Her dark eyes gleamed with an extraordinary fire. With half-open lips, Olympe de Soissons seemed utterly subjugated. He had sensed instinctively what this white woman, greedy for new pleasure, wanted of him. The Negro, with his primitive power, was gauging his prey. Second, sexualization and infantilization of African characters. “If only I hadn’t felt so much pleasure!” she told herself over and over again, unable to stifle a recurring shiver of delight and terror. Then there’s the retrograde cultural elements that were maybe kinda okay in the 1950s but look pretty awful from 2018. Angelique falls in love, but she is separated from her hero and he is killed. On the genre front, we can’t call it a romance.

In this case, I’m going to talk about the problematic elements of the novel first. As with all of my reviews, I’m giving spoilers straight up. LnKRmKdAPXĪnyway, as delightful as that is, let’s talk about what’s behind the amazing covers. I imagine them sitting on a shelf in a shag-carpeted rec room until an estate sale, where some sharp-eyed buyer was quick to grab the whole set.īut Angelique was obviously marketed for her decolletage. The books I got all have the sickly-sweet smell of tobacco permeating the pages, and “Delores ” written inside the cover. I was excited about it back in March, when I originally ordered the 8 book series on ebay. I admit it, I judged Angélique by its covers. Is it a must read romance novel? Although I haven’t got to them yet, Angélique seems like an important precursor to the 1970s bodice-rippers, so if you’re interested in those… Reasons to read this title: Passionate historical novelization of the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. She is… the intelligent and beautiful 19 year old daughter of an impoverished baron. He is… a Comte with hideous scars, a golden voice, and more gold than the King. Setting time & place: Late 17th century France Are things really sexier in France? Is Anne Golon’s Angélique a romance or have I been duped again by the confusion of “scandalously sexy” and “bodice ripper” with lay definitions of romance? Let’s see… Over 22 million Angélique books in print, says the cover of my 1975 Bantam Books’ edition of Anne Golon’s scandalous novel.

Anne golon