Books books books
Nov. 11th, 2011 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotSo I finally read I Shall Wear Midnight. IDK. I think I'm just over the trope of subverting the trope that noble girls/princesses are blonde are delicate and all that. I've been reading it since I was ... I don't know, eight? The Ordinary Princess is the first one I can remember. Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more if Letitia and Roland had had more time - I find them an interesting pair, and I didn't really like the way Roland was basically a non-entity. Esk really reminded me of older!Amy Pond, though. And one of the things Pterry does amazingly, along with DWJ, is get that sense of ancientness that I love so much and wish I could duplicate.
Recently, I decided to pick up a series I read when I was in high school - it's called The League of Jewelled Men, by Patricia Veryan - to see if it held up. It's set post-second Jacobite rebellion, starting in 1748. The League are some rich guys who want to something something take over England, and the heroes of course need to foil their scheme. And do you know? I think it did hold up fairly well, at least for romantic historical adventures written in a Heyeresque vein. At least the first one did, Time's Fool.
Okay, so Capt. Gideon Rossiter has just gotten out of a military hospital with his friend James Morris. (Rossiter is the gaunt, serious one and Morris is jokey and loves expressing himself through proverbs and sayings.) Unknown to Rossiter, while he was ill he deliriously talked through his fantasies about being in a garden with his betrothed, Lady Naomi Lutonville, to whom he'd been engaged for like sex or eight years? - which other people heard and wrote home about how he had a mistress in a garden somewhere. Naomi learns about this from Rossiter's dickish brother Newby and is really pissed off. Also unknown to him, his family's business interests are dead in the water (literally, because they have a burned up shipyard, zing) and it looks like Rossiter's father, Sir Mark, has embezzled and deliberately not taken safety precautions. But Sir Mark KNOWS it's not true and he's been set up, although he has no idea why. But like I said, Rossiter doesn't know this, and he goes to the family's country seat, which is strangely empty. The next morning he goes downstairs and WTF, there's some obnoxious Cockney guard who wants to fight with him and Morris, who asnuck in at some point last night. Morris distracts him by dancing to a nursery rhyme while Rossiter knocks him out, but after that they're friends. Later on the guard (Tummet) goes to see Naomi for something and she suggests that he should be Rossiter's valet, and this actually happens, and apart from the grating phonetic accent and constant rhyming slang that wasn't invented until about a century later, he's pretty fun.
As Rossiter and Morris head back to London, they run into Naomi and her friends, Katrina and August Falcon, on the road in the darkish. Thinking (due to shouts that a highwayman is attacking) that Falcon is a highwayman attacking, Morris shoots him a bit in the arm! This is terrible, as August Falcon is like 1/8th Chinese, and therefore poorly treated by society, and therefore incredibly prickly - basically, he is a hot Snape - and he's completely unwilling to give Morris the benefit of the doubt that he is not a complete moron who likes shooting people. This is even more terrible because Morris falls madly in love with the gorgeous Katrina. The evening gets worse when Rossiter is brusque and ungentlemanly to Naomi, who's trying to help Falcon, and dumps her in her carriage, although neither recognizes the other at the time. At some point Morris finds a little pink jade thing Naomi had been bringing back to her father on the road and picks it up and forgets about it. They all go to an inn and Falcon is a jerk and tells Rossiter about Sir Mark's situation, which makes Rossiter attack him and so Falcon calls him out for a duel, and Morris as well for shooting him.
Once Rossiter gets back to London, everything sucks (except his sister, Gwen, who has a bad knee and knows she won't marry because of it, which makes her kind of outspoken and bold while still being adorable and sweet). Newby is awful, his father's a wreck and people form mobs to attack him in the street because of Sir Mark's supposed financial wrongdoing. Naomi is extra pissed when she questions him about this garden harlot and he tells her she's having twins. (Later on this is cleared up as Rossiter thought she was referring to this Belgian woman with kids he'd helped out but never thought of explicitly until it came time to solve the misunderstanding. Kind of out of nowhere.) Her father is pissed because she lost his package from the jeweller. They all go to a ball and everyone is shocked that Rossiter would dare to show his face, except his friends Horatio Glendenning (not popular because his brother was a Jacobite supporter who fled to France) and Perry Chandler (lost a foot in the wars) who are glad to see him. Naomi wants to stomp on him but hates it when anyone else does. At some point she ends up on a window ledge and overhears some men talking mysteriously while a little green jade figure sits on a table, and then kicks her shoe off to get back in. Newby finds it and plans to figure out whose it is so he can blackmail the owner, who was OBVIOUSLY having sex and throwing her clothes out the window. At the end of the ball, she throws her flowers over her shoulder so the man who catches them can take her to the next ball, and of course it's Rossiter.
Gwen goes to see Falcon to make him call off the duel, but he refuses. She turns his dog, Apollo, from a slavering watchdog into a playful hound by throwing her stick for him and breaking an antique Chinese vase. Falcon thinks that she isn't pretty and it's obvious that they complement each other well and will have an awesome romance in the last and best book in the series. Seriously, check out the reviews, everyone loves them best and has a passion for Falcon.)
There's detective work after that for a while, and Naomi and Rossiter make up, though they still have to deal with their fathers - Sir Mark thinks Naomi is wanton and Lord Lutonville (Earl of Something) is a Jewelled Man and says Rossiter is bad news. Rossiter and Falcon go to have their duel, and Falcon's winning until Rossiter finally manages to ping his sword out of his hand. Falcon goes for it and Gwen stands on it while he shouts that she's bending it, get her off!!! and it's really quite funny. They have to desist, though, because Gwen's bearing bad news: Naomi has been kidnapped! Some guys just rode up between them in the park and made her horse run off with them. Tummet gets beaten up and comes home and tells Rossiter "daughter pill" because someone in the house - Lord Lutonville - is on the wrong side and he can't let them know he knows where Naomi is. Whoever took her wants the pink jade piece and the lapis lazuli one Rossiter took out of a guy's desk earlier on. Which, unfortunately, That Jerk Newby stole to sell to someone who sent round a note about them so he can escape to France with money and leave the scandal behind.
First Rossiter goes to Slaughter Hill, or Something Else That Rhymes With Daughter, I Don't Remember Hill, but it's not right. It turns out that Naomi's been taken to the water mill on Rossiter's estate, which is in such crappy condition that it could blow down any minute. She makes a rope out of blanket bits that she gets to dangle herself out of the window on before Rossiter pulls her back up and they escape just as it burns down. (Didn't I mention? The captors set it on fire.) Rossiter plans never to tell her about her father's place in the League, but after they're married she tells him, "I'm really selfish but I waited until you couldn't jilt me to tell you this: my father was in on it," but he assures her that it's all cool and he knew. The curtain falls with the certainty that every guy in the anti-jewel resistance will get his own book and his own romance.
OKAY. That was long-winded and I probably still left a ton out, but I needed to explain how shenanigany and fun the series is. There's a lot of evil scheming that I didn't quite get, but that's because I was seduced by the character interaction. Rereading the book and remembering oh, right, Morris and Falcon's conversations that go nowhere are actually brilliant was just a lovely feeling, especially as I was worried I'd hate the book on a reread. Mostly what I was worried about hating was clothing stuff and language. Fortunately, clothing is hardly described, and the little there was was mostly right, so gold star there. (Many good clothing descriptions > hardly any clothing description >>> bad clothing description.) The language is Heyer influenced, in Morris especially, who has a lot of the Edwardian about him, but the street slang isn't overused the way it sometimes is in Regencies. Tummet was way over the top, though, and like I said, rhyming slang in the 1740s is an anachronism, but I like the character, so. *shrug* They are fun books and I highly recommend them for light reading.
Recently, I decided to pick up a series I read when I was in high school - it's called The League of Jewelled Men, by Patricia Veryan - to see if it held up. It's set post-second Jacobite rebellion, starting in 1748. The League are some rich guys who want to something something take over England, and the heroes of course need to foil their scheme. And do you know? I think it did hold up fairly well, at least for romantic historical adventures written in a Heyeresque vein. At least the first one did, Time's Fool.
Okay, so Capt. Gideon Rossiter has just gotten out of a military hospital with his friend James Morris. (Rossiter is the gaunt, serious one and Morris is jokey and loves expressing himself through proverbs and sayings.) Unknown to Rossiter, while he was ill he deliriously talked through his fantasies about being in a garden with his betrothed, Lady Naomi Lutonville, to whom he'd been engaged for like sex or eight years? - which other people heard and wrote home about how he had a mistress in a garden somewhere. Naomi learns about this from Rossiter's dickish brother Newby and is really pissed off. Also unknown to him, his family's business interests are dead in the water (literally, because they have a burned up shipyard, zing) and it looks like Rossiter's father, Sir Mark, has embezzled and deliberately not taken safety precautions. But Sir Mark KNOWS it's not true and he's been set up, although he has no idea why. But like I said, Rossiter doesn't know this, and he goes to the family's country seat, which is strangely empty. The next morning he goes downstairs and WTF, there's some obnoxious Cockney guard who wants to fight with him and Morris, who asnuck in at some point last night. Morris distracts him by dancing to a nursery rhyme while Rossiter knocks him out, but after that they're friends. Later on the guard (Tummet) goes to see Naomi for something and she suggests that he should be Rossiter's valet, and this actually happens, and apart from the grating phonetic accent and constant rhyming slang that wasn't invented until about a century later, he's pretty fun.
As Rossiter and Morris head back to London, they run into Naomi and her friends, Katrina and August Falcon, on the road in the darkish. Thinking (due to shouts that a highwayman is attacking) that Falcon is a highwayman attacking, Morris shoots him a bit in the arm! This is terrible, as August Falcon is like 1/8th Chinese, and therefore poorly treated by society, and therefore incredibly prickly - basically, he is a hot Snape - and he's completely unwilling to give Morris the benefit of the doubt that he is not a complete moron who likes shooting people. This is even more terrible because Morris falls madly in love with the gorgeous Katrina. The evening gets worse when Rossiter is brusque and ungentlemanly to Naomi, who's trying to help Falcon, and dumps her in her carriage, although neither recognizes the other at the time. At some point Morris finds a little pink jade thing Naomi had been bringing back to her father on the road and picks it up and forgets about it. They all go to an inn and Falcon is a jerk and tells Rossiter about Sir Mark's situation, which makes Rossiter attack him and so Falcon calls him out for a duel, and Morris as well for shooting him.
Once Rossiter gets back to London, everything sucks (except his sister, Gwen, who has a bad knee and knows she won't marry because of it, which makes her kind of outspoken and bold while still being adorable and sweet). Newby is awful, his father's a wreck and people form mobs to attack him in the street because of Sir Mark's supposed financial wrongdoing. Naomi is extra pissed when she questions him about this garden harlot and he tells her she's having twins. (Later on this is cleared up as Rossiter thought she was referring to this Belgian woman with kids he'd helped out but never thought of explicitly until it came time to solve the misunderstanding. Kind of out of nowhere.) Her father is pissed because she lost his package from the jeweller. They all go to a ball and everyone is shocked that Rossiter would dare to show his face, except his friends Horatio Glendenning (not popular because his brother was a Jacobite supporter who fled to France) and Perry Chandler (lost a foot in the wars) who are glad to see him. Naomi wants to stomp on him but hates it when anyone else does. At some point she ends up on a window ledge and overhears some men talking mysteriously while a little green jade figure sits on a table, and then kicks her shoe off to get back in. Newby finds it and plans to figure out whose it is so he can blackmail the owner, who was OBVIOUSLY having sex and throwing her clothes out the window. At the end of the ball, she throws her flowers over her shoulder so the man who catches them can take her to the next ball, and of course it's Rossiter.
Gwen goes to see Falcon to make him call off the duel, but he refuses. She turns his dog, Apollo, from a slavering watchdog into a playful hound by throwing her stick for him and breaking an antique Chinese vase. Falcon thinks that she isn't pretty and it's obvious that they complement each other well and will have an awesome romance in the last and best book in the series. Seriously, check out the reviews, everyone loves them best and has a passion for Falcon.)
There's detective work after that for a while, and Naomi and Rossiter make up, though they still have to deal with their fathers - Sir Mark thinks Naomi is wanton and Lord Lutonville (Earl of Something) is a Jewelled Man and says Rossiter is bad news. Rossiter and Falcon go to have their duel, and Falcon's winning until Rossiter finally manages to ping his sword out of his hand. Falcon goes for it and Gwen stands on it while he shouts that she's bending it, get her off!!! and it's really quite funny. They have to desist, though, because Gwen's bearing bad news: Naomi has been kidnapped! Some guys just rode up between them in the park and made her horse run off with them. Tummet gets beaten up and comes home and tells Rossiter "daughter pill" because someone in the house - Lord Lutonville - is on the wrong side and he can't let them know he knows where Naomi is. Whoever took her wants the pink jade piece and the lapis lazuli one Rossiter took out of a guy's desk earlier on. Which, unfortunately, That Jerk Newby stole to sell to someone who sent round a note about them so he can escape to France with money and leave the scandal behind.
First Rossiter goes to Slaughter Hill, or Something Else That Rhymes With Daughter, I Don't Remember Hill, but it's not right. It turns out that Naomi's been taken to the water mill on Rossiter's estate, which is in such crappy condition that it could blow down any minute. She makes a rope out of blanket bits that she gets to dangle herself out of the window on before Rossiter pulls her back up and they escape just as it burns down. (Didn't I mention? The captors set it on fire.) Rossiter plans never to tell her about her father's place in the League, but after they're married she tells him, "I'm really selfish but I waited until you couldn't jilt me to tell you this: my father was in on it," but he assures her that it's all cool and he knew. The curtain falls with the certainty that every guy in the anti-jewel resistance will get his own book and his own romance.
OKAY. That was long-winded and I probably still left a ton out, but I needed to explain how shenanigany and fun the series is. There's a lot of evil scheming that I didn't quite get, but that's because I was seduced by the character interaction. Rereading the book and remembering oh, right, Morris and Falcon's conversations that go nowhere are actually brilliant was just a lovely feeling, especially as I was worried I'd hate the book on a reread. Mostly what I was worried about hating was clothing stuff and language. Fortunately, clothing is hardly described, and the little there was was mostly right, so gold star there. (Many good clothing descriptions > hardly any clothing description >>> bad clothing description.) The language is Heyer influenced, in Morris especially, who has a lot of the Edwardian about him, but the street slang isn't overused the way it sometimes is in Regencies. Tummet was way over the top, though, and like I said, rhyming slang in the 1740s is an anachronism, but I like the character, so. *shrug* They are fun books and I highly recommend them for light reading.
