The Dragon and the Pearl (Harlequin Historical) [Mass Market Paperback]

This book comes highly recommended by some of my friends and authors that I highly respect, so there was no way in hell I was going to skip on reading it. Besides, I just love all those martial arts movies with sword fights and leaping warriors.

Before I sank my teeth into this story, I thought I should read `Butterfly Swords' first as the hero of `The Dragon and the Pearl' makes his début in it. Just a side note, you really don't have to read it as the author did a magnificent job of having this one stand on its own. I can assure you that you will love this one so much, that you'll want to get your hands on the other as soon as you read the last page. It is exactly what I did when I was done with `Butterfly Swords'. I went and made sure to buy `The Taming of Mei Lin' and I've still to read it.

I honestly don't know where to start in telling you how much I loved this story. Between the unique setting and this authors prose, I was transported to an era that was pure magic.

759 AD. China. Tang Dynasty. Court intrigue and political upheaval is the order of the day, and the military governors (jiedushi) had their own regional armies independent of the Emperor Shen's army and one of those is General Li Tao.

Li Tao is one of the most feared generals in China, and his star rose fifteen years ago when he saved the life of the previous Emperor. He was also betrothed to Emperor Shen's daughter (Butterfly Swords), who spurned him and ran away from him the year before.

We met Ling Suyin in `Butterfly Swords' when she briefly appeared and gave safe haven to the hero and heroine, but even there I had a feeling that there was so much more to her then just a pretty face. She was known as Precious Consort of the August Emperor Li Ming, and after his death she was removed by Emperor Shen to a remote home that was built just for her by her lover. She has resigned herself to a lonely and barren life never knowing when or who might come to end it, literally and figuratively.

When Li Tao shows up at her door, she's not sure if he's there "to bed her or kill her", so while she trembles inside, her training as a courtesan comes in handy and she doesn't even flinch as Li Tao takes her to his home, not telling her the reasons behind his `abduction'.

Li Tao knows only that an anonymous message arrived warning him of the threat to Ling Suyin's life while residing without protection and all alone in her home. He wastes no time in coming to her rescue, but all his military discipline and his `gutter rats' instincts are on alert and showing any emotion to anyone is something he is not good at.

As the author takes us deeper into the past of both, Tao and Suyin, we become aware of their similarities; both did what they had to in order to survive in Luoyang and both share the past with Gao Shiming, a man whose court intrigues run so deep that killing him would mean certain death for both hero and heroine.

As we follow and watch Tao and Suyin slowly come to realization that the sins of the past have finally caught up to both, we can't help but wonder whose method of extricating them from it will work best: Tao's `in for the kill' or Suyin's `cunning negotiation'.

The author clearly did her homework in researching the setting and because of it my imagination soared. The plot gives this story its perfect pace which in turn brought the characters of Tao and Suyin to life. Jeannie Lin's talent in `tale telling' shines through and you'll be enchanted while she takes you on a journey to a place of beauty, danger and intrigue.

Li Tao is perfect as silent type hero to Suyin's poised and meddling heroine. The sensuality and sexual tension between the two is palpable, exciting, and just a perfect balance of romance and sensuality.

If you're looking for a romance with an exotic setting, mostly character driven and extremely well-written, with an intriguing plot and a perfect pace, then this book is just the `ticket'.

Melanie

* I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Wow! What a great follow-up to Butterfly Swords. Jeannie Lin's voice is so unique and ravishing--and has only been growing in depth and power. Very spare, but gorgeous and heart-breakingly emotional without melodrama. I love the characters, the situation, the evocation of a complex culture, the tense plot, and the palpable feeling of watching two people fall truly in love. The minor characters are fabulous, too, and there are many fascinating secrets revealed along the way.....

Lin is really capturing the best elements of the warrior tales/movies she says she loved as a child. If you've enjoyed movies like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, you'll love this book! Very, very satisfying.

Lady Ling Suyin is a retired imperial consort, in fact the Precious Consort, famed in song and legend as the most beautiful woman in the empire,... as well as the conniving she-demon who seduced an emperor away from his duty. Having shared the bed of a god, it is not suitable for any mere mortal man to have her so she is destined to while away her remaining days alone in the mansion the August Emperor built for her far from the imperial capital....

Of course how many days that might be is open to question. Imperial concubines tend not to have long retirements. If enemies from her court days don't finish her, her secrets will, and now the most feared and unpredictable of the warlords, the old emperor's former "enforcer" himself, is coming for her.

Iron discipline and cold calculation have made that warlord, Li Tao, the success he is today, yet here he is acting upon whim. A deliberately vague anonymous warning has sent him racing far from his regional stronghold to offer his "protection" to what should have been a forgotten castoff, yet he'd intercepted assassins approaching her home, assassins who'd made sure to die before they could be questioned.

Someone wanted her dead, someone else wanted her alive, and now he's been lured into the middle of it.

When Jeannie Lin announced that the hero of the sequel to Butterfly Swords would be the villain of that previous novel, I, no doubt like most readers, was utterly flabbergasted. How could Ms. Lin POSSIBLY redeem this cruel, unrelenting man? Well, it has been an interesting process.

To begin with Li Tao turns out to be a much more complicated man than he first appears, perhaps more complicated than he even knows (or is willing to admit). He claims that "Loyalty means nothing to me" and claims to be "loyal to no one", and with the exception of the dead former emperor, this is largely true when it comes to alleged superiors or peers, but he can be quite loyal to those who follow or depend upon him... so long as they remain strictly loyal to him. He who proudly refuses to proclaim his loyalty to the current emperor will not tolerate disloyalty himself. He despises honor and sentiment as unpredictable at best, utterly false at worst; he openly states that he is not an honorable man; yet the fact that he strictly adheres to his own peculiar code of honor is obvious to everyone but himself. He claims to possess no sense of duty, but duty (as he sees it) clearly matters more to him than almost anything else. Finally, a man who defies everyone will not tolerate defiance.

That such a bundle of contradictions would be troubled by bringing the infamous Precious Consort into his home surprises no one but himself. She was trained from the day her parents sold her in how to manipulate and control men for her benefit... and her very survival. Of course her infuriating captor would be the only man who can see right through the poise of the professional courtesan down to the frightened girl underneath; the irony is that he likes what he sees!

My review title comes from the symptoms of tension Warlord Tao experiences as he attempts to deal with his collapsing position. Utterly lacking in the skills of court intrigue, he finds himself losing influence to and risking annihilation by rivals with far inferior military skills. Suyin offers tantalizing possibilities for the relief of his tension while at the same time materially adding to it with her own scheming for survival. He negotiates one night with her in hopes of getting her out of his system, then a month, but it doesn't seem to be working. Fact is, he could truly have used someone with diplomatic skills like her, if only he'd have been willing to listen to her, if only she could have come up with something. But it's too late now. His past secrets and her past secrets have doomed them both,...

or so it would seem. This reader experienced a growing pain between the eyes himself as he tried to figure out how the author was going to extricate her heroes from the ever growing obstacles to a HEA she piled upon them,... then things really got hopeless. She'd about convinced me there couldn't be one, but she's fooled me before, so the question was, which way was she fooling me now?... Yeesh, time for another aspirin!

IMHO it isn't absolutely necessary to have read the previous parts of this series: The Taming of Mei Lin and Butterfly Swords in order to understand what is going on in this book, but it would probably help, especially the latter. Besides, they are a lot of fun! The somewhat parallel The Lady's Scandalous Night on the other hand should be read afterward.

Note: I received this ARC from NetGalley in return for agreeing to review it.