The Way of an Eagle

I’d been putting off reading Ethel M. Dell’s The Way of an Eagle since early 2006. Partly because it sounded kind of dull, I guess. Partly because I was worried that it would be full of rape fantasies like E.M. Hull’s The Sheik. And, sure, it’s not feminist literature or anything, but I found it charming, in a disturbing kind of way, and I’m sorry I put it off for so long. Yes, there’s a helpless, slightly dithery young woman, but she’s only helpless and dithery in fairly trying situations. Other times, she likes to play hockey. And yes, the hero is powerful and commanding and all that, but he also looks like a monkey and is slightly insane (Dell repeatedly describes him as looking like a monkey. The insanity I figured out on my own.) Also, the heroine is scared of the hero, which is not as sexy as many romance writers seem to think. But when you factor in Nick Ratcliffe’s slight case of insanity, it seems perfectly reasonable. Apparently there’s a new trend in treating Alzheimer’s where the doctors just let the patients do whatever weird thing they want to do, and that calms them down. This book is a little bit like that.