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The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale
 | The Shadow and the Star Laura Kinsale Date: 1991-10-01 — 7.99 — Book Rating: |
A+
The Shadow and the Star is an excellent example of "intelligent romance;" layered, complex, lyrically written, and full of historical detail, this is the type of book to give to anyone who scoffs at romance novels or calls them "chick porn."
Unfortunately, when said scoffer asks what the book is about, you'll have to say, "the relationship between a proper Victorian lady and a expatriot English ninja." Which sounds absurd.
Leda Etoile is an orphan, or perhaps worse; at any rate, a woman of no name. Raised within the circle of proper English ladies, she absorbed their values and morals, but she couldn't absorb their social consequence. When her foster mother dies, Leda is left to live independently. She settles on a career as a shopwoman, but she finds it hard to make ends meet. When Madame Elise, her employer, demands that she purchase a new dress for her role in the shop, it stretches her budget to the breaking point. Madame Elise suggests (indirectly and discreetly) that she supplement her income by prostituting herself.
Meanwhile Samuel Gerard, an English orphan and foster child of the Marquess and Marchioness of Ashland, has accompanied his foster family to England from Hawaii for Victoria's Jubilee celebration. Tess, Lady Ashland, and Lady Catherine, his family, desire to be reoutfitted at Madame Elise's. While there, Samuel sees Leda for the first time - in daylight.
Samuel is well acquainted with Leda's face, but only by candlelight. He has been using her rented attic room as a storage place for a dangerous game he is playing - stealing important artifacts various diplomatic groups have brought to be presented to Queen Victoria. He steals them and transplants them in scandalous places, and then sends word to the police where they can be found, in order to bring attention to the plight of children who are being used and molested in hellish procurement dens. Samuel, you see, was once one of these children, before Lady Ashland rescued him.
Leda is unaware of his activities. Samuel is as silent as a shadow; he has trained with the Ashland family butler in Japanese fighting and concealment techniques since early adolescence. But then one night she shifts the furniture around in her room, and Samuel makes an error - one that almost results in her death, and could very well result in social ruin.
This all sounds complicated, and it is. The book has several settings - various places in England and Hawaii - and Samuel and Leda are fully versed in completely different cultures and manners - those of upperclass English and the Japanese. It's a tall order for an author to make one part of history come alive, but Kinsale manages to infuse life and authenticity into three different aspects of one era. All the details are there - the language, the social practices and conventions, the philosophies and biases of these different traditions. Seeing how these cultures interact with each other is also fascinating.
If the settings and historical details are complex, so are the characters. Samuel is strikingly handsome, strong, intelligent, and amazingly able, but he's internally damaged from his childhood experiences. He believes everything good about him is external, that inside he is digusting. Leda is outwardly vulnerable, but inwardly strong and resolute. Her inner compass never fails her. She has a certaintly about her that stays her through the difficulties of her life. She is also kind and sensitive and courageous. The two of them mirror each other - both orphans, both caught between places in society by the differences in their upbringings and their initial stations in life. But she is strong where he is weak and vice versa.
Revealing more about the story would ruin the journey. Suffice it to say that they are both thrown out of their element and come to trust and respect the other's abilities and wisdom. Along the way they fall in love in the sweetest, most touching way imaginable. This is romance at its finest. The only caveat to giving this book to a scoffer to convert them is that there are few books of this caliber in any genre; anything they follow up with will, of necessity, be a disappointment.
(For more commentary on this book, including spoilers, go here.)