6: Reclaiming the Unlikeable Heroine: Kiss of a Demon King
One of the best loved books in the IAD universe, this week we’re talking about Kiss of A Demon King, the completion of the Demonarchy Duology, starring Rydstrom, the deposed King of Rothkalina, and his fated mate, Sabine, the Queen of Illusions, which is an incredibly handy power.
We’ve got a fabulous guest host this week, Jenny Nordbak from our sister romance podcast, The Wicked Wallflowers Club. Jenny is ride-or-die for Sabine, and she’s got a fabulous personal story about her relationship with the book that we’re thrilled to share with you.
This episode, we’re talking traumatic pasts, horns (I mean, obviously), villains, the unlikeable heroine (a whole lot), and we’ll come back around to Cade & Holly and tackle the unfinished business from their book!
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
Novellas are up next! We told you we’d get to the rest of the Wroth Brothers eventually, and eventually is here! Our next read-along episode will tackle both novellas, The Warlord Wants Forever (Nikolai) & Untouchable (Murdoch), available in the Deep Kiss of Winter anthology! This will be the last time we tackle vampires until Lothaire, so get your fill!
A Note: There are two version of The Warlord Wants Forever — you want the most recent version.
Show Notes
Our special guest this week is Jenny Nordbak, author of the memoir, The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an LA Dungeon and co-host of the Wicked Wallflowers Club Podcast.
All about the freudian slip.
Here is Wendy's blog post about the righted world, along with a twitter thread that Jennifer Porter wrote that eloquently talks about the importance of this idea. Teach Me Tonight jumped in with a look at how this same phenomenon plays out in academia.
Jen's friend Liz, the Latin teacher!, loved this book for the sheer number of classical allusions. Here's a report of some of her mort specific findings:
"mors, mortis" means death in Latin, so O-mort means "without death" or "in the way of death."
The Ourbouros is an ancient symbol that shows up in Egyptian traditions.
Finally, the invaders that Omort led into Tornin--the Invidia, Libitinae, and Undines--are also Latin allusions, and they're really evil in the classical world. (Invidia--this Latin word means jealousy and personified envy. Undines-- Latin word for female spirits that inhabit the water. Libitinae--has several meanings: the goddess of corpses (in her temple were kept the funeral apparatus and registries of death), the apparatus of funerals, or death itself.)
Jen's interview with Adriana about Domestic Violence in romance.
The name Sabine might be a reference to Rome's neighbors, the Sabines. The story of the abduction of the Sabine women has been told in art over and over again. It's intersting to consider why this name was used: perhaps to reclaim a story where sex was a weapon used against women?
Melanthe means "dark flower" in Latin, and she was a minor character in the Odyssey.
Gone with the Wind has a very problematic portrayal of the happy slave and the good master. House elves aren't much better.
The Wicked Wallflower's IAD Spreadsheet of Wonder.
All the horn photos are on Instagram.
The Babysitter's Club Summer Special, and all the other amazing goodness of the Scholastic Book Club. And in case you didn't know, the Scholastic Book Club & its Book Fairs are still a thing.
Jenny's book is called The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an LA Dungeon.
That Mr. Too Big (not to be confused with Mr. Big) Sex in the City episode.
The Arcana Chronicles is a YA series by Kresley.
Why yes, both Sarah and Jen have been on the Wicked Wallflowers podcast. When you're done listening to this episode of Fated Mates, head over to listen, and don't forget their interview with Kresley Cole & Gena Showalter!
The Warlord Wants Forever & Untouchable (in the Deep Kiss of Winter anthology) are coming up next.
Lost Limb Count
Arms and Hands (3)
- Conrad cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)
- Cadeon has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)
- Sebastian pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)
Chest and Torso (1)
- Omort severs Rydstrom's spine and punches through his torso in a fight. Sabine saves him and enlists Hag to help heal him. (Kiss of a Demon King)
Face and Eyes (2)
- Bowen loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
- Cadeon loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighting. It all regenerates. (Dark Desires After Dusk)
Legs and Feet (3)
- Lachlain tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerates. (A Hunger Like No Other)
- Mariketa's skull is fractured and her leg is torn from her body. She heals herself after Bowen lays on the ground. Ivy grows over her and heals her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
- Thronos is chasing Melananthe and loses a foot when a portal closes on it. (Kiss of a Demon King)
5: That Vessel Business: Dark Desires After Dusk
DEMONS ARE HERE! We’re talking Dark Desires After Dusk, starring Cadeon Woede (Prince of the Rage Demonarchy) and Holly, his human fated mate (SPOILER SHE ISN’T HUMAN, WHAT!). This one is the first in what we will end up calling the Demonarchy Duology — and we encourage you to read the next book in the series, Kiss of A Demon King as soon as you can after reading Dark Desires. Each book makes the other better. We’ll cover female rage, sex shaming, fast cars, food, feminism and…maybe a pot joke? Also, Sarah waxes on about horns. A lot.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
Our next read (in two weeks) will be Kiss of A Demon King — the second in the duology, and the wrap up of the plot of this book. We’ve seen Rydstrom total his McLaren and get abducted by Sabine, who is not only Queen of Illusions but also his Fated Mate. DOUBLE TROUBLE. Cade and Holly are a HUGE part of our episode on Sabine & Rydstrom’s — because we just can’t talk about one of these books alone.
Get ready for the KoaDK read along at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or your local indie. Also, the Audible versions of IAD are on sale right now -- and WORTH EVERY PENNY! Listen on Audio!
Show Notes
A quick primer to the verbs deposed, dethroned, defrocked, and usurped.
Groot the Metallurgist is not a cute dancing tree, but rather the half-brother of Omort the Deathless. This Groot has forged a sword that can kill Omort.
Jen went back to Dark Needs at Night's Edge and here is a screenshot of the scene where both Rydstrom and Cadeon choose their kingdom over their fated mates. Nix was not amused.
Romancing the Stone is a rather amazing 80s adventure movie that stars Kathleen Turner as a romance author who travels to Colombia, where she has to trade a treasure map to free her sister. The sequel is The Jewel of the Nile, but it's not as good.
Freya and Woden are two of the three parents to every valkyrie that is created.
Jen says Holly is "some bullshitty one thing away" from being done with her PhD, but the phrase she was looking for was ABD (All But Dissertation).
A MacGuffin is an object that drives the plot.
Women should not be treated like incubators.
Genetic (or biological) determinism is a problem.
For some reason, even with all the talk of eating and not eating, Jen and Sarah failed to bring up the myth of Persephone. #Fail.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder isn't always portrayed well in the media. UPDATE: One of our listeners wrote this thoughtful thread on Holly's OCD and you should read it.
The phrase "Heavy is the head that wears the crown" is from Shakespeare.
Lobsters are always about love.
Instagram and Twitter horn talk.
One of our listeners painted an amazing portrait of Nix.
Along with that 50% more blood thing, pregnant bodies are kind of amazing.
Jen did some emergency research to find out about the etymology of sword, gladius (this video! lol), scabbard, and vagina.
A Bugatti Veyron is very sexy, very speedy, and very spendy. One of our listeners noticed that there is no mile marker 775 in Mississippi, but there is something special about Mississippi River mile marker 775.
The Stig read Sarah's book on Top Gear!
Groot and Omort are only one letter away, which maybe means nothing; but playing games with words is fun.
The Venn Diagram of what the author means vs. what English teachers think it means.
Jen loves groveling a lot.
420. I mean, that can't be an accident, right? Updated: On Instagram, follower Ellenino22 pointed out that 420 is "the smallest number divisible by 1-7." Whoa.
Literary Disco is a podcast with lots of great games.
Avon's KissCon will be in Chicago the first weekend of April 2019.
Everyone but Sarah should watch these videos of planes landing in high winds.
Kiss of a Demon King is going to be epic, so get ready.
Lost Limb Count
Legs (2)
Lachlain tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerates. (A Hunger Like No Other)
Mariketa's skull is fractured and her leg is torn from her body. She heals herself after Bowen lays on the ground. Ivy grows over her and heals her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night) ** Arms (1)**
Sebastian pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)
Eyes (2)
Bowen loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
Cadeon loses an eye and part of his forehead and hair when fighting. It all regenerates. (Dark Desires After Dusk) ** Hands (2)**
Conrad cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)
Cadeon has both of his hands burned off in the same scene where he loses an eye. There's description of what Cade's baby fingers look like as they are re-growing. It's...kinda gross. (Dark Desires After Dusk)
Horns (1)
- Cadeon files off his own horns in an attempt to win back Holly. She tells him to let them grow back. (Dark Desires After Dusk)
4: A+, Would Risk Haunting: Dark Needs at Night's Edge
Book 4 is here and so are ghosts! We’re talking Dark Needs at Night's Edge, starring Conrad (the most tortured of the Wroth vampire brothers) and Néomi (the ghost trapped in the house where he’s held hostage while he dries out). We’ll cover heroines with agency, menstrual cycles, virgin heroes and the importance of family. Also, Jen is on about the moon again.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
Our next read (in two weeks) will be Dark Desires After Dusk — the beginning of the Rage-Demonarchy duology, featuring Cadeon Woede, who is forced to choose between familial loyalty and his human (or is she?!) fated mate, brilliant mathematician, Holly.
Get ready for the read along at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or your local indie. Also, the Audible versions of IAD are on sale right now -- and WORTH EVERY PENNY! Listen on Audio!
Show Notes
- Ghosts are a human problem and preoccupation.
- According to the Washington Post, "nearly half of the women who were murdered during the past decade were killed by a current or former intimate partner." Huge content warnings for everything in this article.
- The Flame and the Flower, Shanna, and some of Sarah's thoughts about rape in romance.
- We talk about Id a lot on Fated Mates, and we use it as a shorthand for our most primal, deep-rooted desires.
- "All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" is the famous first line of Anna Karenina. This New York Times article about the many Tolstoy translations is fascinating.
- Kresley Cole isn't the only one to use the menstrual cycle as a symbol; but others wonder why menstruation is almost always absent from fiction.
- A crescent moon (or "sliver moon" as Neomi calls it) is never up at midnight. Literally never.
- Jen rants a lot about first person narration a lot on Twitter, but it's super OTT, so just read this thread about first person narration that was started by Rebekah Weatherspoon.
- Shortly after they recoreded this episode, Jonathan Franzen stanned for third person narration and Jen realized she's just a handmaiden to the patriarchy.
- Jen strongly recommends Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon. She saw Kiese Laymon being interviewed by Lolly Bowean at the Chicago Humanities Festival, and it was amazing.
- All people deserve birth control that's right for them.
- Some romance readers love breaking in the ponies with a virgin hero.
- Arguably, agency is the most important character trait.
- There are 45 cemetaries in New Orleans, 31 are historic, and 5 are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
- If you're planning to write a sitcom, know the formula.
- In IAD, it's Thrane's Key; it Harry Potter, it's a time turner.
- Get yourself some IAD ringtones.
- Holly Ashwin and Cadeon Woede are up next in Dark Desires After Dusk.
Lost Limb Count
Legs (2)
- Lachlain tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerates. (A Hunger Like No Other)
- Mariketa's skull is fractured and her leg is torn from her body. She heals herself after Bowen lays on the ground. Ivy grows over her and heals her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
Arms (1)
Sebastian pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked) ** Eyes (1)**
Bowen loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
Hands (1)
- Conrad cuts off his own hand with a rusty axe so he escape the "witched" chains his brothers locked him in. (Dark Needs at Night's Edge)
3: A Great Lay or All the Knowledge in the World: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night
We’re three books into IAD this week, and it is happening! We're joined by the brilliant Adriana Herrera to talk Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night, starring Bowen (the werewolf trapped in a tunnel of fire) and Mariketa the Awaited (the witch who is going to run him ragged)!
Adriana, Jen & Sarah cover everything from Snow White to trauma survivors, jungle warfare to May-December romances, sexism and Cardi B. And we still find time to fangirl over Kresley's heroines.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
Our next read (in two weeks) will be Dark Needs at Night's Edge — complete with a broken hero tied to a bed (vampire, obvi) and a haunting heroine who just wants to be seen (literally). This one makes for a LOT of opinions among IAD fans...you won’t want to miss it.
Get ready for the read along at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or your local indie. Also, the Audible versions of IAD are on sale right now -- and WORTH EVERY PENNY! Listen on Audio!
Show Notes
Show Notes
- Our special guest this week is romance author Adriana Herrera. American Dreamer, her debut novel with Carina Press, comes out in March of 2019.
-Jen interviewed Adriana about domestic violence in romance for the Smart Bitches.
- Jen and Sarah both loved The Opposite of You, a food truck romance by Rachel Higginson, and Sil at Book Riot made a list of food truck romances.
- Kresley's historical trilogy is called The MacCarrick Brothers, and you can get all 3 bundled together, of course.
- There's nothing more amazing than warring think-pieces. So here's Huffington Post and Slateteaching us about fuckboy, and Jezebel telling us how they're doing it wrong.
- The five witches' castes are warrior, healer, enchantress, conjurer, and sorceress. Jen's going to make a Buzzfeed Quiz that tells you which witch strength you'd have. (This is a lie. Jen does not know how to make Buzzfeed quizzes. But it's a good idea, right?)
-Speaking of vibrators, the best Romancelandia blog is the Bawdy Bookworms, which features review of both books and sex toys!
- Here's a serious video explainer of the Hero's Journey, and also a slightly more silly one.
- This blog is dedicated to looking at feminism and Snow White in American culture.
- Deconstruct Disney for yourself or for your kids.
- There's an IAD wiki, and it's pretty useful for when you're listing Hekate, Haxa, and can't remember the third one is Hela.
- As symbols, apples do a lot of heavy lifting.
- Mirrors and feminism have a long complicted history. And since we're talking action movies, check out this think piece by Carolyn Petit about feminism, movie criticism, and John Wick's house of mirrors. And then I found this article about Sylvia Plath's senior thesis at Smith and it's very far afield from the current topic, but this is a super interesting read.
- There isn't a video for Cardi B's Money yet, but here are the lyrics.
- How young women have internatlized the Girl Power vs. Feminism dichotomy.
- There's a famous image that illustrates the difference between equality and equity. It's most often used in the context of race, but can be used as a way to envision any kind of oppression.
- Romance has been thinking about consent for a long time. Jen wrote a review of a graphic novel for teenagers called What Does Consent Really Mean?
- Our next Dark Needs at Night's Edge is next.
Lost Limb Count
(Leg - 2, Arm - 1, Eye - 1)
Lachlain tears off his own leg to reach Emma. He regenerates. (A Hunger Like No Other)
Sebastian pulverizes most of his right arm during the Hie. He regenerates. (No Rest For the Wicked)
Bowen loses an eye and most of his forehead during the Hie. Mariketa has cursed him and he can't heal until he returns to her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)
Mariketa's skull is fractured and her leg is torn from her body. She heals herself after Bowen lays on the ground. Ivy grows over her and heals her. (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night)