Woman of Fury

by Constance Gluyas

Throughout all England flames licked at the flesh of women accused of witchcraft, a horror that thrust ever closer to beautiful young Shalada Lorne.

The man who falsely claimed to be Shalada's father and savagely hungered to be her lover had the power to condemn her to the stake. Already he had ravished and ruined the lovely Rebecca - the woman who was secretly Shalada's mother. And Shalada vowed never to suffer that fate.

Rather she would use her tantalizing sensuality to turn the gallant nobleman she loved into a weapon of hate in her hands...rather she would lead the monstrous man she loathed along a path of desire that would surely destroy him....

Genres: Historical Romance, Fiction, Romance

339 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Constance Gluyas was born in London in the lean years following World War I and left school at the age of fourteen to go to work. During World War II, she served in the Women's Royal Air Force and supervised the main switch-board with a direct line to Europe during the Normandy invasion.
After moving to California, where she lives with her husband, Donald, and daughter, Diane, Mrs. Gluyas began her career as a writer.

Reviews

[Julz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning! This is one great big spoiler.

This was freakin' crazy awesome! It had me shrieking “OMG!” practically from the get-go.

The story is told over two generations. We start with the beautiful mama, Rebecca, when she was a ripe young thing and the love interest of Matthew Lorne, the most evil baddy I have ever encountered in this genre. When he started busting out with the wicked action I was floored from the shock. Definitely not your everyday evilness. The dude didn’t like his future mother-in-law, so he decided, ‘eh, I’ll just burn her at the stake.’ WTF!?!?!?! I kept waiting for her to be saved but, no, they cooked her. And it was pretty graphic too. I was disturbed. The totally insane part was how surprised and miffed he was that his fiancé didn’t like it. ???????? This was just the start of the crazy.

Understandably, beautiful h #1 mentally cracked and took off running. She just so happened to run into a hot stud while in the woods who was only too willing to comfort her after some coercion on her part. Evil guy followed her and got an eyeful. Consistent with the craziness of this book, he was shocked that his fiancé had the gall to roll in the dirt with someone else. After all, all he did was burn her mother at the stake. Gah! What a slut!

Since the evil dude had no problem getting rid of nagging mother-in-laws, you know he didn’t have any qualms ridding himself of a little sexy competition and stabbed the stud in the neck and did away with him. He then sheared our girl and strutted her naked through town because that’s what holy men do (he thought he was ordained by god to recognize witches, if I haven’t made that clear yet.) Unwilling to marry her now that she’d been soiled, but refusing to let her go, the evil dude imprisons beautiful h #1 and proceeds to rape her on a regular basis, now with the help of his future wife, who found nothing odd that her betrothed insisted that she help hold down his ex-girlfriend while he did his business. Everyone does it, right? To make it more insane, he even did it while h #1 was huge pregnant. Are you shocked yet? I was.

Then out pops the baby and we now have Shalada, beautiful h#2, who luckily enough is the daughter of the hot stud who did it with her mother once, and not the evil guy, Lourne, who got to her lots and lots of times. So now the evil guy takes home Shalada to raise as his own (other than the regular beatings) as punishment to Rebecca…cause apparently he’s still mad about that whole not-liking-having-her-mother-burned-at-the-stake-so-she-had-sex-with-someone-else thing. Too bad too that the evil dude was so nasty to Shalada growing up because she turned out to be a hottie, while poor Rebecca looked like she was in her 80s while still in her 30s. I guess it was a hard life being locked up in that cabin and occasionally sneered at by our resident evil guy.

Now we’re finally at the point of entry of our hero, David, who has a hatred for Lourne for having his father murdered 16 years before (the evil guy got around). I’m not certain as to why our hero was there as he promised his mother not to kill the evil guy. His worst was irritating him by making him wait in line for a new dress (The evil guy, who she thinks is her father, decided at this point that he was going to start wooing beautiful heroine #2 by buying her some new duds). But the H hung around town quite a while doing much of nothing other than accidentally romancing a local peasant girl and rolling in the mud with the heroine. The latter of which occurred the same day Shalada finds out that the gnarly old lady in the cabin is really her 30-something year old mother who had been stricken dumb for the past 18 years until that morning when she confessed their true relationship.

I can’t say too much about how the H & h’s romance blossomed because all they really did was sling insults at each other (the H loved the B word) and compared similarities to one another. I honestly thought he was going to end up with a peasant girl who he actually had some emotional connection with. But she wasn’t hot and fiery, I guess.

After mud wrestling with the h, the H drags her practically kicking and screaming home and literally dumps her on the floor (how romantic). Evil guy about pops a vessel and wants to punish her for putting out because when you show up all muddy with your boobs hanging out your torn dress, you know it means you’ve been doing the deed. However, he had caused his wife (you remember her, she helped hold down beautiful h#1)to drop dead from fear of his evilness and had to clean up that little mess before he could make it upstairs and have his turn.

During all this chaos, the guy who up until that morning was her brother with incestuous longings, finds out that they’re not siblings and just has to have her then and there to celebrate. That scene just blew my freaking mind. It was pretty graphic and unexpected. The evil guy broke in on the action, and proceeded to murder his son for touching his potential piece of tail. This all happened under the gleeful stare of the “sister,” who the evil guy was going to send to the convent so it could be just him and Shalada. Cold, man.

The two girls (the sister is still evil too, don’t be fooled) make a break for it when the evil guy disappears for some unknown reason and they go and find our verbally denigrating hero (he’s only nice to the peasant girl, who he pets, protects, and keeps warm, etc., etc.) This is the H&h’s third meeting. The first was in the dress store, the second was the roll in the mud earlier that day when he almost raped her until she mentioned Lourne and made him lose his boner. Now we’re here. Ok, so while she’s asking for his help and talking about saving her mother Rebecca from burning at the stake, Ol’ David our H, decides to interject with a free boob massage, because the timing was right and all that. Out of the blue, they both profess their love (based on their deep connection, of course) and then go back to planning the rescue. The WTFery just made me giddy, I’m telling you.

Plans made, we get to where Mama Rebecca started her walk to the stake and everyone who was once in love with her starts hallucinating and seeing her when she was a fresh young thing. Then we have the rescue scene, during which the evil guy gets offed while having a hallucinatory flashback. Lame-O! I actually felt quite robbed with that. Don’t make me feel sorry for the dude at the last minute, like he was just misunderstood or something. Evil guys are supposed to get it while they’re doing something evil so you can feel all justified. He was plum pitiful, which was no fun at all.

Everyone then takes off and follows the hero back to his fine estates, including the peasant girl and her mama and baby. I see trouble brewing there in the future.

Even though I’ve practically summarized the whole book, I haven’t touched it. You just cannot believe how much of a glorious train wreck this beauty is. Yes, there are a lot of things that don’t quite mesh (like how her hymen spontaneously regenerated…or the H&h’s entire relationship) but you will not be bored! But bring your big girl panties.

[Sarah Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book...is an experience. *blinks*

I'm not a big fan of Gluyas' schizo style (this is my 4th attempt), though there are things she does well. They are:

-Secondary characters. David & Shalada are annoying with their endless hate!banter (see below), but the secondaries are much more interesting. Poor stockade'd Polly, cringing daughter Tamsin, Rebecca herself (the catalyst for everything), her dead mum Margaret, even John Avery (who has a brief but touchingly emotional role in the drama) are all pretty fascinating.

-Rebecca West. I loved Rebecca & wish the book had been solely focused on her. Such continually broken & rebuilt dignity -- that downtrodden inner strength -- reminded me of Kit from STORMFIRE, which is a high compliment.

-Villains. Gluyas loves her sadistic asswipe antagonists, & Matthew is the worst of the worst. He's just batshit insane -- end of story. It's a love-to-hate-you kind of deal, & his final scene is hugely satisfying. Well done.

-The opening 100 pages, the finale, & That Bloodbath midway through. (Hardened ripper vet that I am, rarely have I encountered such an onslaught of rape & familial homicide. OMGWTF. :D) Any rate, those 3 scenes were great, & the extended finale in particular gave me feelz (poor John Avery).


That being said, Shalada & David were both flat & uninteresting, esp when their predicable hate!banter goes on for entire chapters. Zzzzz. Gluyas has also demonstrated serious pacing issues, & this book is not immune; she begins & ends with fairly gripping stuff, but the middle sags & bogs down with, well, not much (though the Familial Bloodbath did improve the middle section in this particular effort). As a final gripe, the heavy imbalance of negative characters makes this an exhausting read; I love a good cast of villains, but there's a point where too much Evul(tm) becomes a chore to endure. This book crossed into that territory, particularly when David was revealed as such a bonehead mimbo.

So...while it isn't something I want to reread, I still award 4 stars for ballsy plotting & the secondary characters.

NB.: this is NOT a ripper for the fainthearted. And I do mean that. >:P

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasant romance with twists and suspense.

[Lucia · Rating 1 out of 5]

A total mess.

[Jena]

self note...WTF lol. Julz has all the spoilers..

"The dude didn’t like his future mother-in-law, so he decided, ‘eh, I’ll just burn her at the stake.’ WTF!?!?!?! I kept waiting for her to be saved but, no, they cooked her. And it was pretty graphic too. I was disturbed. The totally insane part was how surprised and miffed he was that his fiancé didn’t like it. ???????? This was just the start of the crazy.

Understandably, beautiful h #1 mentally cracked and took off running. She just so happened to run into a hot stud while in the woods who was only too willing to comfort her after some coercion on her part. Evil guy followed her and got an eyeful. Consistent with the craziness of this book, he was shocked that his fiancé had the gall to roll in the dirt with someone else. After all, all he did was burn her mother at the stake. Gah! What a slut!

"Since the evil dude had no problem getting rid of nagging mother-in-laws, you know he didn’t have any qualms ridding himself of a little sexy competition and stabbed the stud in the neck and did away with him. He then sheared our girl and strutted her naked through town because that’s what holy men do (he thought he was ordained by god to recognize witches, if I haven’t made that clear yet.) Unwilling to marry her now that she’d been soiled, but refusing to let her go, the evil dude imprisons beautiful h #1 and proceeds to rape her on a regular basis, now with the help of his future wife, who found nothing odd that her betrothed insisted that she help hold down his ex-girlfriend while he did his business. Everyone does it, right? To make it more insane, he even did it while h #1 was huge pregnant. Are you shocked yet? I was.

[Tee · Rating 3 out of 5]

One daughter's nightmare rolling into the next daughter's nightmare. Loved/Hated it & so could not escape the torture of finishing it.