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** spoiler alert ** So, after a couple of decades of reading romance, I finally got around to "Stormfire." Whew! They do not write them like this anymore. The ultimate in bodice-ripping, "Stormfire" is a tale of two mentally unstable people and their violent, intense love. And it's great!

The main attraction of "Stormfire" is its writing. If it was a poorly written book no one would still be talking about it 20-plus years after it was published. The chapters each have their own titles such as "Silken Irons," "Into Eden," or "The Nadir." When the heroine meets the hero her first thoughts are of Milton's poetry: "His form had not yet lost/All his original brightness, nor appeared/Less than Archangel ruined..." The prose is evocative and compelling, but not purple. We agonize with Catherine's enslavement, we feel the angry passion between the lovers, we grieve with Catherine's loss, and suffer from Sean's torture...how much misery can two people take? Then there is that intense love/hate. I wish writers of historical romances today wrote like this, deeply and intensely, if not necessarily the same plot.

But then, maybe I'm a sicko, but I like the plot. Yes, it's epic and melodramatic: everything but the kitchen sink is in the plot including SPOILERS***: kidnapping, rape, starvation, forced slavery, multiple marriages, miscarriage, insanity, beatings, brothers fighting for the same woman, incest, castration, forcible sodomy, murder... To be honest, I wasn't comfortable with a lot of things in the book. Even so, Stormfire is enthralling. Even those who hate this book can't say it's boring.

There are a lot of detractors of Stormfire, so in its defense, I'll say this: this isn't a sweet romance; it's a historical romance novel, a bodice ripper, and I use the term with great affection. It's a fantasy. A dark one, definitely, but then some might say so are the vampire, werewolf, bestiality, BDSM, menage fantasies of today. This is a different kind of fantasy, where the greatest hate in the world can be turned into love. Would this relationship work in real life? Probably not. That's why it's a fantasy. Stormfire is very entertaining, emotional, and unforgettable. It falters a bit towards the end, so it's not perfect. It's not the best romance novel ever written, but for me, it's up there.

I'd give it 5 stars or an A- rating.