure, then I'd like these gorgeous types to at least do a little something to justify theirs. Holly sat around all the time, and sounded thin and flabby to me.)

As it happens, her husband did at least have the decency to feel for the cruelty of locking her up, though I would have liked to have seen a little more of his remorse. And I positively felt his nightime frolics during this period of the story with her were either out of character or not adequately psychologically based. (There was some effort at justifying them, just not enough of it, or enough emotion in it.) Naturally, the slowly developing confidence Holly has in her character gets lost at this point, as the book focuses solely upon her beauty and his curse. I really wished the characters could have continued their slow steps, continuing to trust each other, rather than devolving into this battle of sexual wills.

However, she finally manages to get out, and though if the last bits had something of that tacked on/rushed through sense to them, at least the characters were starting to show some of their customary wit. (They did have some lovely repartee, but not nearly enough of it---I would have willingly traded all the sex scenes for five or six really extended dialogs...) I really liked both the characters, appreciating Gaven's patience, generosity, and refreshing lack of brutal machismo, (though he's by no means a wimp) and Holly's spirit and occasionally tart humor, but felt that the author never quite managed to push them all the way to the wall---that kind of frustration is hard to bear, when you almost but not quite get the entire picture. two and a half stars.

Sylvus Tarn

Last modified: Thu Sep 10 22:57:03 EDT 1998

Sylvus Tarn