Straw Into Gold by Nina Merrill

TITLE: Straw Into Gold
AUTHOR: Nina Merrill
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill Heat
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Fantasy erotic romance
COST: $5.00

A weaver who recognizes her womanly wiles. A father who drunkenly tells the king his daughter can weave gold from straw. A horny goblin. It’s Rumpelstiltskin for the erotic romance market.

I read the excerpt for this out of curiosity more than anything else. I’ve read a few fairy tales gone adult, and I wasn’t entirely sure how this could be anything new. The excerpt was in first person, from Rumpelstiltskin’s point of view, as he watched Bella get it on with the captain of the king’s guard. And I thought, Damn. This is going to be all voyeuristic. I gotta get me some of that.

Well, the excerpt was a tad misleading.

The author switches between two perspectives, both told in 1^st person. First is the heroine, Bella, the miller’s daughter, who’s being held by the king because her oh so wonderful father bragged about her being able to turn straw into gold. Bella is a bit of a slut, all too aware of her feminine wiles, all too willing to use them to get whatever she wants. I can’t really blame her for much of it; after all, if she doesn’t make this gold, she’s going to get killed. If my choices were flirting or death, I’d be flashing my cleavage at anybody remotely interested, too.

The other perspective is Rumpelstiltskin, and he is one horny little devil. Sometimes, ickily so. His first demand for payment from Bella is the chance to suckle milk from her breasts, and when he doesn’t get that (not from lack of trying on his part), he settles for jerking off while watching her with the captain (the excerpt I had read). We’re not meant to like Rumpelstiltskin, I’m pretty sure, and it’s pretty easy to be a tad repulsed by him. But when half the story is told from his POV, it’s difficult for some of those feelings not to carry over into Bella’s sections, especially when she’s slutting it up.

That lowers my overall appreciation for the fun in this story. I would have been more than happy to hear the whole thing from our horny goblin’s POV, or just Bella’s. The sex is reasonably hot, and while some of her metaphors – keeping with the fantasy spirit/escapism of the whole thing – don’t work for me, I can overlook them to simply have fun. But don’t read this for the romance. That is most definitely not its strength.

Readability	8/10 – Varying 1st person POV’s actually isn’t that jarring once it’s established, though some of her metaphors are a little unfortunate
Hero	4/10 – It’s a fairy tale. Since when does the hero really have a personality?
Heroine	6/10 – Spunky with a side of slut.
Entertainment value	6/10 – Parts of it were hugely entertaining, others highly uncomfortable
World building	8/10 – For rewriting a fairy tale, the details worked for me.
TOTAL:	32/50

Sacred and Profane by Nina Merrill

TITLE: Sacred and Profane
AUTHOR: Nina Merrill
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill Publishing (Amber Heat)
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 39k)
GENRE: Time travel romance
COST: $4.50

Scholar Jennie Pierson is completely enamored with the history of the Templars. When a cryptic cipher throws her back in time 700 years, though, the reality of Paris and the men of honor she studied colors everything she ever believed. She is drawn inexplicably to Templar Tibald de Bergere, but there are more obstacles to their growing feelings than just his devotion to the Order. There is his companion Napier, a traitorous spy in the Order’s ranks, and the ever-growing fear that she could return to the present day at any time.

You know, for as much as I love time travel romances, I hate the history lessons that invariably go with them. Well, they go with the not-as-well-written ones, at least. For as many good things as this story has going with it, it falls into the same trap. A good chunk of the opening scene is an explanation of the French Templars and the highlights of their history, a primer for the uninformed reader. It’s clunky, and it’s boring, and it does nothing to suck the reader into the story whatsoever. The author makes her job all that much harder by doing this, and I can’t help but feel that the story would have worked so much better if she’d found a more interesting way of disseminating the information. If she even needed to at that point. Maybe it might not have been necessary until later on, like after I’d gotten to know the heroine? As it was, it took me forever to get past the first few pages of this novella, simply because I wasn’t interested in reading a history lesson. I bought it for the romance.

…Which works for me, by the way. Once I got into the past – or Jennie did, at any rate – it was very easy to get sucked into the story of her trying to get the Templars to believe her warnings about their fates. Tibald is a charming hero, one of those noble ones that make me melt a little bit on the inside. He fights his attraction for Jennie far longer than most writers would have made him, which is a credit to the author being true to the spirit of the Templars. Then when he does yield to it, it’s totally realistic. This man who’s rarely had sex comes like a virgin, which, trust me, is just as frustrating for Jennie as it was for me. Thankfully, he’s an excellent student, so later scenes are far more satisfying.

There’s a subplot where his companion and best friend Napier is in love with him that feels tacked on, at best. Nothing happens between the two men, but I’m never completely sure that it won’t, which, with the open ending, was one of my problems with this book. It’s not that I was looking for a ménage. I wasn’t. Well, I’m always looking for a good ménage, but I knew from the get-go this wasn’t it. What I mean is, I liked Napier too much to leave the poor guy hanging like that. Limbo is never fun for favored characters.

I can’t say that Jennie was a favored character, though. Even she disparages how much of a girly-girl she acts like in the story, and her dialogue is way more stilted than the 700 years in the past men.

If you’re looking for a hot, sexy read, this isn’t the book for you. There’s a reason it has Amber Heat’s lowest heat reading. But the romance is sweet and believable, and if time travel or this period interest you, I say go for it.

Readability	6/10 – Some clunky historical lessons in the beginning segues into smoother reading. Except for our heroine’s dialogue. Oy.
Heroine	5/10 – A lot of fainting and dialogue I couldn’t believe made it hard to connect with her.
Hero	8/10 – Believable with the period detail, and charming
Entertainment value	6/10 – The open ending and my issues with the heroine keep this from being higher.
World building	8/10 – The period details are vivid and consistent, as well as realistic.
TOTAL:	33/50