That's All She Read

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2011-12-08T14:44:00.001-08:00

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Historically Off Center With Nan hawthorne
http://historicallyoffcenter.blogspot.com/

The Black Banner, by Helen Hart

2011-12-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

     Becky Baxter seizes a chance opportunity to escape her drunken mother and threat of sexual servitude to her mother's unsavory friend to take a ship bound from Bristol to the New World. Of course to do this she must masquerade as a boy named Billy. On the ship the cook stumbles across Billy's secret and seeks to take advantage of it when out of the salty blue come pirates, Captain Logan Corder and his band of mostly nice guy cutthroats. It's a pirate ship and Billy, along with other crew, are given the chance to join them or die. This begins Billy's education into piracy, a swashbuckling adventure. She grows to respect Logan and the other pirates, the more so when they moor at Paradise Island, a settlement of pirates from numerous ships and their women. Billy learns to use weapons and participates as a boarder in several captures of ships. As usually happens in these "grrlz2men" stories she learns also to enjoy the freedom of pants and lack of restrictions on her life.
     Ironically when the notorious and quite historical pirate Mary Read comes onto the scene that all seems to change. Reed's own story parallels Billy's, having been a crewmember on a ship taken by pirates who accept the pirate offer to join them. Calico Jack Rackham is the pirate captain who also has aboard ship Anne Bonney, who dresses and acts like a man but does not herself conceal her gender. Mary tells Billy about how Anne, becoming entranced of "Mark Read" tries to kiss him, forcing Mary to say, in essence, "I'm a girl, so you can't kiss me." Mary sews a beautiful petticoat with her own piratical hands and tells Billy to wear it to remind herself that she is a girl. When Logan happens to walk in on her while she is doing the "I enjoy being a girl" bit, the jig is up and Billy returns to being Becky.
     That is when a book full of dash and daring do gets murky for me. Typically Becky should take what she has learned about how being a girl doesn't mean you can't leap from ship to ship on a rope and wield a cutlass and stab people like any boy. Instead she seems to revert to a sort of passivity. It's not that Logan and the rest starting to treat her like a girl but that Becky accepts the coddling and, as far as I could tell, is content to be the responsibility of other people. The book lost some of its strength to me with that regression.
     The Black Banner follows history rather well; showing how stricter enforcement of anti-piracy laws brings the era of romantic piracy to an end. Rackham is tried and executed, Bonney and Reed imprisoned, and back at a much-reduced Paradise Island community Corder decides to sail for home. Coming in to land near where hiss brother's farm lies, the ship wrecks on rocks, and Logan Corder is captured. Finding Logan's family Becky joins them in trying to find a way to free Logan from hanging. A happy ending complete with a marriage keeps the novel from ending on a grim note. Unfortunately Becky's minimal activity in these final sequences just cements my sense that she learned nothing but how to take care of others. Perhaps the author wanted her to become a more appropriate little girl.
     With pirate stories these days you have two choices, to be realistic about the savagery of pirates or to say to heck with anything but a fun, dashing story and make them romantic and appealing. The Black Banner teeters in an effort to create a balance, Logan trying to stand for some sort of chivalric piratical ideal, offering democracy to his me, treating women gallantly, only killing those who resist being captured, and more of that sort of moral ambiguity. This takes more than a little willingness to equivocate and blur the edges of morality. Had the author made Logan less of a swashbuckling hero this could have just almost worked? Instead it felt like the standard tacking on an overlay of modern sensibilities onto another age.
     The best things about this novel are its numerous colorful and endearing characters, both pirates and honest folk, its fidelity to the history of the time, and its willingness to at least approach gritty realities about death and desperation. If you can just relax and overlook the ambiguities and Becky's failure to have her lessons from being a boy stick, you will have a rip roaring good adventure.
     The Black Banner is available in paperback as well as on Kindle. The publisher offered me a review copy but I chose to purchase it myself. I also, by the way, bought a copy for my neighborhood kids' reading program.
     See Grrlz2Men for more about fictional and historical women who chose to live as men.

New Format for That's All She Read

2011-08-22T13:58:00.001-07:00

After a short break from full reviews where I let goodreads do the posting, I am going vack to posting reviews and more articles on accessible reading. The one majoy change is that i will only fully review books I would rate good or great here on thsi blog. If I read something i am not impressed with, I will only review it at goodreads. Both will show up on this page, however.

I have my reasons but shan't publish them publicly. It boils down to what books are worth my time.

So from today on I will review books good or bad, but the better ones will get the more in depth reviews for which this blog has come to be known. Those that did not impress me will get a line in the goodreads widget.

Thanks for your patience.

Nan Hawthorne

Nan's books

The Boleyn Wife

by Brandy Purdy

This is a fun book. It's unintentionally irreverent and that's what I like about it. It plays with the historical figures in a provocative and controversial way that I found refreshing. If you are a prude or an idol-worshiper skip this o...

Foxe Tail, by Haley Walsh, a Skyler Foxe Mystery

2011-08-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Foxe Tail

Haley Walsh

Yeah, I know, it's not historical... but I'm multidimensional, like most everyone else. Well, three dimensional.. I like historical novels, end of the world novels, and M/M novels. This fits one of those dimensions, OK?

Skyler Fox is a new English teacher at James Polk High in a small town way out off LA. He went to that school too, so it means all the more to him to be part of the faculty. He fears being outed as a gay man mainly because he wants to keep his job, and though legally they couldn't fire him for that, they certainly could lay him off. So when a gorgeous new biology teacher starts at Polk, he has to struggle to hide his attraction. Things heat up in other ways, however, and rather than proving to be a distraction, Skyler starts wondering if there are connections between the biology teacher and the dastardly goings-on.

The mystery starts with the murder of the principal's son behind a gay dance club. Skyler and his police detective friend Sydney think the club must be mixed up somehow with the murder, so they pursue that angle of investigation. Sydney is annoyed at Sky for getting too involved with the case, bur it seems boys will be boys and in spite of threats on his life, Sky persists. He becomes invollved with helping a student get onto the football team, hoping it will help his behavior problems. It is then that Skyler begins to suspect the football faculty of being up to no good and possibly even connected to the murder.

Skyler is quite likable, has the sort of bachelor life we most of us envy but know better than to think really exists, but sometimes you just want to slap him. He can be obtuse about dangers at times, and makes some questionable judgment calls, like taking his former Latin lover with him to the princiipal's house. Other characters fill out the cast, Skyler's detective and other friends, the other teachers, and a few peripheral characters, including a big handsome guy with piercings "down there" that Sky brings home for the books only actual sex scene.

The initial mystery did not catch this reader's imagination, but when the jocks at Polk High bring in their own sinister subplot, I got really into it. The book is what the author called "a story arc" so I was caught unawares when the initial mystery was solved but much was left dangling. Interesting literary idea, but I tend to think it risks someone losing interest before the next part of the arc is published. Fortunately for me it's coming out next month.

One aspect of this novel that struck me was how difficult it is for Skyler to have to listen to anti-gay comments from fellow teachers. he wants to argue but he is too caught up in hiding his own lifestyle. that is just one of the injustices someone like Skyler must cope with, having to accept behavior that hurts but nonetheless having his very fears proved by the behavior. I know from experience if he does come out, with something sort of similar being a person with a disability, that the situation would shift from "we get to say who we hate" to "we have to walk on egg shells around him". Walsh brings all this out clearly and sensitively.

How Few Remain, by Harry Turtledove

2011-08-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

How Few Remain
Harry Turtledove

What if: the confederacy won the Civil War before the Emancipation Proclamation, before Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth had their fatal encounter, and before the war and its aftermath changed the lives of any number of the prominent people of the time? Whose life, and therefore biography, would be affected and how? Well, Lincoln's of course. An unpopular president who lost the war and left the country only half of its former self, who can't get elected dog catcher. What about George Custer? Would he still have a Little Big Horn in his future? And what if Samuel Clemens stayed a newspaperman in the West?

Add to this list of the movers and shakers of their time such names as Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, Frederic Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Geronimo and even General "Chinese Gordon, and you have a speculative free-for-all. One result is you learn a bit about people like Lincoln whose socialist leanings were eclipsed by the war and his assassination.

The basic plot is that the Confederate States of America have just purchased the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora from a peso strapped Emperor Maximilian, an acquisition which will allow the CSA to build a railroad all the way to the Pacific coast. The USA still smarting twenty or so years after the 1863 defeat by the CSA declares war and starts attacking. Ordered by CSA President Longstreet to hold onto territory but not cross into the US, Stonewall Jackson faces an inept US force at the Ohio River. Jeb Stuart is sent to establish CSA control of the new territories and spends some time harassing New Mexico Territory with the help of the Apaches. Frederic Douglass is hawkish for the war as the only means he sees likely to free CSA slaves. Lincoln, traveling the west to rabble rouse among labor, gets stuck in Utah when the Mormons decide to secede. Sam Clemens lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids and writes editorials about how stupid the war is and how even stupider US President William Blaine is for starting it. perhaps most engaging is a 22-year old Theodore Roosevelt, a rancher in Montana who creates the "Unauthorized Volunteers", a civilian army and proves himself bully when it comes to leading them.

Turtledove tells one bully story, too, and had a lot of fun with speculating who would remain prominent and what course their lives would take if the "war of secession" had turned out differently. You will be thoroughly entertained by this book. I actually listened to the audio version of this novel, unabridged of course, so I had extra cause to enjoy it. The reader was terrific, putting in accents and personality.

It's more than a little fun to see which historical celebrity will show up next. it was a little embarrassing to be in on the marital sex scenes for Clemens, though not so much with Roosevelt and Custer.. I wonder why that was?

OK, I have one gripe. If you went by this novel women have no involvement in the making of history outside of wives who nag their famous husbands or the occasional whore who makes Teddy Roosevelt smile. C'mon, Harry, you could have thrown in an Emma Goldman when Lincoln joins the socialists or an Elizabeth Cady Stanton chiding Douglass for taking too many chances by travelling to the front. Maybe it's not your thing, but if history is, then all of history should be, in my humble opinion.

Lessons in Temptation, by Charlie Cochrane - Cambridge Fellows Mystery

2011-07-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Lessons in Temptation

Charlie Cochrane

Cambridge Fellows Mystery #5

What can i say? It's Jonty and orlando. They are wonderful, the book is bound to be too. And in this volume we finally get to see orlando get over himself and get with the program.

Our two darlings are on a working holiday in Bath, Orlando to look at some old mathematics materials to see if they are worth the college purchasing, and Jonty to work on his first book, a work on Shakespeare's sonnets. Of course it does not take long for a murder mystery to crop up. In this case it is the 25 year old murder of a prostitute. It seems the tone-y bath house.. and remember we are talking about Bath here... went through a scandalous period when the owner was away, hosting orgiastic mixed gender parties. During or after one of these, said prostitute was found dead. The authorities, because some prominent and even titled men were involved, hushed it all up. The owner always felt he had let the poor girl down, so our darlings take up the challenge.

Surprisingly, Orlando and Jonty are able to find some of the pricipals in the case, and slowly but surely they arrive at a solution to the whodunnit and why. Now, here's where it gets strange. They work on the case mostly separately. That is because, i n part, Jonty has run into the 1907 equivalent of Brad Pitt., and American actor who turns his head. Jonty feels terrible that he would even consider another man but Orlando, and Orlando dearly wants to punch "Mr. Smarmypants" in the nose. Said Mr. Smarmypants does get punched, but that's as much as I am going to say about it.

Of course, I loved this book. That goes without saying. i adore these two fellows. The mystery is pretty neat and Miss peters shows up so that's good too. I wanted to smack Jonty, as the author would put it, for thinking he would be that easy of prey for the actor, but Orlando's reactions are so charming it was worth it.

OK, there were a couple things I thought lacking in this novel. One is that one suspect I thought of immediately doesn't even get a look by our brainy sweethearts. that is, the guy who minded the baths while the owner was away. It just seemed to me his n ame should have come up. The other is just that this volume in the series was altogether too short. I wanted at least another forty pages of Orlando and Jonty.

The novel is the usual, an affectionate look at the couple, full of hilarious remarks, satisfying love scenes, but a thin mystery. I dread #8 so I am glad I still have #s 6 and 7 as a buffer.

Backwards To Oregon, by Jaee

2011-07-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Backwards To Oregon

Jae

Rebiew originally publilshed in Bosom Friends: lesbian historical Fiction.
Luke Hamilton is a woman living as a man. S/he has just left the army to head down the Oregon Trail with a wagon train and claim the land the territory will give any man… and notice I said "man"... so s/he can begin a horse farm. S/he meets and asks a prostitute named Nora to marry him... her.. oh heck, let’s just stick to the biological. Her. Though I admit I don’t much like calling Luke what she would not call herself.. him.

Nora accepts Luke’s proposal not knowing Luke is a woman. How this is possible is that Luke from the start tells her she is proposing only a business partnership, not a real marriage with conjugal rights and all that. She explains she needs someone to help out with the wagon, though her real reason is that having a wife and child, Nora’s daughter Amy, helps her maintain her cover of being a man.

Most of the novel is about the journey and the negotiations Luke and Nora make between them to live harmoniously together. I don’t think it's much of a spoiler to say that Nora does eventually find out Luke is a woman, so the question changes from “Will she find out?” to “What will she do about it?” When Nora turns out to be pregnant by one of her brothel customers the plot just thickens, though for the two women it is less of an issue than Luke’s obvious growing attraction to Nora.

The story is told in a combination of short vignettes and more involved subplots along the Oregon Trail. You can almost see a list of the possible plot twists of any pioneer journey story being checked off: a child’s illness, a life-threatening accident , fear of Indians, tensions within the wagon train, childbirth in the wild, deprivation, weariness, despondency, hunger and so forth. But it works. Beautifully. It actually made me want to follow the trail myself, to see what they were up against.

Jae, the author, is a psychologist, and she says right off the bat that she writes to explore how individuals grow and overcome fears and learn to trust. You can follow the evolution of Nora and Luke, as well as a couple other characters. This could be tiresome if the characters were standard, but they are not in this novel. Luke is fully realized, complex, credible, appealing, and natural, and so is Nora. You learn why they are the way they are, not only in how their personalities originated but also what influences either helped them or held them back. Luke was on her own from the age of twelve and took on a male identity to survive. There is a wonderful line that says, perhaps not in so many words, that the clothing and personality she has adopted are now the only way she can be herself. That resonated with me since my own Elisabeth says much the same thing in Beloved Pilgrim. Nora was betrayed by a man and thrown out by her parents, needing to fall back on joining a brothel just so she and her daughter would survive. She has had the worst experience of men being exposed only to the worst among them, so it is no wonder she accepts Luke as a means to an end and constantly judges her actions and intentions based on her jaundiced view of men.

This is a love story. It is developed excruciatingly and deliciously slowly. It is easier to understand how Luke comes to love Nora, but how will Nora handle Luke’s being a woman? how can she possibly actually love her.

Another thing I liked about this story is watching how, in their separate ways, Luke and Nora come to an understanding that being female does not mean you are weak. Luke learns about women’s strength by watching the pioneer women work and cope with hardship. Nora is challenged in her assumptions about what it is to be a woman when first Luke treats her with respect and support and then when she discovers this person she thought was a strong man is really a strong woman.

In short, I just loved this novel. It is intelligent, well conceived and developed, full of heart but sparing with sentiment. That English is not Jae’s native language surprised me.. there is no way to tell reading her work. I am so happy to learn that there is a sequel, Hidden Truths. I thank Jae for making sure both books are text to speech enabled on Kindle so I could have the wonderful experience of getting to know and love Luke and Nora.

Lovers Knot: An M/M Romance, by Donald Hardy

2011-07-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

Lovers Knot: An M/M Romance

Donald Hardy

Stop and think about what “lovers knot” means to you. Does it mean a symbol of deep and lasting love, hearts entwined, and all that? Now think about your interpretation of “deep and lasting love”. Does it give you warm fuzzies or does it scare the hell out of you.? That little exercise will prepare you for Donald Hardy’s Lovers Knot.

Fittingly set in a rather Gothic setting, the fog bank cloaked seascapes of Cornwall in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the novel is two stories. One is the return of Jonathan Williams to the Cornish estate of a cousin, now left to him in that cousin’s will. It is 1906. The journey brings Williams back in time as well as distance, the other half of the story being his 1892 visit when he was eighteen and just lost his mother. The events of that summer in Cornwall have haunted him for his entire life and, further, crippled him for love as an adult.

While the young Williams grieves both for his mother’s death and being able to trust his philandering father, he wanders about Trevaglan Farm and meets Nat Bosawen, one of the farmhands, and soon is in love. Nat is a charming scoundrel whom Williams’ cousin warns has a violent streak. Nat and Williams become lovers quickly, breaking the rules not only against same sex relationships but also crossing of the class barrier. The lovers knot comes in the form of little straw talismans Nat leaves for Williams but also in the close and even obsessive attachment he forms with and the blood oath he forces on Williams.

In 1906 Williams is confronted with all the troubling memories from that summer, startled immediately when a young boy who is Nat’s double comes to meet him where he and his long time flat mate, Langsford, arrive in Penzance. He thinks he sees a ghost, and the ensuing events seem to simply affirm this assessment, no matter his dismissing them as coincidence and superstition. In fact, the reader is left throughout this story wondering about the interpretation. There are what appear to be unquestioningly paranormal events, but at least some of them turn out to be planted by quite living beings.

The roster of characters boils down to, for 1892, Williams, his older cousin, Nat Boscawen, and Rose, a maid, and her future husband James Hale other farm employees. In 1906 you get the same roster but with the subtraction of Nat, whom you learn fairly early in the novel died while Williams was still there, and the addition of Rose’s son Alec, the look-alike of Nat, Langsford, Williams’ flat mate who both loves Williams and is loved by him, though neither has ever dared to reveal their love. Langsford seems to be the target of the ghostly dirty tricks, suggesting a jealous lover, and as you get to know him, you become aware that Nat is just such a one. The conflicts within virtually every character make both the 1892 and 1906 stories nothing less than a powder keg, with the aptly-named “Lucifers” (matches) primed to ignite destruction. An additional character in both time periods is the witchy Mistress Bannel who sees into the souls of the people she cares for and is instrumental in how Williams copes with the trauma of both visits. Though she is the archetypal outsider, she manages to bridge all worlds. Her deaf mute son is a striking character, rather messianic, and I will admit his disability was more than a little troubling for me*.

This brace of stories is exceedingly complex. Hardy had not only to create the elaborate development of characters and plots but also figure out how to tell them in an interwoven style that effectively lets the reader in on the complexities. He manages it in such a way that they learn only as much as they should to pull it all together.

Hardy also took a step that many authors who deal with gay characters have to agonize over. I know because I did too. He risked criticism for a predatory gay male character and a rape of one man by another. There is a taboo in the genre against what might be acceptable in any other form of romance. I applaud Hardy for doing what was right for the story, which should always be the responsibility of an author. That the man who was raped has the courage to call it what it is is a moment in the book when I admired the character and the author who birthed him the most.

Hardy h as accomplished a sensitive and intelligent story that blends the paranormal with just plain scary reality with characters you will find utterly credible.

I thank Hardy and his publisher for making the novel enabled for text to speech on Kindle so I could read it.

* See my article, A Plea To Authors of horror and Mysteries..

Affinity, by Sarah Waters

2011-07-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

Affinity

Sarah Waters

Margaret tried to kill herself after her father died and the friend with whom she was in love married her brother. Her overprotective mother is dubious when an old friend of her husband suggest that Margaret might find volunteering as "a lady visitor" at the prison where he works healing. The women's prison and its inmates are a revelation to her, but none more than Selena, a spiritualist convicted of assaulting a young woman who had come to her for help with depression. Margaret befriends Selena, becomes obsessed with her, and Selena seems to return the regard. Ultimately Margaret agrees to help Selena escape prison. The odd thing is that Margaret is willing to believe that Selena has powers that will allow her to dematerialize in prison and come through a "spiritual cord" to her.

The use of dual first person in this novel is effective because it is in the form of two separate journals, Margaret's and Selena's from before she was imprisoned. Since everything that happens is reported immediately after its occurrence, the reader is fed the story gradually, so impressions and deceptions are credible. It is not a matter of someone telling the story sometime later, which always makes one wonder how they can be so objective about earlier events knowing the conclusion of the matter. In Margaret's journal you hear her reasoning for accepting what she does, while with Selena's the reader gets an unfiltered look into what happened in her life but without much insight on the part of the young woman. Thanks to this you will find yourself going back to reread earlier parts and reinterpreting them in light of later knowledge.

That is as close as I am going to come to a spoiler. All I will add is a recommendation to look at every prop as a symbol. Especially look at symbolism around clothing.

Besides being a wonderfully written and terribly chilling story, this novel offers a look at the prison system in Victorian England, one that is run on religious principles, harsh and far from enlightened thought. The women inmates and their lives are complex and range from pathetic to outright repulsive, but the prison matrons are no better. Margaret can be credited with the self knowledge that because of her class her attempted suicide makes her a candidate not for prison but for medical help..

This is an intelligent, thoughtful and compelling novel that will haunt you for a long time.

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Southern Rose, by Mary Winter

2011-07-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Southern Rose, by Mary Winter: "Southern Rose Mary Winter Pink Petal Books Reviewed by Nan Hawthorne Part of the appeal of historical fiction when it comes to GLBT nov..."

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Sappho Sings, by Peggy Ullman Bell

2011-07-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Sappho Sings, by Peggy Ullman Bell: "Sappho Sings Peggy Ullman Bell Reviewed by Nan Hawthorne The historical Sappho, about whom we sadly know so little, was known in her..."

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Rebeccah and the Highwayman, by Barbara Da...

2011-07-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Rebeccah and the Highwayman, by Barbara Da...: "Rebeccah and the Highwayman By Barbara Davies Reviewed by Nan hawthorne This book is about as fun as a book can get! The only flaw ..."

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Sistine Heresy, by Justine Saracen

2011-07-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction: Review: Sistine Heresy, by Justine Saracen: "Sistine Heresy Justine Saracen Reviewed by Nan Hawthorne With a couple unnecessary celebrity walk-ons and and unclear point, this nov..."

Did women fight in the Crusades? Elisabeth did! Read Beloved Pilgrimby Nan Hawthorne, available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Smashwords.com.

Rashi's Daughters, Book I: Joheved: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France, by Maggie Anton

2011-07-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

Rashi'sJoheved: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France

Maggie Anton

Part of a three volume series, Rashi's Daughters, Book I: Joheved: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France offers a quite unique glimpse of a long ago time and a rare cculture, the insular and fragile community of European Jews. It takes place in Troyes in France during a period of perhaps some of the greatest peace for Jewish people in the early Middle Ages, all the more precious to see since just years later with the First Crusade that peace will be shattered.

This novel is something of a "Little House in the Jewish Quarter" in that it tells the story of a strong father, loving mother, and their three daughters. The eldest daughter, Joheved, longs for scholarship in her own right. her father, the historical Rashi (see Random Biographies) struggles with whether teaching girls the Talmud is appropriate, but lacking a son relents and agrees to teach all his daughters. Fears that their education will scare off potential husbands proves needless, and the conclusion is that the fruit of two intellligent parents is bound also to be a scholar.

Much of this novel is about the family's life and specifically Joheved's courtship, marriage, and troubles. One very non-Ingalls-like aspect is the Jewish view of marital relations. I doubt little Laura Ingalls ever heard sex referred to as "the Holy Deed" in real life, no less in the children's books. Adn that's too bad. That at least is a step in the right direction towards homane concepts of sexuality. The elaborateness and depth of superstition in this Jewish community is either hilaious or alarming as you see it. Nevertheless the deep caring within the families in this n ovel, and no doubt the two sequels, is a joy to share with them.

This book and its two sequels are all on Kindle and text to speech enabled, making them all accessible for people like me who can't read prrint. I am grateful. I fully intend to read the two remaining novels.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, by Geraldine Brooks

2011-07-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Geraldine Brooks

The famous story of the village of Eame, which faced plague in the mid 1660s, inspired this novel that amplifies or alters some of its elements but takes off from there to focus on themes of punishment and forgiveness. The basic plot is there. A tailor named George Vickers unwittingly brings plague to a small rural town in a shipment of fabric. He is the first to die. By the time the two clergymen take their famous stand to islate the town, many more have succembed. The Anglican vicar, here renamed Mompeliaon, and the historically named Puritan preacher Thomas Stanley rather than causing a wall to be built around the town so "the plague will be contained" simply procure an oath from the town's citizens to stay put. Throughout the concept that the plague is some sort of punishment by God for the people's wickedness throws the townspeople into strange and often deadly actions.

The story is told by Anna, a young woman whose miner husband has just been killed. She is a daily servant at the vicarage where she comes into close contact with the vicar, Mompelion, and his bright and caring wife, Eleanor. When the plague hits Anna and Eleanor take on the responsibility of caring for the sick and dying. At first the two "wise women" in the town are blamed for the disease. No one is safe after that, as whether or not an individual is blamed, he or she may take the brunt of the anger and grief of neighbors. When Anna's own drunken father in his greed buries a living man to get his possessions, he is tied out on the structure at the mouth of the mine and dies.s His widow turns bitter and loses her mind, adding to the victimization of the desperate.l

The relationship between the precociously intelligent and resourceful Anna and the strangely wistful Eleanor becomes stronger as they try to take the place of the "wise women" and learn their herb lore. In the meantime the morality in the town is disintegrating, the formerly Puritan becoming libertines and the pious Mompelion growing more and more unforgiving. It is in fact his inability to forgive that brings this odd and wrenching story to its unexpected crisis.

The facts about Mompelion are central to a problem I have with first person narrative. I firmly believe that this style should be used only when it will reveal something third person cannot. This novel might be seen in that light, but the fact that a woman who has her world turned upside down in what she believed is true telling her own story from before her illusions are shattered disturbs me. Knowing that Anna learns some dreadful things later on makes the concept of her telling such an intricate story as complimentary as she does seems false to me.

Her own intellectual and emotional development, however, are fascinating and well conceived by the author. The small dramas in the large tragedy are interesting, often disheartening, and sometimes admirable. The epiloguee is rather outlandish, however. My husband would say, "It's fiction!" but I answer that it has to make at least some sense. It may have been a wise decision to skip that part.

This book was available on Kindle, making it possible for me, who cannot read print, to listen to it, and for that i am grateful.

Just Released! The Tudor Throne, by Brandy Purdy

2011-07-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Tudor Throne

Brandy Purdy

My regular readers know I have strict standards where first person narrative is concerned. I believe it should only be used if the voice can reveal more than the usual narrative style can. I have reviewed books that were at best lackluster and at worst clumsy because of inappropriate use of first person. This book, like at least one other of Brandy's three, uses first person in a skillful, effective way.

After a narrative prologue depicting the death of the great King Henry VIII the novel splits into two voices, is daughters Mary's and Elizabeth's. The tale starts with the three children, the girls and their brother the new king Edward VI at their father's deathbed. From the very start the two distinctive voices not only are easy to identify, but also tell much the same story but with different minds analyzing events.

We follow both girls through their brother's short reign, living with the young boy's imperial behavior and often fickle affections. The sisters are still fond of each other at this point, but a scandal involving Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour threatens to destroy that. Mary clings desperately to a spinsterish Catholicism while Elizabeth, her own woman, nevertheless learns one more lesson in not trusting men to have power over her.

When Edward dies Mary takes the throne. Though Elizabeth has done nothing to earn it, she distrusts her younger sister, convinced there are plots to dethrone her. Purdy shows Mary trying at first to return Roman Catholicism to its preeminence in England through her confidence that "the people" wanted it, then through gentler efforts, but when it becomes a bargaining chip in her marriage to Philip of Spain, her zeal takes its famous "Bloody" turn. Elizabeth can only hang on, playing the game as best she can, until, some day, her older sister dies without issue.

It is both satisfying and enlightening to watch Mary reach out for love in the wrong place, to watch her health, both physical and mental, deteriorate and to see what impact a monarch who is desperate and going mad is on her people. At the same time, the smarter more reflective Elizabeth learns hard lessons that will ultimately make her a glorious queen, perhaps the best monarch England has ever had. Purdy's skill in bringing these two women and others in their world to life demonstrates great skill as a novelist, one that deserves more notice than she got with her earlier novels.

If you are a reader of Tudor novels who relishes the catwalk of the women's and even the men's fashions of the day, you will adore this novel. It seems that every time someone comes on the scene, you get a top to toe description of what she is wearing. The author clearly relishes the Tudor court's finery and knows enough to describe it faithfully.

For me the history, the speculative peeks behind the scenes, and more than anything the sensitive exploration of the two women's emotional development is the attraction for this novel that I fully anticipate will take its place as one of the best loved and respected novels in the genre of Tudor-era historical fiction.

Bonnie Prince Charlie, by G. A. Henty

2011-06-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

Bonnie Prince Charlie

G. A. Henty

G. A. Henty wrote a remarkable number of historical novels meant for young people, especially boys, and he no doubt is getting a bit of a pposthumous revival since his books are in the public domain and available free in a lot of places on the Internet. They will not suit most modern readers, save perhaps for those who like a very old fashioned narrative style. I have to confess to mixed feelings on Henty's work in general, and in particular with this novel.

It is the story of Ronald Lesley, the son of a Scottish Jacobite who had to flee to France in 1715. The rebel fell in love with a young noblewoman, whose father caused him to be imprisoned to prevent him from seeing the woman who it turned out had not only married her sweetheart but had a son by him. We meet the boy as a toddler as longtime servant and companion of his father, Malcolm Anderson, brings him to Scotland for Anderson's brother to raise. In typical Henty fashion the boy is a superman by 15. He gets involved in some latter day Jacobite, support of Bonnie prince Charlie, so like his father has to flee to France. Hey, he wanted to go there anyway, to find his mother and free his father, both of which he does. He rocks the same boat as his dad did and must himself now flee back to Scotland. he does so in the company of said Bonnie Prince, allying himself with the Young Chevalier and following him all the way to his ignominious defeat. Still, Ronald has a loving mom and dad to fall back on, and that is what he does.

So what Henty does in his novels is find a way to put a young boy or young man in a historical situation. He does this well enough, though you are not goign to find the inner boy in these characters. They are all pretty together, bluff and accomplished. there are no love interests in this particular novel. Once the freeing of Maman and Papa are accomplished, cleverly though this is, Ronald's role in the historical events is rather thinly detailed. In Fontenoy and then in Culloden he is no more than furniture. What I wouldn't have given to see Culloden from Ronald's perspective. Not only does Henty just give us the straight historical account, he doesn't even do much of that. Given all the tragic ballad I have heard about the event Henty's account is rather blah.

I expect that Henty's novels are all like this and the other I read about the Crimean War. At least the latter did more with the main character than "Charlie" did. Ronald is as boy scout upright as he can be,. Maybe the average public school boy would find it all appealing, though I tend to doubt it. I think they would want more of what was going on in Ronald's head, just as I did.

The Children of Mother Glory, by C. M. Harris

2011-06-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Children of Mother Glory

C. M. Harris

Reviewed by Morgayne

As was often the only way it could happen in 1900 for a woman to become clergy, Glory Potter inherited the ministry of her father’s church. Raised without a mother, she was groomed for the role by being of service to the people in her parish long before taking over Sunday sermons upon her dad’s passing. The strict sect was founded on the mutual goals of preparing its members in fellowship for the imminent Coming of Christ and their health and welfare until then. Glory is particularly effective at both of these roles.

So much so that even though she has no children of her own she was mother of many. A woman in her early twenties, Glory Potter navigates the tight rope of the Potterite church established by her father. At least she does until the feelings she has for her childhood friend, Emma, lead them to bed for one brief taste of their passion before returning to live in the church like before as if nothing had happened between them.

What happens while the two women are dreaming of those stolen moments? Life. Emma marries and has children and Glory continues to steward the members of her church flock. During wars the Potterites are interred in prison camps as conscientious objectors because their church requires pacifism. Other members of the church struggled and die from drugs and alcoholism.

Although the church kept their members in a religious straight jacket, Mother Glory’s children manage to follow in her footsteps in finding love in non-traditional ways. More importantly they find ways to acknowledge and live with who they really are within the church and the larger context of the world. The main characters were well developed and I was able to have a personal experience with the secondary characters also. As much as I enjoyed Mother Glory’s children I would like to have seen more between Glory and her beloved Emma.

I enjoyed C.M. Harris’s prose which was elegant and poetic. Her story covers a hundred years and Harris manages wonderfully to keep the language progression true to each time period from 1900 to a current setting. In The Children of Mother Glory the author sets herself the Herculean task of exploring pretty much all the social issues of the Twentieth century including: good vs. evil, women as clergy, war and peace, the evils of technology, alcoholism, drugs and other addictions, homosexuality and gender reassignment. It’s a great deal to wrap one’s mind around and at times I was a little daunted by the epoch scope of this novel.

Overall however I found Children of Mother Glory to be well written and nestled nicely in an accurate historical setting. Having grown up in Indiana I can easily see how an ultra conservative church and followers could spring up in the mid-west.

About Morgayne: My life is here on the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington with my cat Shadow where I find inspiration for writing in the beauty of the Olympic Mountains, beaches and in the writing of others.

Two Historical Novels Review Online Reviews

2011-06-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

Historical Novels Review Online, May 2011
Reviews by Nan Hawthorne

Grant Me Timely Grace

By Timothy Woods

Civil war spy thriller.

The King of Silk

By Joe Douglas Trent

Time travel to and high finance in Renaissance Italy.

Lessons in Discovery and Lessons in Power, by Charlie Cochrane - Cambridge Fellows mysteries

2011-06-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lessons in Discovery
Lessons in Power

Charlie Cochrane

Cambridge Fellows Mysteries

When I finished reading Lessons in Discovery I was so lonely for jonty and Orlando that I had to go on and read the next novel in the series,Lessons in Power. The result was two quite emotional reads in a row, though from what I understand these are not the toughest by any means. Cochrane's generally light hearted and entertaining novels get you, or at least they got me, so wrapped up in the love story of these two quite distinct men that the fact each of these novels confronts relationship challenging events put me through a wringer.

In Lessons in Discovery a freak accident leaves Orlando with partial amnesia just as he and Jonty have started to talk about finding a house together. Orlando does not remember Jonty and their love affair at all. He was such a hard sell to start with that you might imagine it's time to start all over. But Cochrane's skill with these novels is such that you learn right away, as Orlando does, that something during that year of lost memories has changed him. He wakes to a friend, that alone showing him how much has changed in his hitherto solitary life. The novel, like all the others, is blessed with two parallel plots, a mystery and the love story. The latter involves a look at jonty's loving patience and Orlando's surprising readiness to trust. The mystery is about the ward of Elizabeth of York who disappeared in the 15th century and is later thought to be the corpse found in a well near St. Bride's. The investigation is academic, all written records and strange encoded letters. The exercise is reminiscent of Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, and coincidentally Elizabeth, wife of henry Vii, is that "Daughter".

It is painful to watch Jonty's fear that he has lost Orlando's love, but in a way it is a chance to watch the two come together a second time, this time with a different Orlando, one already primed for loving his Jonty. The mystery they work on gives uss a chance to spend time with members of Jonty's wonderful family and also introduces us to Ariadne Peters, a strong independent woman who quickly becomes the lovers' firm ally.

In Lessons in Power the crisis is Jonty's as Matthew Aindley from the second novel asks the Cambridge Fellows to investigate a murder. The victim turns out to be one of the schoolfellows who raped Jonty when he was young. All this brings back terrible memories that have not healed, and Jonty suddenly cannot bear Orlando's touch. Orlando is not the understanding partner Jonty was in Discovery but manages to hide his impatience with Jonty's exorcism of the ghosts of his past. Again, we see more of the Stewart family, always a joy. The fellows are in their new house now, so we have that pleasure as well. Complicating both the mystery and love stories however is discovering the other schoolfellow who hurt Jonty, the hall master who egged them on, and another victim are involved in the crimes, reopening those scars for Jonty again and again.

I am quite susceptible to the emotions replete in well written novels with great and charismatic characters, so I was a basket case reading these two in a row. I suspect I should take something of a break until I read the next in the eight volume series.

One thing that struck me reading these novels, and the more so with Power, is that I wish everyone who doubts that gay people have the capacity for deep and enduring love would read them. Cochrane shows the range of affection in both gay and heterosexual couples, from contentious to devoted, and they are drawn as having no predetermined strength based on the gender of the partners, I think people would have a hard time not breaking through their bias. At least I would hope so.

I bought both books from Amazon's Kindle store and thank the author and publisher for enabling text to speech so reading them was even possible for me.

Diary of a Part-Time Ghost, by Vered Ehsani

2011-06-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Part-Time Ghost

Vered Ehsani

A young adult time travel and fantasy novel, the historical content involves the Boston Tea Party of 1773. It is in first person, a story told in a quirky way by a fifteen-year-old boy named Ashish. One of the unique things about this story is that it is told by an Indian American boy, not your run of the mill teen protagonist. The author has written Ash as a typical high schooler, just wanting to fit in and stay awake during monotonous history lectures.

Ash's life takes a dramatic turn when his aunt drops a birthday gift off for him, a strange old history book with a leather cover. The boy's life has been getting strange already, with disembodied voices and nighttime apparitions. His aunt's cryptic admonitions that "What you focus on you will become" and "Don't let him touch you, the book of The Veil" offer him no clues about what his mission will soon be. In history class he happens to open the book to a strangely compelling painting of a poor 18th century English family. He touches it and finds himself there, though as invisible as if he was a ghost. Back at home, tortured by three sisters, he nevertheless finds himself back through the literary looking glass for his first clear sight of The Veil between our world and another. He has an erstwhile guide there who frequently decamps, leaving him on his own. He also soon encounters the "him" of "don't let him touch you", a tall rangy yellow eyed fellow who is the epitome of all the darkest urges. This fellow, plus the shadows of negative emotion that reach out at his bidding, are constant threats for Ash, not only in his own real world but also in the past where he struggles to help a girl, his ancestor, and her brother stay clear of the monster.

The joke-cracking teen boy took me a little while to warm up to, but once he started his trips to 1773 he started to make sense. I think of all his traits, Ash's quickly learning how staying neutral for safety's sake in the life he has lived so far was most admirable and heartening. He constantly carps on himself for acting before thinking or saying impulsive things, but it seems natural for him to do so. The females in the story are stronger than they would be in many young adult novels, and for the most part the author gets his history right. Those small inn accuracies I did notice, like the sofa in the living room of the 1773 Boston house, can be explained as Ash's interpretation.

The only trouble is that the book ends without tying up some loose ends. Some of that seems part of the author's plan for sequels, but not all. For instance, Ash only gets the book his mother confiscated back because he promises to type up his sister Shanti's history paper.. and that never happens. That just does not feel like something important enough that it can wait for the sequel.

All in all, however, I found the story charming and inventive, and halfway through it I realized that two boys I know, Daniel and Samuel Ahn, would love this book. The author provided me with a digital copy so I could read it with a text to speech program, but I have already sent for a paperback edition to give to my young neighbors.

Irish Winter, by John Simpson

2011-06-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

Irish Winter

John Simpson

I like M/M romance and the history of Irish rebellion, so as I noted in Goodreads, what's not to love?

Iam meets Devlin when an aact of British brutality drives him to join the IRA. Devlin is a street smart experienced fellow, and though at first neither knows the other is attracted to him, Devlin takes the initiative and they begin their sexual relationship, of course on the sly. Iam does not know that Dev has turned tricks to survive. Ian, the more sensitive, takes a role as a medic with the local IRA brigade, which helps him accept the violence of his involvement. At the same time, the British take one action after another that further alienates him. The story runs along two tracks, the evolution of the 1919-1924 fight for Irish independence and the developing relationship between the two young men. Will they be able to survive the violence and commit to a lifelong love?

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this otherwise pretty average M/M erotic romance is how much actual history made it into the sex story. The events in which Ian and Dev become involved are all real events, culminating in the assassinations of British intelligence officers in Dublin and the massacre of attendees at a major Irish football game the same day. The young men's lives are fraught with poverty, hunger and danger in this very black time in Irish history.

Ian and Dev are remarkably sanguine about being gay in a time and place where exposure could be fatal, officially or through vigilante action. They do not seem to worry about sinning, and there are a couple love scenes where I felt like hissing "Quiet down!" Ultimately this is quite possible, so I may be imposing my own beliefs on the fictional situation. Where I feel justified in expressing doubt is in the abruptness of the ending which leaves the reader wondering what happened when the young men achieved their ultimate goal.

As characters Dev and Ian are mostly unremarkable, tend to wisecrack a great deal, but the love scenes are intense and sincere. They are, at the very least, likable.

I bought this novel to read on my Kindle. Thanks to Dreamspinner Press for allowing text to speech to be enabled so I could do so.

The Demon's Parchment, by Jeri Westerson - A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir

2011-06-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

The Demon’s Parchment

Jeri Westerson

A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir

Jeri Westerson turns out complete novels at a remarkable rate, and with The Demon’s Parchment she shows no loss of quality and intelligence in its writing or construction.

Her detective, the Tracker, Crispin Guest, is on his way to Westminster to meet a new client, a Jewish physician named Jacob, when he becomes embroiled in solving the murder of a young boy whose body was found in the Thames. Almost immediately he wonders if the two crimes, the theft of sinister documents from Jacob and the ritual rape and mutilation of the boy is connected. His friend the abbot supports the old stories of Jews crucifying Christian boys, and Crispin is a man of his age with all his prejudices. When he stumbles on a secret Jewish enclave after preventing the kidnap of a boy from their midst, then discovers what might be a golem, a clay creature that could have been created from the stolen scrolls, Crispin almost doesn’t know where to turn to look next. Just to complicate things further, when Jacob's son Julian kisses Crispin, he finds he liked it. As if it wasn’t difficult enough just avoiding being beaten up by old friends and their cousins or getting in and out of the palace!

The mystery is just complex enough and there are just enough red herrings to make the story good without confusing the reader. Westerson handles the orchestration of clues, reveals and distractions masterfully. On top of this she offers here an insight into two controversial topics of the day. One is the fact that Jews were outlawed in England under the present King Richard’s great grandfather, Edward I. The only reason Jacob and Julian are at the palace is because Richard is anxious to sire an heir and wants expertise to discover why his wife has not become pregnant. The few Jews allowed to stay in England had to promise to convert and to live under the supervision of the Church, so the existence of the clandestine enclave puts Crispin in a bind whether to tell on them or not.

The other topic is introduced when Crispin is horrified to discover he enjoyed young Julian’s kiss. He heads to Southwark to reassure himself in the stews, but instead he runs into John, a cross dressing male prostitute and an old acquaintance, hardly reassuring. This male prostitute, one learns in the historical note by the author, is a real historical person. The note also presents evidence that in fact homosexuality was not quite the taboo in the Middle Ages we have been told. That came in the 17th and 18th centuries. What got this fellow imprisoned more than anything was his donning of a female identity. The punishment for the act of love between men (and between women?) was often no more than penance.

Westerson has the rare ability to step away from the usual stereotypes about medieval people without resorting to characters with modern sensibilities. I and other authors will be well advised to mimic her evenhanded treatment of controversial topics.

Westerson sticks loyally to the noir genre with the down and out ex-knight getting help from his underworld pals and the often arbitrary powers that be an ever present threat whenever he gets too close to the truth.

I bought this novel as a Kindle book and read it using text to speech. I thank Westerson and her publisher for allowing text to speech to be enabled or I should not have been able to read it.

Sharpe's Devil, by Bernard Cornwell

2011-06-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

Sharpe's Devil

By Bernard Cornwell

Originally posted on Dec.30, 2008, but we just reread it and liked it even more. The only problem.. we have now read every single Sharpe book!!!!

I deviate occasionally from reading novels set in the Middle Ages, and this one which takes place mostly in Chile in 1820-21 is one of those times. My husband, Jim Tedford, and I got bitten by the Sharpe bug recently, and he read this one to me night after night before going to sleep. I had mistakenly thought this one takes place right after Sharpe's Waterloo, which I had read via cassette, so I ordered it from Amazon. I wanted to know what happenws to Jame Sharpe. It turns out there is one in between, Sharpe's Challenge.

The subtitle of this novel, Sharpe's Devil, "Sharpe and the Emperor", made me assume the title Devil was Napoleon Bonaparte. Boney may be, but there is yet another I will describe below. Bonaparte makes a short cameo in this novel, allowing Sharpe his sight of Boney that he had only at a distance at Waterloo. On his way to Chile to find out what happens to old friend Don Blas Vivar, Sharpe's ship looks in at St. Helena where Bonaparte is held, and the defeated emperor takes to Sharpe and entrusts him with a framed portrait for a fan in Chile. Suitably star-struck despite the man being ultimately responsible for the deaths of everyone from Theresa, Sharpe's wife, onward, Sharpe agrees.

Arriving in Valdivia, the Spanish roayl capital of Chile, Sharpe, accompanied by the faithful Patrick Harper, now a Dublin publican, learns that Vivar, the former governor, is dead and that a villain named Boutista is in his place. Our heroes are sent to another town where they are told they will find Vivar's tomb. Managing to avoid assassination on the way there, they find the tomb but are arrested and treated to a display of Boutista's grandiosity and cruelty. The portrait of Napoleon has found its way into Boutista's hands and proves to be inscribed in code on the back. Sharpe and Harper are summarily sent packing back to Europe.

Now here is where the title Devil comes in, the entire reason, I suspect, why Cornwell even wrote this book. It is a highly colorful historical figure named Lord Thomas Cochrane, a Scots pirate and passionate freedom fighter. He is indeed a fascinating personality, a documented hater of "farting lawyers", flamboyant and both fearless and confident no matter the odds against him. Cochrane takes the ship that Sharpe and Harper are sailing on, then recruits the two to help him oust Bautista. Sharpe agrees, having been told that Vivar is not infact dead but a prisoner at the Angel Tower in the Citadel, the stout fortress at Valdivia. Although Sharpe and Harper are no longer soldiers, they both participate ably in Cochrane's battles. In fact, in typical Cornwell fashion, Sharpe is essentially the man who liberates Chile. I am sure the Chilean historians approved this assertion...

Sharpe finds something quite unexpected in the Tower, definitely not a prison cell complete with Vivar, but need not return to Europe empty handed -- and that's all I will say about that.

Jim and I enjoyed this novel, though it veers from the typical Sharpe, not taking place in Europe nor during the Napoleonic Wars, and Sharpe is not a soldier in it, though he certainly does fight. The ending comes quite abruptly, and the dispposition of Vivar is decidedly peripheral. If you like Sharpe novels, you will like this one, though not as tight as the rest. There are loose ends left unresolved, though the visit to St. Helena does come full circle with a tantalizing "what if?" in regards to Bonaparte.

If you like the Sharpe movies with Sean Bean, you may enjoy this parody, Sharpe's Plot, published recently on Nan Hawthorne's Bookking the Middle Ages.

Molly September, by Maggie Secara

2011-05-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

Molly September
By Maggie Secara

I am on a never ending quest for female characters who are not female first and people second, and in Molly September I have found one. Molly, as far as I was able to discern, is as self-actualized, as much her own person as any female character I have read, or for that matter written. Brava, I say, brava!

This is the story of the daughter of a well-bred lady who fell in love with and eloped with a notorious privateer. She has been in Port Royal in Jamaica for a short time being pushed into marriage with a brutal fop when she meets Dick Prentiss, the Jack-Sparrow-only-far-sexier character in the book. They are drawn together instantly, birds of a feather so to speak, and she, like her lamented slut of a mother, elopes with him as Maman did with her own scoundrel. Molly proves an enthusiastic and skillful seaman herself. The two and the crew of the ship Jealous Mary sail away into harrowing and sometimes quite deadly adventures always a step away from the vengeful plans of the jilted fop. When twice it seems that Dick and Molly will never see each other again, the reader holds out hope and ... well you will have to read this thoroughly entertaining book to see what happens.

Let me get my few reservations out of the way, though, first, so I can start lavishing the book with my praise. There were times, I am sorry to say, when I thought plot twists, like Molly's kidnapping by Armand, were in the book for the fun of writing them only, though in fact they do have importance to the final resolution. I can't go so far as to say the subplots were gratuitous, and who cares anyway since they are so much fun? The other thing i could have done without was the appearance of Lady Fortune, a mystical creature, which I felt was inconsistent with the tenor of the rather natural, realistic novel. Oh, and I really, really wanted an author's note. Was it just not in the review copy? I will decline to comment further on some tiny continuity problems.

OK, now I can get on with what I really wanted to say! There are three aspects of this book I absolutely loved, in addition to it just being a heck of a fun read.

First, the non-cartoonish nature of the characters. Molly, as I said, is as much her own person as I could want. She is so natural, so genuine and so in touch with herself she was precious to follow. After her first sea battle, one in which she participated fully, she thinks "This is not women's business. This is what I was born for!" The pairing of those statements, and the liberating character of the second sentence, made me stop, nod, and say, "All right then!" Nor is Molly the only simply real character. I felt the author drew all of the many different characters just as honestly, not at all the caricatures one might expect in a pirate adventure novel. Each is suitably complex and therefore not always predictable and written clearly and satisfyingly. And that goes for Dick Prentiss, Molly's love, and for the least member of the Jealous Mary's or any other ship's crew member for that matter.

Second, I loved the sex scenes. They did what I always say sex scenes should do. They reveal the characters in their most intimate moments. yes, these scenes were erotic, but they also told a story about love and about real care and concern for the lovers' partners. They remained fresh and sweet, and I felt after each that I knew Molly and Dick, not to mention a couple other characters, so much better than I should have without them.

Finally, I adored the frequently poetic and original phrases. I wish I could remember them all. One I picked out was "Calmly, Armand backed off, black eyes reflecting light like soiled windows.." There were lines about the sea, the ship, about the people and about their emotions that made me stop and savor the sheer perfection of them. I know I will have to read this novel again just to savor them once more. Next time I will write every last one of them down.

In short, this is a rollickign good read but with some quite aesthetic and literary jewels.

The author sent me a copy of this wonderful novel specifically for a review, sending me a file I could use on my Kindle 3. She used the subject line "Have I got a book for you!" I think I appreciated her chutzpah almost as much as I did a chance to add one more female character to the short list with whom I can identify.

Nan Hawthorne's Booking History: What Makes a Book Review Useful?

2011-05-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

Nan Hawthorne's Booking History: What Make a Book Review Useful?: "I started That's All She Read as much to have a log of everything I read as to share my perspective with other readers, so there may be cha..."

Wine of Violence, by Priscilla Royal - Eleanor of Winethorpe mysteries

2011-05-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

Wine of Violence

Priscilla Royal

Eleanor of Winethorpe mysteries

The first of the Eleanor of Winethorpe mysteries does more than introduce the reader to the regular characters of these novels set in the reign of Henry III after the defeat of Simon de Montfort. Set in a dual sex monastery called Tyndal, it brings up many of the conflicts that can arise in a society where religious vocation is often not the primary draw of monastic life. A woman might prefer to avoid a horrible death in childbirth or a man be given no choice because of his own birth or sexual inclinations, the potential harmony of the truly religious is threatened by the conflicting needs of those who enter the cloister. As the author says, though our image of a nun’s life might be patterned on Audrey Hepburn, reality was far more complex.

The old prioress has died and already there is conflict as the enigmatic message she passed on to her confessor is made the more obscure when he is murdered. The new prioress is an outsider, the twenty-year-old daughter of a Norman baron, and at first she is treated with resentment and suspicion. Coincidentally with her arrival is that of Brother Thomas, given the choice of a monastic life or death by fire for being caught in a homosexual act with a friend. The local crowner, which we would call the coroner, is called to investigate the murder, then finds himself called back first when Thomas is hit on the head while following a suspicious pair and then for the murder of a local man no one in the village will admit knowing. When someone tries to kill the new prioress, which is making many positive changes at the monastery, the reader is left with a number of possible suspects and motives. Is the sub-prior so resentful of a woman’s control he would kill her? Would the novice master kill to cover up his molestation of his charges? Are resentful Saxons embittered enough to be the culprits? Or is it none of these or some other combination?

Power struggles between the female-controlled order of monks and nuns is just part of the mix of dissonant elements in Wine of Violence. Older religious resent rule by younger. The Norman noble and the Saxon villager contend. Sexual tensions complicate matters both for heterosexual and homosexual members of the community. The corrupt struggle against those who may expose them. Secular and religious authorities further dither over jurisdiction. Is it any wonder that someone, or more that just one, choose to cut through the complications and just kill those who stand in the way?

Royal’s pragmatic overview of the many different people and personalities in a 1270 monastery makes this novel and no doubt all its sequels uniquely realistic. In her foreword she states directly that no concept is absent in any time even though its Time has not arrived yet. So strong intelligent women will be found in 13th century England, as will people whose affect ional preference is their own sex. How they were perceived and how they might have coped with being outside the accepted norm is the point of a novel like this. As she points out, while it might be a mistake to try to make medieval people think and act like modern, simple facts of human existence nevertheless cannot be overlooked.

Mysteries are not always profound but they can be, or at least they may pose profound questions that erupt from the violence of their subject matter. Wine of Violence is one such mystery with sensitive and sensible portrayals of the sort of people who would be outsiders in their own time.

As an aside, as I listened to the book on my Kindle 3 during a scene where the young prioress’s orange cat scares off her assailant, I was sitting with my own orange cat, likewise rescued from being “disposed of”, and I praised him in lieu of the novel’s charming feline.

Thanks to Priscilla Royal and her publisher for enabling text to speech so I could read, almost unable to put it down once I had started reading, this novel.

Beloved Pilgrim Now on Kindle and Amazon UK

2011-05-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

NEWS!

Beloved Pilgrim is now available in both print and on Kindle at Amazon.xom and in print and on Kindle at Amazon.co.uk!

Waterloo, by Bernard Cornwell - Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

2011-05-04T21:01:00.000-07:00

Waterloo

Bernard Cornwell

Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

We are almost there. My husband's and my marathon attempt to read every Richard Sharpe novel in chronological order is nearly at an end. Waterloo is the second to last, at least at this date. So far it is easily my favorite, but then I have become fond of the battle for some reason and even written a bit about it myself. Nothing published yet. We only have Sharpe's Devil to go. We've read it, but we will read it again, almost next.

In spite of his promise to Lucille, Our Hero heads to Belgium when he hears that Boney has escaped Elba and is apparently still able. The allied armies are ready, sort of, to face L'Empereur but do not actually expect him any time soon. They are getting ready for the ball of the season in Brussels when Sharpe, of course, is the one to alert Wellington to the advancing army. "He's humbugged me!" Wellington admits. The battles at Quatre Bras and Waterloo ensue, the British losing the first, and nearly losing the whole enchilada, during a novel that spans only a few days. It is a highly documented battle, and Cornwell does justice to the complexity of the events.

By the way, if you saw the TV movie first, forget it. The two bear only a glancing resemblance. The book, as usual, takes the prize.

Undercurrents include Jane Sharpe and her lover Lord Rosendale showing up in Brussels, where Sharpe confronts the shaking Rosendale, says he can "keep the whore" but he wants his money. Jane tells her lover that he should kill Sharpe during battle so they can marry. Rosendale doesn't know she has an urgent need as she is now pregnant. Another more satisfying undercurrent is Harper's arrival at Sharpe's side. Although a civilian now, Harper has accepted Sharpe's invitation to join him to catch sight of Boney. Perhaps the most historically ambiguous subplot is Sharpe's attachment to the retinue of the Prince of Orange, called "Slender Billy" and "the Young Frog", a Dutch prince whose youthful arrogance is only matched by his criminal ineptitude. One wonders why he has not been shot by his own side..or perhaps he will.

Cornwell as usual weaves his familiar and beloved characters in and out of a well dramatized historical event, going farther to give the reader an understanding of why Napoleon, with fresher and larger forces, managed to get beaten. It is absolutely fascinating. And, of course, Sharpe is responsible for the most decisive action of the war, effectively winning the Battle of Waterloo.

My husband Jim read the book to me over successive nights. We plan to follow our tradition and read my latest novel now that it is in print, then on to Sharpe's Devil. Then our reading of the Sharpe novels will be done. We are looking forward someday to reading the Sharpe novel Cornwell reportedly plans for the near future.

The Warrior's Path, by Catherine M. Wilson - When Women Were Warriors

2011-05-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

The Warrior's Path
Catherine M. Wilson

When Women Were Warriors, Book I

I have been fascinated by attempts to write novels about societies where women and men are equals, but until I read this novel I had never actually found one that satisfied me. When, back in the Pleistocene era, I was in college, I had the good luck to be offered a special topics class on women writers of science fiction. Before I had read all the novels, I had come to the conclusion that no author could imagine a society where a sort of cultural rape was in the inevitable future. We've come some way since those were all written, but Wilson's is the first one I have read where the men and women characters work alongside one another and the men are not made the bad guys. How refreshing! And how important if we want to get away from the destructive side of the gender clash.

Tamras is a young woman who travels to the stronghold of the Lady Maren to join the household where her own mother was a warrior. The Lady asks her to agree to become the companion of Maara, a warrior who came to the household from an uncertain past and whom the others in the household distrust. Maara reluctantly allows Tamras to stay, but it is not until Maara is brought back heavily wounded from fighting with the warriors against cattle raiders and Tamras nurses her back to health that Maara truly accepts her. Maara begins to teach her far more than a companion learns, more like an apprentice. Maara's ways are different but Tamras soon learns their value. Underlying their warrior/apprentice relationship run a current of Tamras trying to learn more about the mysterious warrior and her odd behavior, including sleepwalking characterized by violent episodes. The leader of the warriors, Vintel, through her enmity with Maara, is a constant threat to both Tmras and the warrior. Through Tamras's trust and utter devotion, others come to accept Maara, especially after Maara brings intelligence that saves them all. Another underlying current is Tamras's friendship with another of the companions, Sparrow. She is also a loner, having once been a slave. The two young women become sexually involved causing some friction with their two warriors, Maara and Vintel. There love scenes are sweet and satisfying to read.

This is a refreshingly told story with characters both familiar and just different enough to keep your interest. Though no specific era and location are given, it works, partly because the first person narration makes that more credible and partly because this allows the reader to think about the society that is the setting without and coloration from historical tribes or epochs. I decided to call this speculative historical fiction, though the author says many call it fantasy, because the setting is just too real and natural to fall under that rubric.

In this culture both women and men are warriors. The matriarchy is firmly in place and women make up the tribal council, but it is definitely not a he vs. she tale. I firmly believe we need books like this to offer an alternative to the lies we have been told for thousands of years about men's and women's natural roles and abilities. Too much of what has written along these lines feeds into a tense detente between the genders. Since both the histories of women in general and gays and lesbians is virtually nonexistent or fraught with bias and misrepresentation, it may fall to historical novelists to provide the next best thing. How much better if the "history" doesn't fall into myths just as destructive as the negative ones that predominate?

Archetypes are my specialty, so I looked for them here as in every novel. The women characters are wonderfully diverse. The Lady is the mother figure, but far from stereotyped, as she does not hesitate to use manipulation and dishonesty to protect her tribe. Maara is the maverick, the outsider, while Vintel is the swaggering, aggressive fighter, a role usually reserved to a man. Namet is the practical, insightful and merciful healer, though not officially, the actual healer being more in service to the group than the individual. I especially enjoyed Gnith, the crone of crones, the discounted aged woman who spends all her time on the hearth observing and commenting with the wry humor and detachment of someone no longer entirely in this world.

If I have any regret about this first book of the trilogy it is that the tension with Vintel is overlooked in the final transformative event. I really felt that this antagonist had to have had something to say or a chance to look annoyed or roll her eyes.

I fully intend to read the full trilogy. The print copy is on Amazon , but I bought the ebook from Smashwords. This meant I could listen to the novel on my Kindle 3, for which I am grateful.

P'tit Cadeau, by Anel Viz

2011-04-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

P'tit Cadeau

Anel Viz

Ben is an artist on sabbatical from the American college where he teaches. He has a year in France and wants to fill hi sketchbooks and canvases with the remarkable sights he can find in the south of France and in Italy. He did not expect that one of his favorite subjects for his art would come to mean so much to him, his new model and lover, Jean-Yves Cadot.

The two men meet in the small mountain town of Sainte-Repouze where Jean-Yves' father took the family after a scandal involving a priest at the young man's school in Dijon. The young man, now in his early twenties, lives with his spiteful and bitter sister who considers him simple-minded and a naughty child. Ben befriends him, discovers he is anything but simpleminded but very possibly too childlike for his own good. His relationship with Jean-Yves grows as he paints and draws him, in works like the cover painting, "Boy Wading". He resists his growing attraction to him, believing the young man is heterosexual, but they eventually become quite ardent lovers. The novel chronicles their relationship as Ben sets Jean-Yves on the road to self confidence and achievement.

I could not believe how often my emotional reaction to the story changed, right along with the narrator Ben's. At first I was charmed by Ben's kindness and Jean-Yves sweetness, but I soon saw how the complicating factors in their couplehood, namely Ben's fear of falling in love with someone he would be forced to leave to return to the states, I became just as anxious as Ben and Jean-Yves. From there I saw how dependent the young man was and felt the desperation that itself was replaced by a sneaking suspicion that he was more manipulator than dependent. Separated for years, I started to long to know how Jean-Yves was coping, how he was living his life, and was as anxious as Ben to see him again. Along with the artist narrator I found him strong, talented, and more appealing than ever. I wanted to keep him, as did Ben.

What this boils down to is, quite simply, a real relationship. Romances are about ups and downs, yes, but not usually ones that mirror the lives of us mortals. Ben and Jean-Yves are as changeable, as likely to make mistakes, as likely to surprise themselves and others, and as unpredictable as any other two humans on the earth. No two people will hold the same roles nor relationships either, the give and take being the norm, unlike in much fiction. I found this powerful, so much more satisfying than books where not only the story is fiction but the types of people in them as well. Viz is a wonderful writer, as neat, both economical and eloquent and satisfying as I have read.

Something I noticed in one of Viz's other novels, The City of Lovely Brothers, that I found in P'tit Cadeau I was charmed to find here as well. The fictional author/narrator breaks into the recounting of the story to let drop little hints as to future incidents or situations. Just enough to tweak your curiosity but not to give anything away. This could be tiresome, but in Viz's hands it's like a sprinkling of unexpected spice in the chef d'oeuvre. Ben mentions , for instance, that although at the point in the narrative it looks like the two men are splitting forever, Jean-Yves "still" enjoys being Ben's model years later. How tantalizing! You find yourself even more curious to see how that comes about. No predictability, just a flash of something sparkling off in the distance.

Two other elements I appreciated. Jean-Yves is not just gay. He is naturally disposed to making love to women, but he loves Ben, who happens to be male. To my mind, love and sexuality are far too fluid to define narrowly, but at the same time love you have for a special person is fixed. For Jean-Yves his love and lover is Ben. He enjoys sex with him because he loves him, and that is in spite of horrible abuse as a child. I also liked how Viz introduces the case of gay marriage through introducing his characters so the reader will come to understand in a visceral way what the lack of marital rights would mean to two people of either gender who love each other. That is how you turn "them" into "us".

The sex. There is no question that one of Viz's gifts is writing erotic scenes without narrowing the novels he writes to simply erotic novels. His sex scenes are hot, and though some might call them unduly graphic, I don't agree. I don't see why one wouldn't want to experience all the joys a loving couple share. It is just too bad many readers who could gain so much from the novels will be put off by the sex.

I read few contemporary novels, but the sheer pleasure of this expertly crafted love story was worth getting lost out of time for its duration. I bought it for my Kindle 3 and thank the author and the publisher, Silver Publishing, for enabling text to speech so I could read it.

Requiem: The Fall of the Templars, by Robyn Young

2011-04-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

Requiem: The Fall of the Templars

Robyn Young

This is one big honkin' story, part three of the Brethren trilogy about a secret society within the Knights of the Temple of Solomon that had as its ideal peace between Christians, Muslims and Jews. The first volume, Brethren, which I have not yet found in an accessible format so have not read, sets up the story of Will Campbell, his conflicts, his enemies and his love. The second, reviewed on this blog, Crusade, was all about how the central players worked to keep it all together and wound up tearing it all apart, the fall of Acre as the final end to the dream of the Crusades for Will and for everyone. With The Fall of the Templars Young shows how these death throes ultimately lead to the dissolution of the Knights Templar, no matter how the disillusioned Will tries to keep that institution's demise meaning the deaths of the knights he cares about and respects.

In The Fall of the Templars we pick up Will Campbell's story some uears after the fall of Acre. He has dropped his daughter Rose off with the King or France and gone traveling with the new Grand master to fund raise for yet another Crusade. He is way disillusioned, and when he gets back to Paris he discovers that in spite of all his nastiness, the templars and even the Anima Templi, the secret society, are making nice to Edward I. He throws a Templar tantrum and quits and goes to see his family in Scotland. While he is there the English dispossess said family, so he joins old Braveheart in the woods to fight as a guerrilla. His groom, Simon, finds him, and they go back to Paris, Will somehow managing to stay out of the Templar's radar though he is living at court and doing all kinds of missions for the king. He gets mixed up with dirty tricks that include murdering a couple popes and is on the spot when Phillip and his evil minister, who hates religion, get going on a conspiracy to get rid of the Temple entirely so they can get all the Templar's stuff. No matter how he tries Will cannot prevent the inevitable -- we knew that, but we don't know if their end will also be his.

The main problem I found with Book 2 I found here as well. Too many unlikely subplots that tended to end with a "so what was that all for?" feel about them. How Young managed to see William Wallace in all this seems to boil down to "well he was running around at the same time, hating Edward I too, so let's make him Will's focus for a while." And again, you wonder what that was supposed to lead to. Another problem is that Young leaves out entirely a rather significant element of King Phillip le Bel's reason for wanting to see the end of the Temple historically, and that is the fact he owed them a ton a of money and wanted his debt canceled. Finally you could probably subtitle this novel "Will Campbell, Escape Artist" because he constantly gets captured only to escape or be rescued by the Wallace Ex Machina of the moment.

That is not to say I did not enjoy the book. At times I wondered how it was going to get to the end that history assured me would come, but the characters were sufficiently compelling to keep my attention, especially as the tension built in Part III.

I bought this novel in Kindle format to listen to on my Kindle 3. I thank the publisher and author for enabling text to speech so I could read it. I still want to read Brethren, though by now it will seem like reading "Templar Babies".

Lessons in Desire, by Charlie Cochrane - A Cambridge Fellows Mystery

2011-04-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

Lessons in Desire

Charlie Cochrane

A Cambridge Fellows Mystery

I just love these novels. I think I may actually be addicted. I read, and reviewed, the first of the series, Lessons in Love, and fell head over heels in love with the two university dons cum sleuths, Jonty Stewart and Orlando Coppersmith, whom I find just so familiar and comfortable that I am quite at home in their presence.

It is the couple's first holiday together. Of course, almost as soon as they arrive in the Channel Islands and check into the charming seaside resort, there is a murder. A cantankerous old man with a boatload of enemies is found dead, having had his brain stem punctured by a long thin object.. like a hat pin, a knitting needle, or perhaps a tie pin? The first suspect is his son, who comes back from making an unfortunate pass at Orlando, to find Dad quite dead. Jonty wants to help him clear his name, much to Orlando's hurt feelings and opposition Thee is the usual crew of suspects, and if I don't give this novel five stars... not giving stars at all makes that easy... it's because the solution to the mystery is a bit hard come by in my opinion.

The other, arguably more central story, in all of these novels is Jonty's and Orlando's struggle to overcome social biases and threats to realize their growing love for each other. In this novel it is a chance for the men to have some time in private, and Orlando's skittishmnes puts stress on that effort. Jonty at the same time is impatient for the ultimate intimate expression of love between two men, which Orlando is afraid of. It will take a lot of soul searching and trust for that to come about.

One thing I enjoy in these novels is the chance to laugh out loud.. several times per volume. The author.. and her characters.. are full of clever wit.

I bought this book on Kindle and thank the author for ensuring it is text to speech enabled. I went right out and bought the entire series after I finished this one.

Moon in Leo, by Kathleen Herbert

2011-04-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

Moon in Leo

Kathleen Herbert

Alchemists, gypsies, Puritans, sleep-walkingd women, clandestine Catholics, and necromancers... what's not to love in Kathleen Herbert's Moon in Leo?

Seriously though, this novel combines a look at an intriguing time in history with compelling characters and thrilling intrigues. The time and place is Restoration England. The king, namely Charles II, is back on the throne, spending the nation's money on wine, women, and song, and those who were happy to see the tail end of Cromwell and his Roundheads are ready to find someone else to blame for national woes. When a group of conspirators decides the unpopular and illegal Catholics would be a nice diversion for violence, a family with a long history of being oppressed for the occult beliefs is caught in the middle.

Rosamund is looking forward to the return of her brother Stephen, hoping they can now settle down in the mystical marriage required of great alchemy. But Stephen doesn't want this any m ore, so Rosamund is drawn to another alchemist she meets, she believes accidentally, who appears to share her dreams, a certain Mr. Challis. It is not long before she begins to suspect he has dreams far wilder and ambitious than her desire for peace on Earth, good will, well you know the drill. Meantime poor Stephen is dragged off to gaol in Lancaster for treason. Fortunately for him he has met and fallen in love with a Catholic woman, who gets her friends to spirit him out of his cell. Rosamund, knowing she can only wait to see if the plan succeeds, goes off to Challis's chalet where she finds him ensconced with an odd lot of people who seem to have something cooking. Challis has pull on her of a definite occult kind, and one of his earlier victims is wandering about the place in a trance that finally gets through to Rosamund's brain. So she takes off, eluding Challis's searches, worldly and otherwise, only to run into a cad of a fellow she met once and didn't approve of but now needs his help.

I will be honest and admit I knew precious little of what was going on with the average English person during the Restoration. I am afraid one demerit of historical novels is their tendency to focus on nobility too much of the time, giving the reader an unrealistic view of everyday life. Rosamund and her family are hardly average, but they have enough distance from Court to give one a sense of what was really going on. The paranoia about plots and insurgencies exacerbated by a king who was basically asking for it, was revealed in this novel while the paranormal romance is entertaining the reader.

I have not read all that many romances, but I think Moon in Leo has the requisite themes, the smart, spunky heroine who nonetheless needs rescuing, the model gallant fella who turns out to be sinister as a ll get out, exciting escapes, unforeseen death, exotic helpers, the rake who turns out to be Mr. Right, and all of it being wrapped up in a heritage of turning base metals into gold just adding spice to.. well.. spice. It was a wonderful introduction into the genre for me. It seems to me that the novel combines a nice little historical romance with some unexpected occult twists. It sure worked for me.

The publisher supplied me with an accessible digital text copy of the book so I could read it on my Kindle 3 and write this review.

Circle Cast, by Alex Epstein

2011-04-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Circle Cast

Alex Epstein

Circle Cast has the intriguing description, "the lost years of Morgan le Fay". If you saw the movie, Excalibur, you can't forget the scene when, in the guise of Tgraine's husband, Gorlous, Uther Pendragon enters her chamber and rapes her, while an eerily perfect little Morgan sits in a corner and watches it happen. Did you ever wonder what happened to that little girl between then and her reappearance in King Arthur's court? This is that story, as imagined by Alex Epstein.

It doesn't start with that shocking scene but earlier, when the eleven-year-old Morgan, then named Anna, comes to a gathering of the lords with her father and mother. There Uther sees Tgraine and the proverbial die is cast. When Gorlois takes his wife and daughter home to Tintagel pursued by Uther, we learn a bit about the father-daughter relationship on which hangs the tale of Morgan's desire for revenge against his murderer. Ygraine sends her away to save her life, over the sea to Ireland.

There the newly renamed Morgana spends time as a slave, later lives in an early Christian monastery, marries a handsome young chieftain, and finally leaves him to take her revenge back in Tintagel. The revelations there have a shocking impact on her. Epstein does an excellent job writing a growing girl. This is a very dark book, with little joy for the characters or the reader. It is a well informed story of the legendary time, gives promise of a sequel about Morgan and Arthur.

That's the rub. The book feels like half of a novel. The resolution at the end is only partial, leaving out any contact with the Merlin character who seemed to this point to occupy much of the heroine's attention and drive. Given how much she gave up, and more poignant to me that she forced her chieftain husband to give it, I found that unfortunate. Epstein follows the novel with an epilogue that undercuts whatever closure the reader gets with the story. I really think this novel and its sequel should have been published as one book. Splitting longer novels into two shorter ones, a small trend with some ebooks, is definitely a bad idea. I for one do not find myself wanting to go looking for the second if the first left me feeling unsatisfied.

Nevertheless I thought well of how the author showed Morgan's development into the she-monster we all know and secretly admire. The experiences she undergoes from the day Uther goes after her father, through disappointment and slavery, the bout with Christianity, and her growing power as Connell's wife, we see a quite creditable transformation into the woman. One issue the book confronts that I thought was masterful is how Morgan dances back and forth between her different religious and magical beliefs. I could identify with her intellectual and spiritual dialectic, and though at one point I thought I detected a Christian bias, I was dispossessed of this notion as I saw not only the druids discredited but then the Christian leaders. Morgan is left with her direct and tangible relationship with earthly magic, turning away from other's religion, in the true sense of the word, to what she knows to be true herself.

The author supplied me with a copy I could listen to on my Kindle 3 in order that I could review the novel.

Princes of Ireland, by Edward Rutherfurd - The Dublin Saga

2011-04-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

Princes of Ireland Edward Rutherfurd The Dublin Saga This installment of Edward Rutherfurd's eon-busting novels took two volumes to tell it all. This is the first of the two, "princes" referring to the time where at least some of Ireland had its own rulers, while the second novel, Rebels of Ireland, covers the period from the complete domination by England to independence for 26 of the 32 counties in 1945. Princes of Ireland starts with a tale from before St. Patrick's time based on the tale of the elopement of Diarmuid and Grainne, who flee the angry King of Tara to travel alone throughout the island. Rutherfurd throws in a little Cuchullain here too, with the hero having to fight his dearest companion to the death. You run into another aspect of the Cuchullain stories here too with the metalsmith who shares the ancient hero's trick of shutting one eye and making his open eye seem huge. This is one of the typical Rutherfurd family traits you recognize in every generation, along with the heroine of this first story line and her red hair and green eyes. In its transit through history to the period when Henry VIII destroyed the power of the Earls of Kildare and put Dublin, if not Ireland as a whole, firmly under his thumb, you run through St. Patrick and the spread of Christianity, the coming of the Norsemen and Brian Boru at the Battkle of Clontarf in 1014, through the invasion by Strongbow and Henrrty II pulling one on the Irish Church, to the growth of the Ascendancy families. In each you meet another family, the descendants of the Norse Harold with the family blue eyes, the wild and sexy O'Burnes from the Wicklow Mountains, the Walshes, descendants of a Welsh mercenary with their "soldier's jaws", the Doyle's who take their slight disreputable appearance from a Danish ancestor, and the Tidy family with their modest expectations and pointed beards.n every era these families' stories weave through each other's, telling the story of Ireland through all the stories of the peoples and the people who were part of it. The stories concern a woman's sense of abandonment when her family members find fulfillment elsewhere, a blood feud from a past generation and a man in love with a woman constrained by prejudice, a Welsh soldier who must use people to get ahead, a simple man who is easily tricked into leading the authorities away from smugglers, a nearly fatal paranoia about two women's dealings with the same man, and a bitter humiliation of a husband avenged. It is inspiring to follow these generations but it is also depressing as all get out. You find yourself fully involved in a character's story only to skip ahead a hundred or more years to find his or her descendants utterly ignorant of the ancestor. It makes one wonder if anyone ever really makes his or her mark on the landscape. One of the flaws of this novel helps ameliorate this depressing factor, and that is that few of the characters are all that appealing or sympathetic. I doubt Rutherfurd intended this, but as my husband, Jim, and I listened to the audio we found not having someone to champion or at least approve of rather unsatisfying. Another result of this is that some of the stories seem to go on and on with quite a bit more detail or complications than were strictly necessary. I actually read this novel and its sequel some years ago before I started this blog, and one thing I enjoyed is finding that I knew more about some of the subtleties thanks to all the Morgan Llywellyn novels I've read. This is also one of those books where you get to a plot line and think, "Oh yeah! So this is where I read that." I remember liking the second novel, Rebels of Ireland, much more, though this is not surprising since I am drawn to Ireland's rebellious periods and personalities. I hope Jim likes it better too. he ought to, since I play songs about so many of the events in it on my Celtic radio station that he practically knows it all already. We listened to the audio version of this novel with its superior narrator on my Kindle.

Lesbian Historical Fiction

2011-03-31T14:52:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be gay to read gay or lesbian novels. Gay people have been reading straight historical fiction for ages. Why not give their books a read?

This list, which clearly needs updating, has a permanent home on Bosom Friends: Lesbian Historical Fiction.

List of Lesbian Historical Novels

Anthology

Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present by Various

The Collector’s Edition of Victorian Lesbian Erotica edited by Brooke Stern

The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica 1920-1940 edited by Victoria A Brownworth

The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories – 1897 onwards

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories - multiperiod speculative historical fiction

Ancient World

Sappho Sings by Peggy Ullman Bell

Sappho’s Leap by Erica Jong

Sappho: The Tenth Muse by Nancy Freedman

Medieval & Renaissance

A Mistress Moderately Fair by Katherine Sturtevant

Beloved Pilgrim by Nan Hawthorne – Crusade of 1101Smashwords

The Boleyn Wife by Brandy Purdy – Tudors

Lieutenant Nun by Catalina de Erauso – 1600′s Spain

Moll Cutpurse: Her True History by Ellen Galford – Elizabethan

Peculiar Passions: Or the Treasure of Mermaid Island by Ruby Vise – 1670 Caribbean

Sistine Heresy by Justine Saracen – Renaissance Italy

Sor Juana’s Second Dream by Gaspar de Alba – 17th Century Mexico

Storm by Kim Pritekel – 14th Century England

The Vinland Sheep by Helen Shacklady – 15th Century Britain

Eighteenth Century

Branded Ann by Merry Shannon – Piracy

Brigid’s Charge by Cynthia Lamb – 1700 America

Hearts and Minds by Jay Taverner – 1730 England

Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller and Emma Donoghue – Pioneer America

The Ladies by Doris Grumbach – Ireland

Life Mask by Emma Donoghue

Pembroke Park by Michelle Martin – Regency

Rebeccah and the Highwayman by Barbara Davies – 1700′s England

Rebellion by Jay Tavener – 1730 England

The Sea Captain and the Lady by Vada Foster – Tall ships

The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody – 1702 Caribbean

Taming the Wolff by Del Robertson – 1800′s piracy

Nineteenth Century and Victoriana

Affinity by Sarah Waters

Amantha by Sarah Aldridge – 1880′s America

And Love Came Calling by Beverley Shearer – Western

And Those Who Trespass Against Us by Helen Macpherson – 1872 Australia

Backwards to Oregon by Jae - Pioneer America

Bittersweet by Nevada Barr – 1800s America

Black by Gaslight by Nene Adams – 1880′s England

Charity by Paulette Callen – 1800′s America

Distant Thunder by Peggy J. Herring – Western

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer by Mickey Minner – Western

Galveston 1900: Swept Away by Linda Christ- 1900

The Grass Widow by Nanci Little – 1870′s Kansas

House of Clouds (Bold Strokes Victory Editions) by K I Thompson - American Civil War

Innocent Hearts by Radclyffe – America

Josie and Rebecca: The Western Chronicles by BL Miller, Vada Foster – Wild West

Kicker’s Journey by Lois Cloarec Hart – 19th Century Canada

Last Train Home by Blayne Cooper – 1880′s America

Lizzie by Evan Hunter - 1890

Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom – 1890s

The Long Trail by Penny Hayes – Western

Loving my Lady by Penelope Friday – Regency (f/f)

In Unlikely Places by Rebecca Beguin – 1880′s Africa

Madame Aurora by Sarah Aldridge – 1897

The Madonna of the Sorrows by Nene Adams – 1880′s England

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier – 19th Century France

Montana Feathers by Penny Hayes – 1880′s

Nightwood by Djuna-Barnes -1880′ss

Omaha’s Bell by Penny Hayes – 1800 America

Passion’s Legacy by Lori A. Paige – Victorian England

Prairie Fire by L. J. Maas – Western

Prairie Storm by Lynn E. Lisarelli – Western

Promising Hearts by Radclyffe – 1860′s Western

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue – 1864 England

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See – 19th century China

Southern Rose by Mary Winter – American Civil War

South of the Line by Catherine Ennis – American Civil War

Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner – 1848 Europe

Sweetwater Saga by Mickey Minner – 1800′s Western

Sweetwater

Rolling Thunder

Fireweed

Tahoma by M. Broughton Boone – 1880′s Washington Territory

Tiopa Ki Lakota by D. Jordan Redhawk – Native American

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters – Victorian England

Tumbleweed Fever by L. J. Maas – Western

The War between the Hearts by Nann Dunne – American Civil War

We are Michael Field by Emma Donoghue – 19th & early 20th cent. England

The Witch’s Kiss by Nene Adams – 1880′s England

Words Heard in Silence by T. Novan and Taylor Rickard – American Civil War

Yellowthroat by Penny Hayes – Western

Twentieth Century

Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer

All True Lovers by Sarah Aldridge – 1930′s America

An American In Paris by Margaret Vandeburgh – 1920′s Europe

Angel by Anita Mason – WWII

Beautiful Journey by Kenna White – WWII

Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon – New York

Carol by Patricia Highsmith – 1950′s

A Certain Discontent by Cleve Boutell – 1940′s America

Christie and the Hellcat by Barbara Davies – 1880′s Western

Chronicles of the White Rose Book One: The Stradivarius Affair by Laurie J Kendall – WWII

The Color Purple by Alice Walker – 1930

Cytherea’s Breath by Sarah Aldridge – 1900′s

Deep in the Heart by Sheila Morris – 1950′s & 60′s

The Dovecote by Stephanie Dummler – 1960′s/70′s

The Empress by Lucius Parhelion – 1910/20′s

The Escape Artist by Judith Katz – 1901 Buenos Aires

Ever After by Sandra Freeman – 1910′s Europe

Fall On Your Knees by Anne Marie MacDonald – 1920′s

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg - 1930′s America onwards

Grassy Flats by Penny Hayes – 1930′s America

The Hope Chest by Victoria McConaughy and Catherine McConaughy – 1930′s/1940′s

In the Blood of the Greeks by Mary D. Brooks – WWII

Kathleen O’Donald by Penny Hayes – 1909 New York

The Kind of Girl I Am by Julia Watts – Mid 20th century America

Ladylegger by Carol McKenzie – 1920′s America

Kindle

Land Beyond Maps by Maida Tilchen – 1930′s Americas

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters – post WWII

MacDougal Alley by Tatheena Roberts – Pre-WWII America

Midnight Melodies by Megan Carter – 1912 America onwards

Misfortune’s Friend by Sarah Aldridge – post WWI

Miss McGhee by Bett Norris – 1948

My Life With Stella Kane by Linda Morgenstein – 1950′s Hollywood

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters - WWII

The Orphan Gunner by Sara Knox – WWII

The Other Side by Sandra Freeman – Edwardian

Polished Glass by C W Reed – WWII

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith and W.W. Orton – 1950′s

Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen – 1920′s

Reiko’s Garden by Brenda Adcock – WWII

The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke by Elizabeth Ridley – 1900′s London

Relief by L E Butler – 1912 Venice

The River by Ria Goff – 1940′s Hollywood

Kindle

Sabine by A.P. – 1952 America

The Seduction of Moxie by Colette Moody – 1931 America

Snow Moon Rising by Lori L. Lake – WWII

Staged Life by Lija O’Brien – 1900′s (YA)

A Stone in her Shoe by Jo Burgess – 1930′s England

Summitt Avenue by Mary Sharratt – 1912 America

The Swashbuckler by Lee Lynch – pre-Stonewall

Tales from the Levee by Martha Miller – 1960/70′s America

Tempus Fugit by Mavis Applewater – 1950′s and 60′s America

Time of Grace by Gabriella West – 1916 Ireland

Tory’s Tuesday by Linda Kay Silva – Nazi Concentration Camps

Under the Mink by Lisa Davis – 1940′s New York

The Walking Man by Constance O. Irvin – 1950′s Alabam

War on the Margins by Libby Cone – WWI

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall – 1920′s

Whistlebait by M King – 1950′s

Winterkill by Joyce K Walsh – 1932

The Wolf Ticket by Caro Clarke – 1945 onward

Non-Fiction

Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England by Sharon Marcus

Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography by Helen Sheehy – 1900 and onwards

Gay and Lesbian Historical Fiction by Norman W Jones

A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500 by Rebecca Jennings

The Lesbian Pillow Book by Alison Hennegan – Lesbians through the ages

Lesbian/Woman by Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon - history of lesbian action

The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall by T Castle

Looking in the Shadows: The Life of Alice Austen by Amy S Khoudari – 1880′s onwards

Nazimova: A Biography by Gavin Lambert – Pre-revolutionary Russia and onwards

Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985 by Lesbian History Group

Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson – 1920′s England

Sex Lives of the Famous Lesbians by Nigel Cawthorne

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Thanks to Erastes of Speak Its Name for her work on this list of books.

Please tell us about other lesbian historical fiction.

Two Novels About Emma of Normandy

2011-03-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

Breath of Kings, by Gene Farrington
Forever Queen, by Helen Hollick

Emma of Normandy, called Aelfgifu but the English, was the wife of two English kings, mother of two more, and the aunt of yet another. She is a puzzling personality, made the more so by the fact that so little is known about her. In the typical succinct style of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, much of what we know is along the lines of "Then, in the same Lent, came the Lady Elfgive Emma, Richard's daughter, to this land." She must have been a more colorful woman, given that she, made widow by King Ethelred's death, then married the Danish conqueror, Cnut, sent her first husband's and her two sons into exile, and then championed her son by Cnut to inherit the crown. It has been the challenge and opportunity for creative people known as novelists to bring her, or an interpretation of her, to life. The experience for the reader is both entertaining and fraught with historical perils.

Ay, there's the rub. Having read both novels, I can tell you the interpretations are at best creative and at worst fanciful and misleading. As author Helen Holiick herself wrote to me, "You can;t rely on everything you read." A comment by someone who interviewed me for a radio station came to mind, that historical novelists are liars and put words into historical people's mouths." Clearly! The question is, whose responsibility is it to bear the fictional aspect of such work in mind, the author.. or the reader? I realized reading Hollick's novel just how much I had, naively, accepted a historical fact what I read in Farrington's novel. A caution for all of us who read historical novels, then.

Farrington's novel, Breath of Kings, is the more fanciful of the two, adding a layer of mysticality that is, actually, part of the book's charm. Much is imagined, that Edward, later to be called "the Confessor" was an albino, that his brother, Alfred, came under the influence of a traitorous homosexual lover, and Earl Godwin, prominent in both novels, was directly responsiblele for young Alfred's deathh. Godwin's daughter Edith in this novel is a sort of sun worshipping nudist, which I think I can safely say is unlikely but interesting as fiction. Further in the nocel Cnut's death is portrayed as a lingering and debilitating fever, when in fact, all that is known is that he died at Shaftesbury.

Hollick's Forever Queen, published formerly as The Hollow Crown, by its nature has more plausible interpretations, though no more founded in absolute fact. Edward may be uninspiring as a manly man, but he is normal in all respects, his brother Alfred is released reluctantly by Earl Godwin to Harald Harefoot, who had him blinded. Godwin's daughter Edith is precocious at most. And Cnut dies suddenly of a heart attack(which I found more affecting).

Now fiction is not fact, though based on fact. Fiction, even historical fiction, is first and foremost the creation of a good storyteller, and there is no question whatever that both Farrington and Hollick are ripping good story tellers. As I state in the author's note of one of my novels, if you want to read deadly accurate history, go look for a history text. But good luck to you even then, since beyond a dry list of dates and events history is by and large conjecture. As Hollilck points out in her own author's note, the chroniclers on whose work our study of Anglo Saxon England is largely based are themselves vague or changeable about these "facts".

The one thing that Hollick and Farrington agree on in their novels is Emma herself. Whether a fair interpretation or not, Emma is a painfully calculating woman, whether out of selfishness or as a survival skill depends on which novel you read. The fact that she married "the enemy" and sent her two sons by her first husband away lends to the interpretation of someone who hedges her bets. Ascribing any further motivation for her acts is really the novelists' and readers' purview. Hollick poses the possibility that the woman may have been an impotent pawn, but I have to agree, that's not how I would interpret her.

I know Hollick so I know, as am I, she is biased towards Godwin and his son Harold Godwinson, so I was prepared to take her interpretations of these two men with a grain of salt -- salt, after all, lends flavor, dos it not? Reading both these excellent novels however have taught me a lesson. Like Hollick said, you can't rely on everything you read. My conclusion is that if you rely on fiction to tell you the absolute facts, you are mistaken. So relax, enjoy, and while encouraging historical novelists to stick to what's known, take the time to appreciate our creative artistry.

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories, Connie Wilkins, editor

2011-03-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories

Connie Wilkins, Editor

I am convinced that historical fiction is how you take a series of recorded events and illustrate them to make them real by speculating how it may have been for the people who lived through it. One of my favorite examples is Anel Viz's Memoirs of Colonel Gérard Vreilhac where the experience of living in Paris during the storming of the Bastille but in another part of the city may have been like: how did you find out about it? what did you think? Were you afraid? Did you have a loved one you worried about? Nothing about the sequence of the notable events will give you that insight. That's where the historical novelist comes in, lending his or her empathy, imagination and intelligence to color an otherwise gray set of facts.

How more poignant then that whole communities of people are rarely represented in historical fiction? I am, of course, talking about gays and lesbians here. I remember reading an Amazon review of Brandy Purdy's The Boleyn Wife where the reader was shocked and dismayed at the portrayal of the gay members of the Evergreen Gallants. How much worse was it to be one of those fellows, or others if they were not gay, and knowing that simply because you loved and desired a person of your gender could result in your being torn apart and killed. This anthology of "what if" stories about gay and lesbian people, historical, interpreted or fictional, seeks to address that gap in our understanding of the human race and its history. Here, finally, that overlooked insight into what had so much impact on so many lives.

"What if" -- that is what every story in this multi-period selection of historical short stories asks. What if T. E. Lawrence could come to grips with his sexuality and realize that he was most effective and fulfilled while helping the people of the Arabic world? What if Thomas Jefferson had insisted the right to marry as one wished was in the Bill of Rights? What if Isabella had known and loved a Moorish woman when she was young and as a result not pushed for the expulsion of non-Catholics from Spain? What if, instead of Marlowe, the man killed in Deptford was William Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's plays after that were written by Marlowe- and Shakespeare's twin sister Judith? Those are the famous examples, but the book is full of more ordinary people. What if the woman chemist who parachuted into World War II Brittany had been responsible for the infamous explosion that destroyed a bridge and the Nazi munitions stored there? What if some Dutch mariners discovered that Coleridge's Xanadu was very real?

These stories are fun, insightful, challenging and sometimes quite moving. Of the last, my choice is Emily Salter's A Happier Year, in which a bereaved man seeks out E. M. Forster in the years after World War I because the author's novel allowed him to have a short period of utter contentment with the lover who died on the battlefield. That Lawrence might find contentment and completion made this old fan happy with At Reading Station, Changing Trains by C.A. Gardner. And don't tell me you can resist wanting to know Sandra Barret 's take on what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke!

The stories are:
A Wind Sharp As Obsidian by Rita Oakes
The Final Voyage Of The Hesperus by Steven Adamson
Roanoke by Sandra Barret
A Marriage Of Choice by Dale Chase
The High Cost For Tamarind by Steve Berman
A Spear Against The Sky by M P Ericson
Sod ’Em by Barry Lowe
Morisca by Erin Mackay
Great Reckonings, Little Rooms by Catherine Lundoff
Barbaric Splendor by Simon Sheppard
Opening Night by Lisabet Sarai
A Happier Year by Emily Salter
The Heart Of The Storm by Connie Wilkins
At Reading Station, Changing Trains by C.A. Gardner

Not every story is A+ material, but they are nevertheless compelling. Along with Wilkins' astute introduction they combine to make speculative historical fiction, one of my favorite genres -- though isn't all historical fiction speculative? -- more complete and inclusive... and full of life, love, and hope.

I purchased this book of short stories on Smashwords and read them on my Kindle 3.

Jack Archer, by G. A. Henty

2011-03-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

Jack Archer

G. A. Henty

One of the finds with all the public domain books groups like OpenLibrary and Project Gutenberg and companies like Amazon.com have retrieved from obscurity are books like those written by G. A. Henty. He was a prolific author of boy's adventure stories à la Robert Louis Stevenson who died in 1902. Every one of Henty's novels are historical, including this one, Jack Archer, which tells the story of a young midshipman who goes to fight in the Crimea in the 1850s.

We find Jack at school in Canterbury dreading a punishment for turning in poor verses. He is called home where he learns he has gotten a post as a midshipman on HMS Falcom, a steamer. His brother, Harry, is in the army and will be shipping out to deal with the pesky Russians who think they are entitled to Turkey. Jack doesn't even need to get to the Eastern Mediterranean to start his adventures. He and a fellow midshipman decide to go on a joy ride, if you can call riding a mule a joy ride, across the border from Gibraltar in Spain where they promptly are captured and held for ransom. In a charming moment the two boys recall other boys' adventure heroes and long for them to be there, helping them figure out what to do.

What Jack does, and continues to do, is what comes from a fresh imagination and just plain not knowing what a dumb idea it is. They get away from the bandits, eventually return to the Falcon, and steam away to the Crimea. There they get into one scrape after another, eventually getting captured by the Russians and dragged far into Russian territory to be held prisoner. Their dumb luck being what it is they wind up being billeted with a count's family, complete with three lovely daughters, and fast become part of the family. They must get away from Russia, as cozy as their billet is, so they escape through Poland with the help of some Polish revolutionaries and make their way to Austria. Jack goes back to the Crimea for more escapades until the armistice is signed and he can go home.

That's the story as far as Jack is concerned. Henty has lots more to say about the battles, and a good third of the book is a combination narration and first person plural account of the battles so well known from Tennyson and Florence Nightingale,. What surprised and fascinated me was Henty's castigation of the British military commanders whom he credits with numerous bad decisions and catastrophic delays and poor planning.

I got this particular copy from Open Library for free and read it on my Kindle 3. I have at least a dozen more Henties to read, from the Norman Conquest to the Wild West and Darkest Africa. It's a great way not only to learn about the history but also the viewpoint and prose of a late 19th century author who is about as unpretentious and enthusiastic a novelist as you will find.

A Dead Man In Deptford, by Anthony Burgess

2011-03-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

A Dead Man in Deptford

Anthony Burgess

Of course I knew about Christopher Marlowe. I was Outstanding Senior of the Year at Northern Michigan University's English Department, you know. Poet, playwright, Elizabethan. Sometimes joined with Sir Francis Bacon in authoring Shakespeare's works. More recently I heard about his more notorious side: homosexual and spy. He came off as a rake to me: clever, devious, daring.

That is not what I found in Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford. Yes, he's a homosexual. Yes, he's a spy, though he is more of a covert messenger than a spy. Rather than coming off as a cocky and iconoclastic daredevilil, Burgess' Marlowe is rather earnestly pathetic, or perhaps pathetically earnest. While studying theology at Cambridge a friend recruits him for Sir Francis Walsingham's Elizabethan version of MI-5. From the start he begs to be reassured he can quit any time, and from the start he is told, "Nope. You are in this for life." On one of his first assignments he is partially responsible for the hanging, drawing and quartering of some Catholic supporters of Mary Queen of Scots. Forced to watch the execution he is sickened physically and emotionally. His only recompense is that Thomas Walsingham, the spymaster's kin, is also a spy and also gay and rather into Kit Marlowe for a time.

Marlowe's career from poet to playwright and controversial philosopher runs rather contrary to what appear to be Elizabethan norms and values. This is the Elizabeth of her infatuation or dalliance or flirtation, you choose, with Walter Raleigh and then with the Earl of Essex. She is in her fifties and even less amused than her queenly successor in the 19th century. The Church of England and the Privy Council have teamed up, ostensibly to rid the realm of everyone pernicious to the state church, including Catholics, atheists, witches, other Protestants and even unorthodox C of E. Marlowe is an atheist, though he keeps this as close to his chest as he can, given his obsession to write plays with atheistic and otherwise controversial characterers like Tamburlane.

You know from the title and from history that Marlowe was murdered. You have quite a buffet of suspects supplied to you. There are people who would only be too happy to do the knifing, but there are also many others who would pay them to do the knifing. It could be Walsingham's successor, Cecil or one or more of his operatives. It could be marlowe's sometime lover, Thomas Walsinggham or, indeed, his devoted servant. It could be Essex. It could even be Raleigh who had invited Marlowe to attend meetings of his free thinking intellectual club. Pretty much from the start you know Marlowe is flinging himself towards disaster. His conflict is primarily how to avoid bringing those he cares about with him.

Now I have heard the appellation "Bloody Mary" use to describe Mary I and her supporters and their rapacious burnings of Protestants for the sake of the realm. What I did not know is that we could and probably should refer to her little sister as "Bloody Bess." Paranoia about Catholic plots, not without foundation, resulted in gory executions too, lots of them, and not just Catholics, but any religious deviant or simple inexpedient enemy of one of the Big Boys and Gal. The French Huguenots, fleeing French religious intolerance, found themselves first the target of rioters and then of the Church and politicians. You could call Marlowe "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and whose knowledge could have messed things up in the constant power struggle and personal greed and ambition.

Burgess, of course, does a superb job of the writing. It is in a sort of Elizabethan patois, handled well, sometimes thick, but wen necessary laid on thinly. Anyone wating to write Elizabethan dialogue should read this book. Burgess's doctoral dissertation was on Marlowe, and it is clear that the histotircal details are authoritative.

I found myself feeling sorry for Marllowe. I know what it is like to push the envelope because one's convictions won't melt into the background when writing, not that I claim Marlowe-like talent. In his author's note Burgess points out that for all the hopelessness Marlowe may have felt, he is still read and discussed today and enlightens our understanding not only his time but of universal thought.

I purchased this novel on Amazon as a download to my Kindle 3. I thank the publisher and author for allowing the text to speech feature to be enabled so I could read what I cannot in print.

Far Traveler, by Rebecca Tingle

2011-03-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

Far Traveler

Rebecca Tingle

Aelfwynn is the bookish daughter of one of the great women warriors in English history, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. At her mother's sudden death she is at the mercy of her uncle, King Edward (I, who will come to be called "the Elder".) Though an archbishop and a dispossessed king come to ask her to help them against the Danish incursions in Northumbria, she is unable to act and is taken from Mercia to Wessex to be married off. She runs away, disguised as a boy. (Where have I heard that one before?) Her learning causes her to think she can be a storyteller and entertainer, but her talent is only for farmers. When she runs into the dispossessed king Wilfrid, he takes her under his arm to teach her how to be a real skald but also, though he does not know she is Aelfwynn, to use her against her uncle.

The real historical Aelfwynn is unremarked in the chronicles after her uncle removes her from Mercia, and this is what the author, Tingle, took as her starting place. In her author's note she talks more about the possibility that the girl might have been able to pass as a skald than the likelihood she would manage to travel in the world as a boy. Unfortunately that is the problem with this book- its credibility. Yes, it's fiction, but fiction needs at least to follow logically within the confines of its two covers.

For one, Aethelflaed appears not to have raised her daughter in the same way as her own father Alfred the Great raised her. To lead and be a fighter and general in her own right. Aelfwynn, on hearing the story of Judith and Holofernes is amazed that Judith would use a sword. Was she kept in willful ignorance, and, if so, why? Aelfwynn in herself is not inspiring. She is prone to gloominess and reluctance to face facts. She lacks the ability to act on duty. I found it hard to believe that she would up and put on boy's clothes and head out of town to escape the unwanted marriage.

Her decision that she might have what it takes to be a storyteller brings us into the only real interest in this young adult novel. Tingle obviously knows a great deal about Anglo Saxon England and about the arts thereof. The exposure you get here to riddles, music and musical instruments, storytelling tradition, poetry, and the skaldic life is fascinating.

Then it all falls apart again with an Aelfwynn ex machina that follows some highly disorganized reasoning on the girl's part and and even less credible apotheosis. Tingle tries to get some insight into Edward and his war-like "diplomacy" but that's all the scraps you will find on the table as the book comes to an end.

I am sorry I felt this way about this novel. I like Tingle's other work. But I cannot even imagine caring for it at fourteen or fifteen. Perhaps it appeals to girls who want to believe that in spite of their passibity they too can be carried off and loved by the loser king of Northumbria.

I purchased this novel to read on my Kindle. I thank the publisher and author for making the book text to speech enabled so I could listen to it.

False Colors, by Alex Beecroft

2011-03-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

False Colors: An M/M Romance

Alex Beecroft

There is something about the Age of Sail in historical fiction that is highly conducive to M/M romance. Perhaps it sets the stage (or should I say "deck"?) for inevitable personal contact with quite immediate and fatal circumstances. Unlike two men in love in the landlubber world, there is little chance to hide the relationship, and however hard one might try to avoid the other, there is no way to do it. Further, since part of the theme of the genre and even part of its poignant appeal is the constant threat of exposure, you are going to find lots of room for gay relationships in the work of such authors as Alex Beecroft with this novel and Captain's Surrender and M. Kei's Pirates Of The Narrow Seas series.

In False Colors Alfie is attracted to his superior officer John, presently captain of a ship set up for failure. For his part, the strictly brought up John is puzzled by Alfie's unusual friendliness and relaxed behavior around him. They become friends, but it is not until Alfie so caringly looks after John when he is severely wounded that Alfie has an opportunity to show his affection, something John firmly rejects. When Alfie's old captain, Farrant, arrives and John learns of his notorious life as a sodomite he confronts Alfie, is horrified by his candor about his sexuality, and rejects him once and for all. Alfie takes off and signs on with his former captain. John and Alfie meet again in Jamaica. John has come to grips with his own sexuality by now, but Alfie is on trial for sodomy. Unbeknownst to him, John goes to bat for him and exposes the plaintiffs at the cost of a captaincy of his own again. They sign on with the same mission to the Arctic where they try hard to avoid each other, but it's no use. A tense and ill fated encounter in John's cabin makes matters worse. It is not until they are back in Jamaica that there is any chance for a rapprochement.

It sounds like a simple story, but there are many facets to the fractious romance. The former captain, Farrant, is terrified of falling in love and acts recklessly, almost suicidally. Farrant's wife has been convinced by her husband's doctor that he is ill and that a cure can be found, a suggestion still made in these more enlightened times. John's childhood with a philandering father and religious zealot of a mother contrast with Alfie's antiquarian parents' utter rejection of their homosexual son. The impact of torture on each man, under different circumstances, stands as both a bond and a barrier between them. The seamier life of "sodomites" in the era comes up to shake John's growing acceptance that he and others like him are "made this way by God".

This is a well told story with really only one flaw. Beecroft's handling of scene changes and time passing can be abrupt. We lose some of the character development that could have taken place. This is the earlier of the two novels, so it cannot be faulted for the fact that Captain's Surrender bears a strong resemblance to it. I hope Beecroft gets out of this mold for any further books, which I fondly hope she writes.

What I liked about this novel, and I liked it a lot, is that unlike many M/M romances, it is not afraid to show struggle and self reproach as would be the case in such an era. Beecroft told me wshe has gotten grief for the more "real" aspects of her writing, things like rotten teeth, scurvy, and other "unromantic" parts of the scene. Personally I think the book was much the better for it, but then I am not what you would call a romance fan. I read books like this as literary historical fiction, and Beecroft satisfies the need for more than just a love relationship with its fits and starts. She gets into the times, not only the events but also the cultural impact constant even hysterical condemnation has on people who are simply in love. She handles John's religious self questioning and Alfie's hopelessness about finding love. He thinks to himself at one point that all he wants is to have someone in whose arms he can awake. To me that is the quintessence of love and, for lack of a better word, marriage. That anyone, including a god, can seek to deny anyone that homely comfort appals me. I thank Beecroft for making that point so strongly in this gutsy novel.

I bought this novel for use on my Kindle 3. As always, I thank the author and publisher for allowing text to speech to be enabled so I could read it.

The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon, by Alexandre Dumas

2011-02-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon

Alexandre Dumas

The story about the discovery of this novel is almost more interesting than the novel. It seems it has puzzled Dumas experts for years that with all the novels he wrote about French history he had left out a novel about one of the most exciting periods. It turned out he did not, but the novel, which appeared in installments in one of the journals of the day, was first never finished and second, lost in the journal's archives. Once rediscovered The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon has been reassembled, all 110 plus chapters of it, and though pretty much nothing in the novel ever gets resolved , it was published in 2008. The copy I "read" was a download from the National Library Services for the Blind and was a cool 34 hours long.

I won't even begin to pretend to review a novel this old by a novelist so enshrined in history. There's no point, really, but I will give you a sense of what you are in for if you pick it up and start to read it. To start with, you don't even meet the title character until well into the novel. The entire first section is all about Napoleon Bonaparte, his wife's debts, his enemies, his personality, his plans. When we finally meet Count Sainte-Hermine we find him falling in love and getting married.. almost. It seems he is the last of a line of royalists and I mean last... the rest were all at best exiled and at worst guillotined. Loyal to their memory, the young Count leaves his wedding and his bride in tears to go and rejoin the resistance. He is caught and imprisoned and then forgotten by the author for a while. To make a long, long, long story shorter, he has a friend in a high place, no not Napoleon, who gets him released and makes him choose either to be a common sailor or a common soldier. You soon learn he is anything but common as he faces dangers beyond imagining and reckoning in his Elerde-like desire to get himself killed. His elaborate suicide attempt takes him into the crew of a famous corsair, then to Burma to fight tigers, and after that to Trafalgar where he is the marksman who kills Nelson. Returning to Paris much lauded, he comes out as a royalist to Bonaparte himself and instead of reaping richly deserved rewards he gets sent down to help the Emperor's brother Joseph rid Italy of brigands as colorfully as possible. That's apparently when he died.. no not the Count, but the author.

One of the fascinating things about this novel is that it breaks every rule in the How To Write a novel Book. As I am tempted to believe all those hard and fast rules are largely some one's persnickety idea rather than actual I got a big kick out of this. "Show, Don't Tell"? Not only does the author tell you what is going on all the time, he doesn't even confine the telling to the story at hand. Dumas isn't shy about telling. Some of the most interesting chapters, and there are tons of them, have no direct bearing on the protagonist's story at all. There is one about what was doing on the Appian Way fifty years before the birth of Christ, another on a Breton island famous for its corsairs, several in a row about Chateaubriand travels in America. "Point of View"? Dumas doesn't hesitate to jump from character to character, leaving the Count in the dust numerous times. I am sure if I had paid close attention I would have heard speech tags other than said and asked all over the place.

You realize fairly quickly that this "novel" is really a serial. Clearly Dumas was being paid by the installment, as he was far from finished after well over 100 chapters. As a result the resolution remains elusive, no return to his betrothed, no kiss and make up with Napoleon, and I can't say if these resolutions would ever have come through, though Dumas does appear to presage them.

One must remember that this man wrote The Three Musketeers and The Man In the Iron Mask, to mention just a couple of ins swashbuckling novels, when watching the Count shoot better,k fence better and more nobly, give his millions away right and left, tear up romantically when anyone reminds him of his sorrows, dress impeccably, know the right wine to have with the fish course, run faster than a speeding locomotive and leap high buildings in a single bound -- well you get the point. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the man who apparently is a virgin still at the end of the romance (sic). Women fall for him of course, but his true love back in Paris is his one and only.. and having never had the honeymoon ... oh merd.

Major commitment, readers.. I confess I skipped two chapters, both asides from the main story.

The Swords of Faith, by Richard Warren Field

2011-02-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

The Swords of Faith

Richard Warren Field

For a little while now there has been an effort to examine the Crusades from both a Christian and Muslim viewpoint. From my own research I have found that the former record can be quite spotty, for instance when the three accounts we have of the Crusade of 1101 are not only not by witnesses to the events but one was not even written until some years later. It must be gratifying for those authors who turn to the Muslim record, for it appears that it is fulsome. The Christian records are full of propaganda, but whether or not this is true of the Muslim I cannot say.

Richard Warren Field's The Swords of Faith is one of those works dedicated to a balanced look at, in this case, the Third Crusade. It follows three central characters each of whom represents one part of the dialectic. The great Muslim leader, Saladin, known for his honorable and courteous manner, is one. The second is the legendary King Richard of England, known as Lionheart, who while arrogant and blinded by his quest for glory, cares enough for chivalry to recognize Saladin's qualities. The third represents the synthesis of the two sides, the fictional character Pierre. Early in the novel he is captured at the Battle of Hattan and winds up being sold to a Muslim trader named Raschid for two pairs of ugly shoes. Because both Pierre and Raschid are good men, Pierre working hard and honestly for Raschid and Raschid treating Pierre justly, they become friends and allies. They share a desire to see a pluralistic society take root in the Holy Land, where Christians, Muslims, Jews and all can live in harmony.

The story follows Saladin's attempt to make the Holy Land Muslim and Richard's drive to retake Jerusalem and reestablish the Christian kingdom. One of the first things I noticed about this novel comes through their separate and opposed quests, and that is the book's skillful rendering of relentless movement towards confrontation accomplished through Field's shift back and forth between the onward progress of the two leaders. I found my heart beating in time with this sense of an inevitable clash. At the same time the antiphon is Pierre's and Raschid's developing relationship, as the trader frees the slave as a wedding gift for him and the favored servant woman who may well be Raschid's own daughter. The two men struggle to help each other survive in an increasingly hostile and dangerous world, one that views their alliance with trepidation and spite. Whether peace and cooperation can be achieved and persist appears, in the end, to be up to the next generation.

The author clearly painstakingly researched the events of this novel as well as the personalities of the two leaders and those around them. There is authenticity in its rendering, along with a clear sense of Field's fascination with everyone and everything involved. There are tender love scenes, stirring battle, gripping adventure, and crushing loss. The characters are distinct and the reader comes to know them in a personal way.

If I remember correctly I received this novel from the publisher and author as a document which I was able to read on my Kindle 3.

Lessons in Love, by Charllie Cochrane (Cambridge Fellows Mysteries)

2011-02-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

Lessons in Love

Charlie Cochrane

Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 1

This is one sweet, touching triple murder mystery. Well, the murders are not sweet or touching, but the amateur detectives most certainly are, and the story of their meeting and falling in love especially is.

Dr. Jonathan "Jaunty" Stewart is a Shakespeare scholar just hired to teach at Cambridge University's St. Bride's College. His first day he breaks a serious rule, that is, not to sit in another fellow's chair in the Senior Common Room. That's how he meets Dr. Orlando Coppersmith, a brilliant mathematician who has never known a moment of human warmth in his entire life. Jaunty's ubiquitous cheer slowly draws Orlando out of his hard shell, and, of course, they fall in love. There growing affection is threatened by a series of brutal murders of college students known to be homosexual, each of whose bodies has a note claiming the vengeance of God. Orlando is afraid his growing romance with Jaunty will put them both in danger, even while the two of them are asked to help with the investigation by the local constabulary.

This is a good, if not brilliant, mystery story,. but its thinness allows the real story, of Jaunty and Orlando, to fill most of the pages. Jaunty has had both brutal and loving same sex experience, but Orlando is a highly repressed product of a stone cold family life. Cochrane does such a sensitive job with these charaacters, who are quite unlike the main characters of most of the gay novels I have read. Jaunty is quite sincerely religious, believing no just and loving God would condemn something he himself finds so beautiful. That was refreshing. Orlando takes some time to adjust to the new feelings he has, but Jaunty recognizes this as pure innocence and goes about warming things up from just kissing to making love with as much tenderness and patience as he has in considerable store.

Something about this particular novel cememted for me why I so love what is called N/N fiction. I find the coming together of two preassumed equals with so much life experience in common quite liberating. In the vast majority of love stories the factual equality of the men and women is not well portrayed, in my humble opinion, and that goes for my first novel too. When the two men find each other, there's no need for translation or cultural adjustment just on the basis of gender. I also find the difficulty with which the individual character has coming to grips with his particular identity, finding love safely, and finally protecting that love in a hostile society, since I read historical fiction, poignant and a magnet for my sympathy. The mind to mind romance just works for me in a way the typical heterosexual romance story does not.

But I digress. Lessons in Love delivers a very satisfying portrayal of two diametrically opposed personalities where indeed opposites attract. The look into the life in an Edwardian British college is fascinating, with its routines, values, and select society. It is not immune, in spite of this, to the injustices and threats of an intolerant time and era.

More than anything I know I will want to come back for more of Jaunty's and Orlando's charming and entertaining company.

I purchased this novel to read on my Kindle 3. As always, I thank the author, Charlie Cochrane, and Samhain Publishing, for allowing text to speech to be enabled so I could read it.

Read a Cambridge Fellows short mystery in the latest Wilde Oats: Once We Won Matches.

The House in Birdgate Alley, by Anel Viz

2011-02-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

The House in Birdgate Alley

Anel Viz

Some might think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson dealt with some of the seamier sides of London crime, but there is a decided lack in terms of such scandalous matters as male prostitution. That is where we latter day novelists can correct this lack, and that is what Anel Viz has accomplished with The House in Birdgate Alley.

A baronet is deathly ill with pneumonia and his wife asks family friend Dr. John Williams, the Watson character, to find out why he was out in the miserable weather until three in the morning. He calls on his Holmes-like cousin, Cyril Fosterby, a chemist with remarkable powers of deduction to help him solve the mystery. The murder of a young male prostitute comes to light, and the two soon establish that the baronet had a longstanding love affair with the young man. They choose to enlist the help of the prostitute's friend, and colleague, Johnny Rice, in finding and catching the murderer, whom they are sure is not the baronet.

Johnny is bright, attractive and fearless, and though the novel is ostensibly a detective story, the central theme is really the growing awareness of "inverts" by the good Dr. Williams. At the outset he is clear that homosexual acts are "unnatural" and is repulsed, but as he gets to know the various cast members of the book who are so drawn he is, by nature, forced to reconsider his attitude. When Johnny starts to fall in love with him and his own affection grows, he is forced to recognize "normal sexuality" cannot be pigeonholed as one type or another. Johnny's spirit and liveliness he comes to realize is largely bravado to mask the torment of his underworld life.

This is also an origin story of sorts, with Fosterby, an experimental chemist, realizing just how much he enjoys detection that he decides to make it his profession. Holmes aficionadi will recognize the Master Sleuth here with his superior powers of observation and his use of disguises. Now I will confess that while I enjoy the Conan Doyle stories, I have always felt they were rather simplistic and contrived, not quite as amazing as their reputation. People seem to get caught up in the brilliant creation of a character like Holmes, the real artistry of the novels, and assume what they are seeing is Holmes' brilliance in action. I am tempted to think Viz sees it this way too, because The House in Birdgate Alley is fairly thin in terms of the detective story, much like typical Holmes and Watson tales. The quirky and intriguing Homes/Fosterby character is not half as interesting as Watson/Williams, with his observer's objective view and judgments.

This is not a long book. It's primary attraction is entertainment, but more its sensitive interpretation of the characters and relationships. Just sit back and enjoy.

I bought the novel to read on my Kindle. My thanks to the author for authorizing text-to-speech to be enabled.

Sharpe's Revenge, by Bernard Cornwell (Richard Sharpe Adventure Series)

2011-01-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

Sharpe's Revenge

Bernard Cornwell

Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

We are approaching the end of the Richarrd Sharpe series here, with only two novels left. Neither Jim nor I want them to end. It is said Bernard Cornwell is working on another, but it just can't come soon enough.

In Sharpe's Revenge, Wellington has crossed the mountains into France. The war is almost over. In fact, the Battle of Toulouse, dramatized here, occurs after Napoleon Bonaparte has surrendered and technically France is under the control of the British and allies. Angry about a duel, Jane Sharpe has gone back to London, taking a letter from Sharpe to his bankers authorizing her to take over the account. Pierre Ducos knows his goose is cooked, so he takes the opportunity to steal Bonaparte's treasure and manages somehow to pin the blame on Sharpe and Freerickson. These two are arrested for the theft. That Sharpe has in his possession the spyglass Napoleon gave to his brother, Joseph, seals the deal on him. The two officers escape and go looking for the witnesses to their innocence, while Ducos does the same, getting there first and silencing them.

Back in London Jane is falling in love with and spending Sharpe's money on Lord Rossendale. Beginning to sense the betrayal Sharpe finds comfort in Lassan's sister, Lucille Castineau. Unfortunately Frederickson fell in love with her first. Sharpe wants to tell him about Lucille and him, but they are on their way to find Ducos by the time they speak again. In the meantime it turns out the attorney seeking Sharpe and Frederickson is really working for Bonaparte who also wants his treasure back.

This is the most mature writing of Cornwell's Sharpe series. The segments in it about other people than Sharpe himself are as interesting and important and show a greater breadth of characterization than the earlier novels. Not that I am complaining about the earlier ones... The story is more involved, the circumstances just as daunting but the more so since pretty much everyonne on earth is after Our Hero.

I have already read the next two novels, Waterloo and Sharpe's Devil, and Jim has read the latter. We are intentionally reading a long novel next, Edward Rutherfurd's The Prince of Ireland, partially to put off the end of our survey of every single Sharpe novel starting in 2008. Then we shall have to kill ourselves... No, wait, I am planning to get Jim hooked on Lymond next!

By the way, there is a movie stuck in here somewhere... Sharpe's Mission seems to come before Sharpe's Siege. It's not a bad movie with some echoes from the books, but there ain't no book counterpart, not really.