Captain's Surrender, by Alex Beecrost

Captain's Surrender

Alex Beecroft

Josh Andrews stands at attention as the highly homophobic Capt. Walker hangs one of his crew mates for sodomy.  He is sure Walker knows that he shares that "abomination" and that the first proof he can get he will use to destroy him.  When the ship's new lieutenant, Peter Kenyon, pulls up in a fancy carriage to start his duty on the Royal Navy ship and Walker catches Josh's admiring look, he assigns Josh and Peter to share quarters just to torture the midshipman. 

The two young men not only must deal with the Captain's cruelty but also the mutiny brewing among the crew because of it.  When Walker is stabbed during the attempt Peter takes over the chip and sails it on to Bermuda.  This gives Peter the chance to get Josh, who had once given into impulse and kissed him, alone so he can fulfill Josh's fondest hope, and they become lovers.  Josh tells him from the start that he knows someone like Peter is ambitious and wants a normal life, so he expects him to break it off someday and would rather not entertain any false hope.  Peter seems to go along with this.

When Peter starts casually to court the daughter  of an important man in Bermuda,  Josh sees the writing on the wall.  That the woman is not in the least interested in Peter seems not to be taken into consideration by anyone.  When the two men are on a mission to assess French designs on Hudson's Bay, Josh takes a chance to save Peter and the other ships by sending his own crew off and firing the ship, expecting to die.  Peter is captured but ransomed and goes back to Bermuda to mourn for his friend.  In the meantime Josh has met some Indians who saved his life and teach him that men who love men are considered special and holy in their culture.  The man wants to make Josh his second wife, but Josh will only do that if Peter truly no longer wants him.

More than anything this novel about the two men's understanding of their sexual and affectional proclivities.  Josh has known he is gay from childhood, has been taught he is wrong, a sinner.  Peter doesn't seem to think very hard about why he is boinking a man, seems to think he is just doing it to make Josh happy.  While he tells Josh he cannot separate sex from love, he certainly acts like he can.  When Josh is first presented with the idea that there is nothing wrong with him, he is liberated to feel free to love a man, no matter how careful he and that man need to be to be safe from man's law if not God's.  To the eleventh hour Peter continues to see conventional society the correct one.  I absolutely cannot forgive him for what he contemplates just before coming to his own epiphany.  He does not deserve Josh, who is the much better man.

The main problem I had with this novel is that dramatic tension seemed to llack at the the most unlikely times.  Three weeks go by in a flash at the beginning, a period where  Peter and Josh would be getting to know each other.  More feeble is a later scene when a "molly house" or male brothell is burned down and Josh can hear a man inside dying horribly.  All Josh seems to focus on after an abortive attempt to enter the house and save the man is to take Peter's rival for the young woman's acffections and buy him a drink and tell him not to give up.  An atrocity has just taken place and they are off having a beer.  The dramatic potential of that scene in particular is tragically lost.  The one thing about that scene I appreciated was that it demonstrated how the classes were treated differently in terms of gay men.  The molly house is no finer than a brothel and the perpetrators of the arson will be overlooked, for they are upper crust and alouwed to commit murder but the low caste male prostitutes will receive no justice.  This is a concept that I know for a fact many people don't consider, that punishment for "sodomy" is applied based on class and not universally.

Nevertheless the characterization is credible and well drawn and the plot holds together and is exciting at times.

A persistent theme in what is often called M/M love stories is that the two men in love go from doing what comes, according to their society, unnaturally, but eventually conclude love is love and love is worth the risk.  There is almost always some threat of being caught and punished.  It can be emotionally harrowing to read these books.  Fortunately there are a few M/M and gay novels where fear is not as strong a motivator as attraction and love.

I listened to this novel, which I bought at the Kindle Store on Amazon, on my Kindle 3.

Bone of Contention, by Roberta Gellis

Bone of Contention

Roberta Gellis

A Magdalen La Batarde Mystery

Magdalen La Batarde is a whoremistress.  She runs a brothel in London called the Old Priory Guesthouse because that is what it used to be, a priory guesthouse.  The building belongs to the Bishopric of Winchester, and the Bishop knows perfectly well how the money for the rent is earned.  The flexible relationship between the Church and sin is one of the themes of this series of mysteries, and I, for one, find that refreshing.  I firmly believe that especially in the early Middle Ages the influence of the Church on the conduct of individual behavior  is overstated.  So that is one good mark for this novel.

William of Ypres, the Flemish mercenary leader who worked for King Stephen against rebels and the forces brought against the king by Empress Maud, appears to be the particular protector of Magdalen, and while the king has a congress at Oxford, Ypres asks her to come and host a secure meeting place for his behind-the-scenes planning.  Magdalen asks the man who is in love with and sees her as his special charge, Sir Bellamy of Itchen, to accompany her to her rendevous with this longtime lover, rather thoughtless of her if you ask me, and if you ask Sir Bellamy too.

The three central plots in this novel are:

1.  The conflict between Bellamy and Magdalen over her insistence of a non-exclusive relationship, something that is becoming harder for her to maintain the heart to continue.
2. Threats to the fragile peace of the realm during the period just prior to the civil war between Stephen's and Maud's supporters.
3. A string of murders with various possible objects.

This is a simply entertaining story.  By that, I mean, read it, enjoy it, but don't look for excellence in it.  I found numerous vexing flaws.  The main one is that there are so many characters with some connection to the murdered people that I simply could not keep them straight.  The Norman names flew past me, perhaps because I listen to rather than visually read books, and I could not remember who was who throughout the novel.  A second problem I had was that there are an inordinate number of references to past happenings that relationships and events rely on that I wished I had a concordance.  Finally, the novel is repetitive, particularly with Magdalen's "don't hate me because I am beautiful" angst and her repeated dragging out of the reasons she can't be Sir Bellamy's exclusive sweetie.  I both do and do not like Magdalen.  I like her earthiness, but she is a type that no doubt many women like that I do not, sassy, spunky, vapid and vain.

I would love to know if "futtering" and "cocking chambers" are real words.  If they are, good.  If not, it's too bad Gellis felt she had to create new dirty words instead of using the good old Anglo Saxon terms they stand for (and which you notice I am shying away here!)

I don't know the reference to "bone of contention" in this novel.  It does not seem to relate to any aspect of the plot or characters.

I bought this novel as an Audible.com download and listened to it on my Kindle 3.

Ground Zero, by Mel Keegan

Ground Zero


Mel Keegan

Not historical fiction, but one of author Mel Keegan's science fiction offerings.   Ground Zero is not, as I had assumed, about the end of the world, a genre I enjoy not quite as much as historical novels, but about a potential end of the world, First Contact with another planet and its more advanced technology.

Ground Zero stars two lovers, Lee and Brendan, both of which work for a university paranormal studies department.  It is 2048 in Adelaide, South Australia.  One theme is the frustration they and their boss have with how their work tends to the debunking rather than proving all types of off worldly and other worldly phenomena.  Their work does bring them very much into partnership with the forensics department of the local police, and it is a series of bizarre thefts and even more bizarre murders that the paranormal studies team is called in to help investigate.

The thefts are of highly advanced even classified equipment,  The murders, which happen near the burgled facilities, occur within a couple hours.  In each case the victim has been drained of blood in a surgical way that leaves no mess behind other than the body.  What Lee, Brendan and their boss don't know is that someone else is watching their progress using advanced technology, like flying spy bots.

The novel follows the investigation step by step.  I was astonished by Keegan's facility with all the equipment and wonder if she has a background in physics herself. It's a good futuristic thriller, with a not-too-predictable outcome, and likable characters. This is what is sometimes called M/M Romance, which means there will be gay sex depicted, though the "romance" part appears not to be used in the same way it is with, say, Harlequin. In this case there is no story of seduction or coming out since the two men are an established couple. The sex scenes border on "gratuitous" as they have only a tangential relationship to the story. About the most I can say is that another central theme of the novel is how important one's love for a partner is as Lee in particular observes the grief of those who lost family. Nevertheless, the sex depicts a joyful relationship, and I found that aspect of this book more appealing than the simple thriller plot. You are left feeling the love between Lee and Brendan will be joyful and secure throughout their lives.

The one thing that made me roll my eyes was the waxing lyrical about the partner's gorgeosity in reverie, which was laid on a little thick.  I get it, I get it, he's hot!  Now let's get on with the story.

I bought the novel at Amazon's Kindle Store.

Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia


Ursula K. Le Guin

This novel so engaged me I blogged about it before I enven finished reading  it.  Take a look at When Characters Know They Are Fictional.

Lavinia is the story of a barely storied character from the extended epic of the Fall of Troy.  In a nutshell, after the hero Aeneas left Troy he fell in love twice, first with the Carthaginian Queen Dido and then with the daughter of the King of Latia, Lavinia.  He did not marry Dido, for which she killed herself, but he did marry Lavinia and named their royal city after her.  The epic poem The Aeneid by Virgil says very little about Lavinia other than that she was quiet, modest, and beautiful.

Le Guin seeks with this novel to correct that .  She clearly explored not only the legends and the poem, but the history and archeology of the era when Troy is believed to have fallen.  Lavinium and the rest of where this novel takes place are in Italy, not far from where Rome will someday be.  Aeneas traditionally is the ancestor of Rome, and so, therefore, is Lavinia.

I did not warm up to this novel right away.  It was, shall we say, just a little too familiar, my havbing read Margaret George's Helen of Troy so recently.  Here we have two young girls, daughter of a loving father, a king, and a crazy mother, growing up wild in more or less the same era.  Both girls are courted by many noble suitors who compete in various ways to win her, and both girls wind up with a foreign lover.  In Helen's case, he is just a lover, while in Lavinia's he becomes her husband.  In both cases this pairing off causes a bloody war.

Not long into the novel though I came to Lavinia's special magic, something downright sacred to me, the notion that fictional characters though made up by an author, nevertheless have a sort of reality.  That's what the aforementioned blog post is about, how there is poetically  a separate dimension where characters wait for us to bring them out into the world.  In Lavinia's case, it is poetic in every way, as that author is the Roman poet, Virgil.  Lavinia meets him at a sacred spring, he appearing as a shade, as astonished by the experience as she.  He is both gratified and horrified to discover what a vibrant, strong and canny young woman with depth beyond his flimsy portrayal of her.  He did not consider her character to be part of the story of the great Aeneas, and now he is sorry that he failed to attend to her.  It is too late for him to do anything about it, as he is dying.

The next bit of magic is how Lavinia comes to understand and then embrace the realization that she is a fictional character!  What others may see as fate, she sees as plot.  That has simply got to be a historical or any other sort of novelist's epiphany, when you realize you are not writing a novel but simply "channeling" or "taking dictation" from full blown characters who will have their way, don't you forget it!  Le Guin's brilliant idea is matched by her skill making this concept credible, relevant and engaging.

It hardly seems necessary to share anything else about the book, but I shall.  Lavinia meets Aeneas when, at the end of his long wanderings from his home city of Troy, he and what's left of his following come to "the promised land".  Another suitor, the nephew of her crazy mother, wants her wealth and position, and the locals want the local boy over the newcomer.  Thus the war.  Aeneas of course wins and he and Lavinia are married.  She knows from her conversations with The Poet that he will live only three more years.  How she copes, what comes from rivalries within the land, and what happens after Aeneas dies (yes, I cried) is the outer clothing of the novel.  The body inside the clothing is a combination of the exploration of a woman lost to both legend and history and the role of a self aware fictional character in her own story.

Besides Lavinia, who is vivid but in no way a stereotype of a strong woman, there are other well drawn characters.  Aeneas is a good man who wants to do the right thing and works hard at it but suffers guilt for his few failures.  Other characters include Aeneas's son who doesn't understand that might and military prowess are the least of what a strong leader should be.  Lavinia's mother is completely unpredictable in her madness, bipolar with some psychosis, a real chore to be around, and her father is a gentle loving man who will believe no ill of his wife.  The Poet charms Lavinia with his songs and his visualization of a future, his present, she in part made possible, for which he honors and reveres her.

I received the book from the National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Crusade, by Robyn Young

Crusade

Robyn Young

The sequel to Robyn Young's Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar, Crusade follows Knight Templar William Campbell and his friends, loves and enemies to the Holy Land.   There he struggles to support the efforts of the Anima Templi, a secret society, to maintain peace in the few decades before the last Christian strongold falls to the Mamaluks. 

Campbell has been the liaison between the Anima Templi and

Sharpe's Regiment, by Bernard Cornwell - Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

Sharpe's Regiment

Bernard Cornwell

Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

My husband and I got back to our chronological survey of every single Sharpe novel, knowing we are approaching the final half dozen.  This particular novel, Sharpe's Regiment, is such a change of pace that it was quite a treat.  It starts and ends in Spain, but most of the takes place in England, and is  just as hair-raising as any assault on or by the forces of Napoleon.

Sharpe, Harper, Price and D'Alenbord,  in order to prevent the disbanding of the South Essex, go to England to find out what has become of their replacement regiment.  Sharpe immediately runs obfuscation and threats by corrupt government and army officials who clearly have something serious to hide.  A little investigating leads our heroes to conclude that the regiment  designated as a "holding" regiment exists only on paper.  The problem is how to find the real men and convince the authorities to give them to Sharpe.

When Sharpe goes to visit his old friend, Maggie, an attempt is made on his life.  He decides that since those who arranged for the murder think he is dead, he and Harper should present themselves to be recruited under false names.  They almost immediately learn that their worst fear is justified: crimping.  Crimping is where soldiers recruited and trained for one regiment are "sold" to others who need soldiers badly.  Who should turn out to be the baddy in this scheme but the beloved Henry Simmerson who shows his wan colors in Sharpe's Eagle.  Sharpe is first appalled to see how Simmerson has taken credit for the capture of the eagle at Talavera, then is delighted to discover that his niece, Jane Gibbons, is there as well.  It seems that, unbeknownst to Sharpe's readers, at least as far as I can recall, been in love with Jane since he met her on a trip to England for her brother's funeral that I also seem to have missed.

The question is, of course, if and how Sharpe can reveal the crimping which actually is not illegal, and whether or not he can, how can he get is calloused hands on them?  It takes a lot of suffering abuse from Lt. Colonel  Girdwood who, with his tarred moustache and betrothal to the delightful Miss Jane, is in change of the clandestine camp and his pet Hibernophobe Irish sergeant, some harrowing minutes as Harper is literally hunted across the marsh, and some highly clever thinking by Sharpe before the answer can be known. 

Two women play a part in this story.  Besides Jane, who tries to help Sharpe, there is Lady Anne, a woman being extorted for sex by the head bad guy, Lord Fenner, who gets her own pound of flesh, plus a few extra charming ounces, out of helping Sharpe bring the bugger down.

For comic relief we have Prinny, better known as the Prince Regent and future George IV, who is clearly about as mad as his mad king father.  Fortunately for Sharpe, Prinny's ego is tuned to what Sharpe can deliver.

Lots of wonderful archetypes, somewhat more familiar locations, more on English politics, and Sharpe in love enough to pop the question, and you have a rollicking good story here.  My only complaint is.. was I asleep when all this stuff about Jane and the funeral happened?

My husband and fellow Sharpe nut, Jim, read our personal copy of the novel aloud to me.

Early Britain: Anglo Saxon Britain, by Grant Allen

www.gurenEarly Britain: Anglo Saxon Britain

Grant Allen

I am gearing up for my next novel, so finding several free or inexpensive books for download to my Kindle was a nice surprise.  I was particularly pleased to find this one, the pleasure only mounting as i read. 

Like other historical novelists I often have to dispel myths about history that people are taught in school but which bear little resemblance to actual people or occurrences.  Many of those fairy tales are based on traditional stories  gleaned from the old chronicles, often written by monks with an agenda or at best written sometimes as much as a few hundred years afterward.   I might have expected this with Allen's book, especially if I had known what I later discovered about it.  But instead I found an intelligent, well thought out and researched account of the advent of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes on the Scenptr'd Isle, followed by details on what can or cannot be determined from the evidence we have.

Allen relies on scientific and astute analysis of the evidence to draw what seem to me at least sound conclusions.  He engages in cpmparisons of the many questionable records, well aware of their independence from each other or lack of it, in order to find credible information.   He draws as well on the work of archaeologists, linguists, cultural and physical anthropologists, deftly applying the knowledge of each discipline to the findings of the others.  He does not romanticize the history, but simply gives the reader what is known of the Anglo Saxon period.

Imagine my surprise, then, when certain oddities in the book made me look for the copyright.  1881!  I was clued into the likely old age of the book by references to the missionaries in Hawaii, the conflict between the regions of India, and other references that were out of place, but others, like a comparison of English settlers to the Kurds of Norther Turkey and another to the rule of Afghan warlords could easily be contemporary.

I learned a lot about the history of the Anglo Saxons from this book.  I also learned about the various methods for studying history where the written record either does not exist or is lacking in authority.  Further, I learned about my own assumptions about just how far we have come in the investigation of the past and its people, that a book over 130 years old need not be assumed out of date.

Now I want to know what new we have learned since 1881!

I downloaded this public domain book to my Kindle 3 for free.  There are a lot more where this came from, and I have discovered now that you can download Kindle format books from Project Gutenberg as well.