05/14/2006 8:21 PM
Posted by Rachelle

Until Forever by Johanna Lindsey

The plot: A time-traveling cursed viking from Valhalla seduces a virgin history professor who collects swords.

Number of sex scenes: 5
Number of times I laughed out loud: 11
Euphamisms for body parts: 1 (loins)
First kiss: page 75
First orgasm: page 182
First sex scene: page 182
Steaminess of first sex scene (1-10): 3
Length of first sex scene: 3 pages
First mention of love: page 311

Best quote: page 183: "It took every ounce of his will to keep from driving into her now and pummelling her with the strength of his passion."


Oh, man this was horrible. It took two attempts at reading it for me to actually finish the book. The heroine and hero are named (just try and say these together without laughing) Roseleen White and Thorn Blooddrinker. She gets ahold of a thousand-year-old sword called Bloddrinker's Curse. When a woman holds the sword, Thorn is ripped from Valhalla (where he hangs out with his brother, Thor) and must do her bidding.

The rules of the sword:
Until the woman releases Thorn, he has to do everything she says. He can't go back to Valhalla until she says he can. Once she has released him, though, he is in charge of himself and doesn't have to either obey her or leave. The sword gives Thorn the ability to travel through time, but only to places he's been before. And in order to time-travel, the woman must both go with Thorn and give the sword into his keeping (basically give up control over him), though she can make it a loan and thus retain overall control of the sword. The sword can't travel to the future beyond it's own present. The only way to release Thorn from his curse is for the woman to give him back his sword for good, but he is unable to bring this up -- she has to ask him about it.

Roseleen and Thorn go back in time to the battle of Hastings because Roseleen wants to ask William the Conqueror a bunch of questions for the book she's writing, and hilarity ensues when they accidentally change history a few times. Things get fixed, she gives him back his sword, and everybody lives happily ever after in the twentieth century.

There was hardly any sex in this book, which is the only reason we read these things. Way, way too much bad plot. I say there were five sex scenes, but that's really just the number of times a chaper ended with them getting it on. The only real scene was the first one, where she loses her virginity with no pain or sticky mess whatsoever. Like any good virgin heroine who had been saving herself for marriage before being seduced, she immediately becomes a dirty little slut who can be distracted from every argument with sex. And there are arguments every few pages, either when Roseleen berates Thorn for being a medieval thug with oppressive views of women (while they're in the twentieth century), or when Thorn berates Roseleen for causing a scene and not acting like a proper medieval woman(while they're in the eleventh century).

In conclusion, I give you the inside cover art: