The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

[lightreads]

The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Detective Inspector investigates a murder and uncovers a treasonous plot and fucks a pirate/duke/war hero/nanotechnology superman a lot in alt history England, also zombies.



I feel somewhat betrayed. I was promised terrible books on the level of Skye O’Whatsit and that one where the hero’s name is actually Fulk, and then you hand me this. And I found it inexplicably charming! I mean, it’s a weird post catastrophe England with functioning prosthetics and airships (and apparently vibrators), and it’s all murder! plot! Africa! Random kraken! Sea battle! Orgasms!



The romance, though. It’s of that reluctant woman/determined man type, where he is absolutely and unquestioningly certain that he will have her, in whatever capacity he wants her at that moment. Vagina entitlement, you know? In his case, very literal. Which also comes with that approach to sex where penetration is the absolute end, and nothing else really counts or satisfies. Reading these sorts of romances always feels uncomfortable in the way staring down the barrel of other people’s kinks does. Particularly when it’s an outgrown kink of mine, shed when I developed a taste for relationships of equality and nontraditional power dynamics etc. And by “outgrown” I mean “since I was eleven.” This one is trying to get at the kink under a glossy wrapping of modern sensibilities (less rapiness), and I think in doing so it made the kink very uncomfortable and the modern gloss very awkward.



Still. I did like our heroine, who dealt with the postwar racial prejudice directed at her in ways that were not very deep, but believable. And she wasn’t plucky, she was competent. The hero didn’t like her because she’s different from all those other boringly submissive misses (thus condemning women for being what generations of men demanded that they be), he just likes her. I do too; I’m just confused about why she likes him. I think what I’m complaining of here is what I always complain of in romances: I realize attraction is often inexplicable, but I would like to get a sense of how these people fit together, psychologically, and how they grow into each other above and beyond the groin shorthand.



Also, I cannot believe we made it through that entire book without one single iron penis joke.





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