Another one for my quest to read the first 100 HPs. This one is numbered 78 and was first published in 1972. It's the 43rd one I've read so far.

Okay so this book was strange. The writing style was extremely overwrought. It was all quite dramatic and flowery. Here's an example from the first of the book:

She was lying outstretched against a flat boulder, her arms gently floated open, one hand clutching a clump of white lilies, her long silvery hair trailing like sea silk in the stream. A ghostly light enshrouded her, a kind of deathly trance. Her beauty was eerie, heartbreaking. She looked like a beaten child, bleeding hands and feet, lacerated by the tearing thorns and clinging vines that had put him through a living hell, and him with a machete! Her face was miraculously untouched. a gleaming alabaster, like the lilies that grew in profusion along the reed flats.

and later:

The sunlight shafted across her bare head gleaming like a silvery cap; her hat hung by its strap down her back. Her face was glowing, impregnated with colour whipped up under the skin, her eyes enormous. There was something different about her, he saw, some lack of restraint, like spring water effervescing from sandstone into the sunlight, pure and tingling. Whatever it was, it fanned his anger.

Nobody's character was pinned down very well. Everything was sort of seen through a vaseline coated lens. The most clear cut character was the evil aunt of the hero. I really quite enjoyed her. Still even with her you never quite knew exactly what she had done in the past to the hero's mother or was going to do in the future to keep the heroine away from the hero. Details were lacking throughout the book. This book was a whole lot of telling and relatively little showing.

So the heroine was so tragic and wonderful that everyone loves her except the evil aunt of course. The hero blows hot and cold and never says what he means. There is a lovelorn other man, amnesia and a great cattle station complete with aboriginal ceremonies. It wasn't the worst I've read for stereotyping native cultures but it did have that going on a bit. I liked the aboriginal maid though. She seemed to have a fairly well developed character and came across as a real woman who was living within her culture but who managed to be fairly modern anyway.

The book ended pretty much with a whimper. There was no crisis or climax to be resolved. She's like "I think I'm well enough to get a job" and he's all "how dare you? You will obviously marry me instead." I mean it wasn't awful. There were words of love exchanged but they did sort of come out of nowhere. ( )