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timeripple's romance recommendation, "Lord of Scoundrels" did not arrive with a horrifyingly gauche cover. I was a bit disappointed. It also was not a large-print edition. There is always a trade-off...
Well, to start with, from the outset this was Not Your Georgette Regency. Though it maintains a certain composed diction that one expects (and can relax into) from this set of historicals, it also established right from the prologue that it was going to be unflinching about the realities usually alluded to more coyly.
This starts in the vicious initiation of the hero into the way Eton's society runs. The idea of the abuse these schools has broken my heart since reading Surprised By Joy, and seeing it deployed in a story like this made me sit up and take notice. This formed an unusually solid emotional core for the hero.
He is a rake. He is one we watch act in ways that are pretty inexcusable, but in that very-necessary prologue, we saw this monster created--not excused, but explained. That was definitely anchoring the kind of mean things he does. Which had a lot more punch than the usual slights and banter. Which have their place! But in this case, the rooting in a very vivid bitterness filled both the rake trope and this storyline with a gravity.
The dark-humor streak continued from the prologue into the main text with the entrance of a naughty watch---which was likewise a choice that made me sit up and notice. X) I've heard about porno miniatures in snuffboxes and so on, but the use of it was exquisite--setting up the whole tenor of their relationship, the storyline itself.
The twist in the resolution was likewise tied into this emotional core, and though it was a little bit of a non-event ending...that was right. There had been so many drastic highs and lows that commonplace highs and lows and interruptions felt delightfully well-done. It was slightly neat, in terms of real psychological trauma recoveries, but you know...HEA. It worked.
This is a scorchingly hot historical, both in intensity of emotion and the pace of the romance. I liked that it did not dance around the reputation of the bad guy hero and instead brought us right amidst it. It is important to his emotions to have his old affairs come back and bite him
(the resounding opposite I can think of is in These Old Shades, the impeccable blackguard hero so very perfect in his management of these things...it's a very similar overall arc, in the romance, but of completely different level)
and yet bring him around to see a brighter truth than he was aware of before.
I know that I've talked exclusively about the hero. The heroine was markedly well-adjusted for a romance heroine! In a way, it was a story about the making of the hero, as opposed to the romance making the heroine. Bravo for that: it's one of the stream of choices made to not go the easy route but go the INTERESTING one.
Having a hero get all the complexes? LOVE IIIT.
timeripple's romance recommendation, "Lord of Scoundrels" did not arrive with a horrifyingly gauche cover. I was a bit disappointed. It also was not a large-print edition. There is always a trade-off...Well, to start with, from the outset this was Not Your Georgette Regency. Though it maintains a certain composed diction that one expects (and can relax into) from this set of historicals, it also established right from the prologue that it was going to be unflinching about the realities usually alluded to more coyly.
This starts in the vicious initiation of the hero into the way Eton's society runs. The idea of the abuse these schools has broken my heart since reading Surprised By Joy, and seeing it deployed in a story like this made me sit up and take notice. This formed an unusually solid emotional core for the hero.
He is a rake. He is one we watch act in ways that are pretty inexcusable, but in that very-necessary prologue, we saw this monster created--not excused, but explained. That was definitely anchoring the kind of mean things he does. Which had a lot more punch than the usual slights and banter. Which have their place! But in this case, the rooting in a very vivid bitterness filled both the rake trope and this storyline with a gravity.
The dark-humor streak continued from the prologue into the main text with the entrance of a naughty watch---which was likewise a choice that made me sit up and notice. X) I've heard about porno miniatures in snuffboxes and so on, but the use of it was exquisite--setting up the whole tenor of their relationship, the storyline itself.
The twist in the resolution was likewise tied into this emotional core, and though it was a little bit of a non-event ending...that was right. There had been so many drastic highs and lows that commonplace highs and lows and interruptions felt delightfully well-done. It was slightly neat, in terms of real psychological trauma recoveries, but you know...HEA. It worked.
This is a scorchingly hot historical, both in intensity of emotion and the pace of the romance. I liked that it did not dance around the reputation of the bad guy hero and instead brought us right amidst it. It is important to his emotions to have his old affairs come back and bite him
(the resounding opposite I can think of is in These Old Shades, the impeccable blackguard hero so very perfect in his management of these things...it's a very similar overall arc, in the romance, but of completely different level)
and yet bring him around to see a brighter truth than he was aware of before.
I know that I've talked exclusively about the hero. The heroine was markedly well-adjusted for a romance heroine! In a way, it was a story about the making of the hero, as opposed to the romance making the heroine. Bravo for that: it's one of the stream of choices made to not go the easy route but go the INTERESTING one.
Having a hero get all the complexes? LOVE IIIT.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 07:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 03:23 pm (UTC)From:I will say, this is a pretty SMUTTY romance, if well developed, so pursue it if you like, but I don't want you to be shocked. ;)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 05:17 am (UTC)From:I'm unlikely to be shocked by regular type smut--the main thing that's likely to make me want to burn out my eyeballs is eroticized (shut up spellcheck it is totally a legit word) rape, because that is just straight up icky :S
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 05:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 02:38 pm (UTC)From:...mine never are. X)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 02:37 pm (UTC)From:Our heroine holds her own standards, which is lovely. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-05 02:25 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-05-05 03:02 am (UTC)From:Ren Faire. Got it. X)
no subject
Date: 2012-04-29 06:16 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 01:46 am (UTC)From:*his* vulnerabilities being what screws things up (instead of what hobbles the heroine) is so very fresh. And seeing the bull-headedness from inside his own head, but also his realizations that he's going about it all wrong are superexcellent.
"I WILL PUNISH YOU BY GETTING MARRIED
wait, what am I saying
ye gods, I came out hoping this would happen, didn't I"