Skye O'Malley

This book was SO BAD and yet I couldn't stop reading it... Pardon the cliché, but it was like watching a train wreck. Skye O'Malley's beauty is both a blessing and a curse, and therefore the reader is both blessed and cursed with the tale of her innumerable sexual conquests. Don't go into reading this expecting great literature - but if you don't mind smut and want a good laugh at the over-the-top writing, then give it a go.

So I find myself wanting to review this book even though it has been a while since the last I read it. Bertrice Small has recently passed away and I find myself grieving the loss of a wonderful writer. She was known for writing historical romances that quite frankly got some mixed reviews because of the content. The characters didn't have boring lives nor were they 100% happy but who is really? She created depth in her characters that was built through their experiences, both good and bad. Yes, they experienced a lot of bad things but those things made the characters what they were.

Skye O'Malley has stuck in my mind since the first time I read this book. She was a strong, independent woman who faced every challenge thrown at her and show more overcame every one of them. There are many challenges that Skye and the men she loved had to overcome, including rape, incest, amnesia, kidnapping & sodomy. However, all things things are overcome and she manages to find love several times.

I love Skye's relationship with Queen Bess. When these two get along, they get along wonderfully but when they don't then the world knows they are feuding. LOL! Skye becomes a pirate and only captures ships that belong to Queen Bess in an effort to make Bess pay for interfering in her personal life. Who doesn't love a woman pirate?

I think the thing that stuck with me most was her spirit that couldn't be crushed, her independence, her strength and her intelligence. These are all the traits that I hope my daughter has and one of the many reasons I named her Skye.

Despite the many critics out there, this is still and always will be my favorite book. I will certainly miss the chance to see new Bertrice Small books but I will comfort myself by re-reading the many wonderful books she wrote in her lifetime. Ms. Small may be gone but she will never be forgotten as her books are her legacy. show less

Rbrs #3

This was supposed to be the "good" romance, the one that has some popular acclaim and merit. Hah!

The book itself is a no-star wonder. I hate it, with the same passion all the characters seemed to have for endless and immediate boffing. I skimmed a bit then went back to the beginning with a non-drinking drinking game-type system, of marking certain types of passages with colored tabs:

Yellow = dumb, eye-rolling, wtf, you're kidding, now you're making sh-t up
Pink = well that wasn't too bad because at least she was willing
Green = hold on while I swallow back the vomit...nopeit'scomingout - bucket!
Blue = how beautiful is she? sooooooooo purty!
Orange = food glorious food

At about 70 pages I gave up yellow because too much of it was show more dumb. At about 100 pages I gave up all but orange. At the 1/3rd point I went back to skimming. Here's a visual of the carnage (just 1/3rd of the book, I would've run out of sticky tabs if I'd tried to mark the whole book):




This book...rape (of every hole!!!), globular breasts and cupped buttocks, having the heroine act idiotically but then having everyone admire her intelligence, stating something and then having a character repeat with the exact words within the same page, despicable men (every one of them), emphasizing again and again how beautiful she was and how everyone desired her for her beauty and how wonderful her beauty made her and my god she's beautiful...I don't know where to begin...maybe with the words of those who actually read the whole book, the brave, the masochistic, the wild-eyed with anger, the adept at making fairytale analogies, I applaud their determination.

The one aspect I want to cover - the ess-ee-ex. Hoooooo boy. The last romance had a cheery leer when it came (heh) to the sex. I mean, there was a sequence that was followed for "start-up" and the "finish line" and for the most part it didn't sound "bad." This one, the descriptions were almost perfunctory. Except for when it was abusive. Which was most of the time. Oh man, the abuse. To quote Elizabeth, ICKICKICKICKICKICKICKICKICKICK! Ick.

I wonder, would I have hated this book so much if I'd stumbled upon and read it on my own? How much have I been influenced by the reviews of those whose opinions I respect? I keep mentioning, my reading habits have changed like crazy since I started spending too much time on this site. I used to read casually, a swish and spit; now it's become practice to carefully examine, sniff, masticate thoughfully, absorb and digest. I can't seem to forget I might have an audience, all of whose mental dexterity is like Cirque du Soliel (they're in town right now!) where I can't even touch my toes...the pressure! I try to read more critically now. I'm not very good at it because I still boil down to "like it," "don't like it," "'cause." Does that suck some of the mindless enjoyment I used to have for junk like this? I'm not sure.

This enormously long book (not as enormously long as many of the men our heroine encountered) highlighted how slow I read. I'd always thought I was sort of a fast reader. Nope. Slug. Sloth. The formation of stalactites and stalagmites. Governmental reform.

The enjoyment, though, came from reading this with other goodreaders who made the experience fun. Fun! It was making me flip-flop on my opinion of this book, just like our heroine switched from loving to hating to loving to forgetting to ignoring to hating to loving the same man. The idea that reading is a solitary act has been pointed out to me before, by a very neat person on this site (you seem to have found offline life because you're rarely on here anymore, yay! but also sad to me). We all think at different speeds and in different ways, so silent reading locks us away in ourselves. But having this group who discusses, comments, mocks, jokes, and tears apart this awful book made this a social event. I was engaged to the point of wanting to read this in order to participate.

In the months I've been more active on this site, I've seen waves of activity and read of past waves; much lamentation for the past and it seems not allowing that grieving to fade hinders from allowing the now to be enjoyed. Some waves have been bad; lets focus on the good. I've read of and observed the most touching friendships that had developed through mutual love of books and sense of humor. We get great recommendations, assistance in picking out books that are more likely to appeal from the oceans of titles. I've laughed myself to tears. I've found stimulation that had been melting to nearly nothing since all my peers began coupling up and away to staid conservatism. For all this, I can't quite fully hate this book. I love this site. I love you guys. I'm not drunk. show less

Love Bertrice Small! I read this book when I was 15 years old and have reread it many times since. Small's books are pretty much the only romance books that I read. I love the way she intertwined her stories with real historical facts, characters and situations. Her rich, luscious descriptions of the feasts, banquets and balls never fail to please, and her heroines are always strong and capable women.

One of my all time favorite books. I read this steamy historical romance again after six years and it's still a great book. It is so full of events that invoke a whole range of emotions like love, hate, happiness, sadness and more. Skye is a strong beautiful woman who deeply experiences love.

This is more of a saga, Skye suffers much, from abuse, to kidnapping, to the manipulations of the Queen. Bertrice doesn't pull punches and hits on a lot of sensitive areas that some may not be comfortable with.

Rape, rape, and more rape. Here are three excellent reviews if you don't want to take my word for it:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/96800632
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/98673013
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/101170277