We're all just dancers on the Devil's Dance Floor...

As I promised yesterday...today I will rant on the overuse of the word "devil" in both the title and and names/nicknames of characters within historical romance novels. I don't really read anything contemporary so I honestly don't know if that is a problem in those novels as well I think what annoys me the most is the "clever" way authors think they are making their demonic references. I understand that every girl fantasizes that her womanly wiles will change a bad boys (who of course was already good at heart, simply misunderstood by everyone else), but do we blatantly need the reference. I have had my fill of Damiens and Luciens...not to mention those that simply have the nickname devil or lucifer. On a similar note, I also have to protest the excess of the names Duncan and Alec. Apparently everyone in the highlands has the name Duncan. Makes it convient I guess and at least I know how to pronounce it.. far batter than Alleyne. Who knows what that one is supposed to be.
On a completely different nore, I have read the most amusing review on Amazon.com ever written. Crossroads of Twilight remains one of the most painful books I have ever read; apparently it was even worse for W. Larson of Pennsylvania. He begins with an amusing bit on senilty and then goes on to discuss a bit about other bad books he has read, before then describing the pain that was the 10th book of the Wheel of Time series. Here I quote...

"If you haven't read it, but feel you must, find a willing and desperate third world peasant to outsource the job to - don't worry if he can't read English, as I'm not sure Mr. Jordan is writing in English anymore. Contact the now insane, babbling unfortunate at whatever asylum or holding cell he has been confined to, and get his summary of the novel. Or perhaps your hireling is now the village shaman, haven taken to insane gibbering, fits of palsy, and random bouts of self-mutilation. I can foresee a new religion spreading across the Far East, as gibbering lunatics, clutching their holy hardcover talisman, the Crossroads of Twilight tightly to their chests, march erratically through barren wastelands. While smoothing their robes. And drinking Spiced Wine. And telling Sparky their talking, invisible cow just how that imaginary wine tasted. "
See full transcript here.

There is more including a bit about ebay and a comment about an assclown, but I hate to give it all away. As mastercard would say...Hardcover copy of book: $19.77 on Amazon.com; paperback copy of same book: $7.99; 1 amazingly, fabulously funny review of the horrible book: PRICELESS!!