Of Swords and Parasols

(I remember a time when about 70% of my content was posts on individual books.)

The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne: Romance novel about a French spy and a British spy who have been freinds, lovers, enemies and rivals in various combinations over the course of a quarter of a century, beginning in the French Revolution. I don't recall Bourne's first 2 books incredibly well, but I remember both having interesting and rather different premises but the books not quite living up to them, and the heroines being rather out of the norm but being defanged somewhat to make the romances work. I rather loathed the hero here at times but I suspect my subconsciousness recalls him better in the previous books than my consciousness does, and my reaction is more related to that than this book, a few scenes aside. Not as good as it could be, but quite different from most of the genre.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher: The short and unspoilery version is that the 13th installment in the Dresden files is a fun and entertaining book in which the most interesting things, sadly, are the things going on offpage with the supporting characters, and which Harry (and so we) only see a bit of or hear about. Molly has been slowly becomin the character that interests me the most over the last few books, and that held true here as well. I like to think that my hopes that Molly will eventually be Maggie's mentor are supported by this book, but am sure that my not-so-secret desire that the series eventually switches from Harry to Maggie as the central protagonist will never happen. The resolution to the mystery from the end of the last book was fairly predictable, but that's OK.

Magic Under Stone by Jaclyn Dolamore: Sequel to Magic Under Glass, featuring a good story and a woefully whitewashed cover. Everything in the book springs pretty much directly from the first, including the new characters and their plots. This one focuses a lot more on the fae and the fae court, but it's not to the detriment of the book as a whole. (Though, if you're like me and watch Once Upon A Time, one particularly dramatic and serious scene might accidentally become funny because you picture Josh Dallas popping us and asking if you've tried "True Love's Kiss.") The world remains a very engaging blend of history, steampunk and fantasy, though I wish more of it would be explored beyond the pseudo-Europe beyond Nimira's memories of her homeland.

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George: Light and largely adorable medieval-lite MG book about about a 12-year-old princess in a castle that's always changing (rooms and corridors move and change size, conditions and dimensions, new rooms spontaneously appear) who, along with her teenaged brother and sister, has to protect the castle (and kingdom) from advisors and a foreign prince when her parents disappear and are declared dead. A bit heavy heanded with the "place as character" at times, but probably not as much so from the perspective of the target age group, and less reminiscent of the "Castle Perilous" books than I had expected, with lots of spy!princess shenanigans and some political maneuverings that are amusingly naive at this point in life, but which I probably ould have thought brilliant when I was 12.

The Squire's Quest by Gerald Morris: This is I think the 9th or 10th book in the "Squire's Tales" series. Good but not one of the best in thr series, this adapts "Cliges," a source text which Morris seems to look at about the way he views "Tristan and Isolde," only moreso. It's most notable, probably, for being one of the few books to focus primarily on the series's titular character, Terrence, and his running around investigating things and being suspicious of Mordred was considerably more fun than the "Cliges" parts. I think there are only one or two books after this, given the presence of Mordred and his obvious plotting.

Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde: A collection of 8 adaptations of "Little Red Riding Hood," the best part is probably the author's foreword, in which she spends several pages boggling at the tale and it's popularity. The stories themselves are a bit hit-and-miss, and largely have little to do with the fairy tale beyond the surface. My favorites were "Little Red Riding Hood's Family" (a bit of a nod to urban fantasy) and "Granny and the Wolf" (in which the wolf is female and Granny's pet, and Granny has an unwanted suitor), but while a couple made me go "Err...what...?" (possibly deliberate) it's a pretty entertaining, light read.

This book created a lot of buzz when it came out, for both its heroine and its voice. The books centers around two spies in the Napoleonic War. Or rather, just barely before, I believe. Annique Villiers is the daughter of a French spy, and has been working as one since childhood, but has recently come under attack by another French spy, Leblanc. Robert Grey is a (for romance novels) fairly common English nobleman spy. They get imprisoned together by Leblanc, she helps him and his injured friend escape, then he decides to kidnap her and take her back to England so the English can have the information Leblanc wanted from her. She objects. Strongly.

All the talk about the voice is spot on. The prose is far superior to that of many romance novels, and its fair share of other genre voices, too, and the dialogue crisp and engaging. In addition, the voices of the French characters-all of them, not just Annique-feel French. It’s not the typical approach of a few stereotypical phrases and mannerisms, but the characters and everything about them feel French, at all times.

And Annique? For the first half of the book, I wholeheartedly agree. Faced with three English spies, it takes all three of them just to keep a very slippery grip on her. She’s smart, clever, and physically capable. There’s a Secret revealed about 70 or so pages in that just makes it more impressive. Except that this is a romance novel. If you’ve ever read a romance novel set in this period, then you know there’s a borderline unbreakable rule that England=Right, France=Wrong. While this isn’t as blatant here as it is elsewhere, there is, right from the beginning, a subtle message that Annique is on the wrong side, and Grey on the right, thus giving an implicit approval of his actions.

Therefore, when the tables are slightly turned, Annique suddenly loses her edge, especially when the Secret is revealed. Her feelings for Grey cloud her judgement. The English spies, of course (or at least, this group) would never harm her, they just want her information (there is, at least, textual indication that this wouldn’t be true of anyone but her, for reasons that have nothing to do with Grey) while the French spies are evil. Annique remains multiple steps above the typical romance novel heroine in this plotline, but it’s very clear that the romance novel requirement that the enemy heroine be made soft for the hero is present.

Then there’s the kidnapping aspect. Now, in the context of the story, it makes perfect sense. In fact, I would have called Grey a moron if he hadn’t done it. I have no problems seeing the characters as being compatible, or even, under different circumstances, falling in love. However, for most of the book, she is his captive, and for the short period when she isn’t, it really isn’t much better. I simply have problems with the “falling in love with your kidnapper” trope as a whole. Also, it’s a romance novel, meaning that, at some point, they had to have sex. There is, very simply, nowhere to insert sex into this plot without there being a skanky element.



Here’s the thing: a lot of this sounds extremely critical. However, most of the elements, including the execution, are great. Had this not been a romance novel, even with an understanding of post-book romance, or had they been on the same side, or rival spies working together, instead of enemy spies where she spends most of the book as his captive, I’d probably hail it as one of the best romance novels I’ve read in ages. But it does have those problems, which hold it back. Still, I look forward to her other books quite a bit. Even though the cover of the second looks as embarrassing as this one.