1 star, No Home Here

The Kadin
by Beatrice Small

No home here. Didn't care for it, at all. It has a pretty cover, that's all I can say about it. ( )

I enjoyed the first part of the book, but the rest of it was Doom, destruction, death, doom, destruction, death etc. etc. It ended up being like a train wreck, I didn't want to read it anymore but I couldn't stop! ( )

This review will be really hard to write. This is the first romance I read from cover to cover when I was in elementary school so this book has a lot of memories for me that makes me more partial than normal.

Reading the book as a child and reading it again as an adult has not changed my fondness for this book but I have discovered a lot of things about the story that bother me and I'm going to try to delve into those items with this review.

The book is broken into several (dated)sections:

Prologue
Part I: The Ambassador's Daughter 1490-1493
Part II: Cyra 1493-1494
Part III: The Kadin 1501-1520
Part VI: Hafise 1520-1533
Part V: Janet 1533-1542
Epilogue

The Prologue starts in 1484 when Janet is 4 years old. That should make her birth year 1480. Per the book it seems she died in 1566 at 84 years old. The novel follows Janet from the time she is 4 years old until shortly before her death. This is not a typical romance (for me) in that it follows the life of the heroine - even after the death of the hero. Other things that are odd (for me) is that both the hero and the heroine of the novel have sex with other people during the course of the book. This is pretty typical for Smalls' writing from what I've read.

Lady Janet Leslie is the first born daughter of the Scottish Earl of Glenkirk, Patrick Leslie. Patrick Leslie is sent as a diplomat to a small Mediterranean country when Janet is 10 years old. Janet is (of course) a beautiful girl with "perfectly formed, rose tipped breasts," rare emerald green-gold flecked eyes (like leaves on a still pond), stunning red-gold hair and Celtic white skin.

Janet is betrayed by a favored slave who sells her to a passing foreign trader. Janet is so beautiful the trader refuses to ransom her back to her father. Instead she is sold at a highly publicized private auction. Although her father tries to get her back, she is purchased by the agha kislar Hadji Bey (head of the Sultan of the Turkish Ottoman Empire's black eunuchs) and taken into the sultan's harem at the (approx) age of 13 years old and renamed "Cyra."

Cyra is given - as a birthday gift along with 5 other maidens - to Prince Selim on his 25 birthday as a gediklis to start his own harem. Prince Selim falls deeply in love with her and so chooses Cyra to come first to his couch. She should still be about 13 at this time. Cyra quickly becomes pregnant with her first (of five!) child.

The relationship between Prince Selim and Cyra is a very strange one for me. Throughout most of my romance reading history - while I have read and enjoyed harem centers novels - I have not read any other romance where the "hero" has sex with any other woman than the heroine (after they meet) - but in this book Prince Selim starts off with six women in his harem. While he does choose Cyra as the first of his women, he has functioning relationships with all six of the women. Two of the six are Cyra's best friends (Zuleika and Firousi) who were brought into captivity with her.

I need to digress.

There is a hierarchy to the harem system in Small's book. The lowest ranked women are the gediklis. These are women who have entered the harem system. Guzdehs are women inside the harem system that have caught the eye of the Sultan (or in this case, Prince) but he has not yet bedded. Ikbals are women who have had sex with their master and managed to keep his favor. The kadins (of which he can have a total of 4) are women who have birthed sons for their master with the bas-kadin being the first of his women to give him a son and thus the head of his women. The highest rank a woman could obtain in Ottoman Turkey was that of sultan valideh - the mother of the sultan.

Ok.

Cyra is the first of Selim's women that he has sex with gets pregnant, which is important. This means that she gives him his first male child, his heir. She becomes Prince Selim's bas-kadin as well as the mother of a future sultan. She would have been 14 and Selim would have been 26 - a 12 year age difference. I usually wouldn't care too much about age gaps but when I actually think about Cyra being 13 years old and pregnant by someone 12 years older than her, it squicks me out a bit.

I need to digress again.

A very large part of the plot for this book is a game of thrones so there is a some political intrigue. Cyra is purchased - along with Zuleika and Firousi - by the head of the Sultan's black eunuchs. He bought them for Prince Selim so that they would be completely loyal to only Prince Selim, being uninvolved in the harem system. This is important because Prince Selim's mother had planned his entire life to have him overthrow his degenerate older brother (Ahmed) before Ahmed could become the next Sultan.

The majority of the action during the first three parts of the book are based around this game of thrones. Prince Ahmed is not the primary antagonist of the book. That spot is reserved for Besma Kadin, mother of Prince Ahmed. Besma Kadin murdered the original heir to the empire - the first son of Prince Selim's mother & father - so that she can manipulate her way into becoming the Sultan Valideh.


Sex and sexual abuse in The Kadin

I've only read a few books by Smalls but those I have read I would categorize as "rape fests." The Kadin seems to be different in that there are very very few sex scenes in this book. Smalls only describes sex between the primary hero (Selim) and Janet/Cyra on one occasion and it is more of a "fade to black" moment than anything else. Although Selim does have sex with the other women of his harem and other women in general, the reader is never exposed to any actual sex scenes between Selim and other women. Strangely enough, the book does have sex scenes between Janet/Cyra and other men after the death of Selim.

Speaking of rape, Smalls is rather casual about sexual assault. Selim almost rapes Cyra shortly after receiving ownership of her :

"After she had left him, he sat by the pool in deep thought. The sight of her slender body had aroused him terribly. Had she not swooned, he would have raped her and ruined everything. Hadji bey had spoken to him at length about the three girls he had purchased, but always the agha had come back to Cyra."
--Page

...and Selim rapes at least one woman near the beginning of the book as well:

That evening Selim sat cross-legged at the head of his table and stared in frank delight at the girls about him. They were like the flowers in his garden - Amara in pale sky-blue, Sarina in lime-green, Iris in peach, Zuleika in peacock-blue, Firousi in dusky rose and Cyra in a soft wisteria color. Their unveiled faces were a pretty mixture of races and cultures. He began to feel a slight stirring of desire. It had been over a month since he had lain with a woman - unless you counted that savage little nomad girl he had surprised one day while hunting. Selim, like all Ottoman princes, was a healthy and virile man."
-- page 104

Janet/Cyra is sexually assaulted at least twice before the end of the book. These occur after the death of Selim and her return to Scotland. The first time she is assaulted, Janet had only returned to Scotland for a short while. At this time she is about 53 years old. She is a mother of five, grandmother of at least 10, a widower of 10 years and she has only had sex with one man in her entire life.

Janet (as she is called when she gets back to Scotland) is seen from a distance by Colin Hay, a neighbor, who comes over to Glenkirk for a visit soon after. Colin finds Janet beautiful and just waltzes into her private chambers while she is taking a bath. He pulls her out of the tub and has sex with her even though she screams and fights him. After he finishes, she gets up crying and telling him how horrible he has made her feel. He laughs, puts her back in the bed and rapes her again. For some strange reason, Smalls somehow makes Janet ok with this by the morning and she becomes Colin's mistress. As a child I sort of glossed over this section and the implications of it but as an adult it really bothers me. I cannot say that the scene is anything but pure rape - Smalls even used the word "rape" in the scene herself - but suddenly this woman who has never had to deal with any real violence to her person is having a relationship with a man who just raped her twice. As an adult I find I need to avoid this scene in the book. It is really off-putting and I find it hard to understand a character being in a relationship with someone who finds it ok to force themselves on her and laugh while she cries about it.

Later she is forced by the King of Scotland when he comes by Glenkirk for a visit.




---More to come later --- ( )

Re-read. Liked it the first time and still like it. Interesting portrayal of life in the East (specifically harem life). ( )

One of the best paperback bodice-rippers ever written! I enjoy her later series, heroines and their hunks, but none measure up to Cyra and Selim. ( )