A Rose in Winter by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, 1982

Grade: E for Entertainingly Egregious

As some of you may have been clued in by the naked people clutching at each other all over the cover up there, this is a romance novel.  And not one of your sissy modern romance novels with all the "political correctness" and "convincing settings" and "character depth" and "copy-editing".  No, this is old-school.  There's rape!  There's shouting!  There's bribery!  There's a spunky girl (I know she's spunky because I'm told so frequently, and also because she sometimes pretends to be a swordfighter with an air sword when no one's looking) who is only spunky if it doesn't involve arguing with her jackass brother, her asshole father, or one of the (several) rapist dudes who are always coming around and trying to steal Her Precious Virginity!  There's a duel with Horrible Consequences!  There's class friction that is conveniently forgotten the second people decide they want to jump one anothers' bones!  There's magical instant man-part to woman-cave attraction!  There's at least one chest that is described as "furred" with distressing frequency!  There's a typo on every other page!  Truly, it is a thing of wonder.

However, what there is not is any actual relation to the Phantom story.  Le sigh.  If I had a filtering person, I would fire them, but as I can't fire myself and still meet staffing requirements, I just have to look sad and embarrassed.  I mean, the book is a very romance-novel-trope-deluged version of the Beauty & the Beast story (there's a fire-scarred dude in a nearby manor that the girl gets married off to and must reconcile the fact that he is totally ugly yo with the fact that her lady area bursts into flame whenever he's around), which is of course how I got the last one confused, as well.  Maybe I can blame Amazon for their misleading plot summaries.  I can do that, can't I?  Who's going to stop me, that's what I thought!

So, anyway.  Not Phantom literature.  It's getting put away, though I may have to pull it back out at a later date and review it anyway, because as you can see above, it's utterly hysterical.  I mean, who doesn't love a good story about a guy with a hideously scarred face but also a magical SuperWang?  I read a few passages from the first chapter aloud to John over dinner, until he begged me to stop.  However, in the interests of not repeating this mistake that I'm totally going to repeat again, here's a little breakdown for my own personal use:

Suspect Phantom Literature Checklist

1)  Are the same names used?  This is generally a good sign that the author was at least trying to draw a parallel.

2)  A dude with a disfigurement or mask is not an automatic pass.  Does said disfigurement isolate him from society?  On purpose?

3)  Music should be involved, unless things are otherwise very, very obvious (see 1).  Music being the basic idea that distinguishes this particular strain of the B&B story.

4)  Some or, god willing, several of the following themes should be present: social ostracization or isolation, self-hatred, genius versus insanity, redemption through love, innocence and childhood versus sexual awakening and adulthood, and any form of allegory that they can squeeze in there with a shoehorn.

So, on to the next one.  Which, please, God, I will not have sucked at selecting.

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