Had We Never Loved
Feb. 16th, 2012 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotIt's been a long time, but here's the sequel to Time's Fool, of Patricia Veryan's League of Jewelled Men series.
The sequel is, as most sequels are, not as good as the first book. The hero is Horatio, Viscount Glendenning, who supported Prince Charles during the rebellion, which is pretty decent as a backstory. He stops at a fair on the way home and flirts with a beautiful gypsy (using the term because the book does) woman, Amy Consett, our heroine. She moves his purse to a different pocket to teach him a lesson about paying attention, but then she gets into some trouble with a jerk and Horatio defends her. Then he follows her into the woods (can't remember why, and I already took the book back) and steps on a branch that goes through his boot into his foot and runs into a tripwire Amy's adoptive uncle Absalom set up, which knocks him out. When he comes to, he's in their house, being taken care of by Amy. At first he's kind of skeezy and comes onto her all the time, which pisses her off because she's so used to this all the time from men. Ab had to "buy her out of the tribe" because the chals were always on at her to marry them. He becomes less skeezy about it but still hits on her, and then tells her he wants to make her his mistress. This enrages her, so good job there Horatio.
Meanwhile, Falcon is mad because Horatio was supposed to be his second in his duel against Jamie Morris (remember, Morris shot Falcon, thinking he was a highwayman), and since he's missing they can't have the duel. Gwen isn't involved, so it's not as good as it could be, but Falcon and Morris do go on a road trip and have a few hijinks and bicker a lot.
Horatio finally goes walking out of the woods, healed up, but gets kidnapped by some people who work for the Squire, the head of the League, who tie him up and rough him up. Amy rescues him by pretending to be a ghost! But after they go back chez Consett, the men come after them and they have to fight them off and then run away in the donkey cart. Amy and Horatio go to an inn, but get chased off when the innkeeper thinks she's a prostitute. So they go to a shop, where Amy pretends Horatio is returning her to her family and they buy her some magic ready-made clothes (ANACHRONISM) and then go to his family home. Horatio's step-mother, Countess Bowers-Malden, tells him that there's been a big crisis: her son, Michael, has fallen into bad gambling habits and ran up a huge debt. To pay the debt, Major Trethaway has agreed to take an antique brooch from the countess's family (the Comyn Pin). But as soon as Michael gave him the pin, the jerk from the fair comes sniffing around! His name is Burton Farrier and he works for the government, looking for traitors. He claims to have a list of stuff donated to the Jacobite cause, and says the Comyn Pin is on it. Apparently there are two pins and the one that was donated was probably given by an aunt, whom they obviously don't want to turn in. The countess is like, please help the kid and get the pin back within [some time frame] because Farrier is coming back, don't let your father find out because he'll be furious. And when Horatio does talk to the earl, he is furious about something else, they just don't get along very well because of Horatio's political leanings which could apparently get all of them executed. I think this is the bit where the earl tells Horatio not to consider him his father (incidentally, my grandfather did this).
I will give Veryan this: a lot of historical series tend to have everyone good on one side (generally the one the present likes most/finds the most romantic), but this one has a mix. Horatio doesn't like the house of Hanover, the League doesn't like any kings, and the rest of the heroes don't have strong feelings about the monarchy, they're opposed to the League because they're ruining people's lives.
Horatio and Morris ride out after the Pin, coming across Trethaway by an amazing stroke of luck - he was sailing to France - but Trethaway knocks Morris out and ties Horatio up to a tree (also kicks his wounded foot). Horatio can only watch as Trethaway's ship sinks, taking the Pin away forever. The rest of the heroes are doing something with Sir Owen Furlong, who works in the Horse Guards, and needs to come to Bowers-Malden's estate - I think I've missed a bit, Horatio goes back to the house at some point with Amy, and his father calls her a whore, but then Horatio tells him he's got to denounce him to the government to save Michael and Marguerite (the step-sister, who is beautiful and sweet because everyone in this series has a beautiful, sweet sister), and the earl is ~dumbstruck~. It's a lovely melodramatic scene.
Anyway, Horatio gets loose and goes back home, dejected that he's lost the Pin and knowing he's going to have to take the fall. Farrier is gloating at having not given Bowers-Malden a chance to denounce Horatio (he wants them all to die because the League wants specific estates to be seized by the crown and sold). All seems lost! But then Amy marches out, covered in the countess's jewelry, pretending to be a maid or something, and the countess is like omg, it's the Comyn Pin! They compare it to a drawing and kick Farrier out. The Pin is actually a fake made by Ab, who is an art forger oh I should have said that earlier. Horatio and Amy are going to get married and everyone will tell about how she was ~stolen at birth~; happy endings for all except Falcon, who still has not gotten his duel (spoiler: he won't until the last book).
I somehow really liked this one when I was a teenager, probably for the class difference. Now I think Amy's whiplash shifts between "oh, I love you so tenderly, teach me to speak properly" and "I am SO ANGRY, you're ashamed of me because I'm ignorant and you're going to dump me as soon as you can" are annoying. (Also her rhyming slang, Veryan is in love with rhyming slang and must have someone saying it in each book despite it being anachronistic.) And the way everyone comes to the conclusion that Amy was ~stolen~ as a child from a good family because ... she's beautiful? when you tell her how to speak Standard English she can speak Standard English? IDEK ... is pretty sketchy, especially as it's never resolved. I mean, it's sketchy enough that Veryan made the beautiful romantic interest have been literally stolen by gypsies (leading me to search on the topic, read a thread on Straight Dope that has an interesting bit at the end which suggests young Romani women might have run away from their family and claimed to have been stolen for social acceptance - kind of a Cherokee princess thing?), but that could have been somewhat mitigated if they'd found her family and they were related to the plot at all. But that didn't happen, and it just seems like a too-easy way to have both a) a romance with an exotic lower-class woman that can ~never be~ and b) a happy, married ending without any difficulty at all in the future. However, there are a lot of bits where people DESPAIR and FEEL DREADFUL, so if you like that sort of thing it's worth a read, I guess.
The local library doesn't have the third book, Ask Me No Questions, so I'm skipping to the fourth, A Shadow's Bliss. Maybe I'll go back afterward and request it from the system, IDK.
The sequel is, as most sequels are, not as good as the first book. The hero is Horatio, Viscount Glendenning, who supported Prince Charles during the rebellion, which is pretty decent as a backstory. He stops at a fair on the way home and flirts with a beautiful gypsy (using the term because the book does) woman, Amy Consett, our heroine. She moves his purse to a different pocket to teach him a lesson about paying attention, but then she gets into some trouble with a jerk and Horatio defends her. Then he follows her into the woods (can't remember why, and I already took the book back) and steps on a branch that goes through his boot into his foot and runs into a tripwire Amy's adoptive uncle Absalom set up, which knocks him out. When he comes to, he's in their house, being taken care of by Amy. At first he's kind of skeezy and comes onto her all the time, which pisses her off because she's so used to this all the time from men. Ab had to "buy her out of the tribe" because the chals were always on at her to marry them. He becomes less skeezy about it but still hits on her, and then tells her he wants to make her his mistress. This enrages her, so good job there Horatio.
Meanwhile, Falcon is mad because Horatio was supposed to be his second in his duel against Jamie Morris (remember, Morris shot Falcon, thinking he was a highwayman), and since he's missing they can't have the duel. Gwen isn't involved, so it's not as good as it could be, but Falcon and Morris do go on a road trip and have a few hijinks and bicker a lot.
Horatio finally goes walking out of the woods, healed up, but gets kidnapped by some people who work for the Squire, the head of the League, who tie him up and rough him up. Amy rescues him by pretending to be a ghost! But after they go back chez Consett, the men come after them and they have to fight them off and then run away in the donkey cart. Amy and Horatio go to an inn, but get chased off when the innkeeper thinks she's a prostitute. So they go to a shop, where Amy pretends Horatio is returning her to her family and they buy her some magic ready-made clothes (ANACHRONISM) and then go to his family home. Horatio's step-mother, Countess Bowers-Malden, tells him that there's been a big crisis: her son, Michael, has fallen into bad gambling habits and ran up a huge debt. To pay the debt, Major Trethaway has agreed to take an antique brooch from the countess's family (the Comyn Pin). But as soon as Michael gave him the pin, the jerk from the fair comes sniffing around! His name is Burton Farrier and he works for the government, looking for traitors. He claims to have a list of stuff donated to the Jacobite cause, and says the Comyn Pin is on it. Apparently there are two pins and the one that was donated was probably given by an aunt, whom they obviously don't want to turn in. The countess is like, please help the kid and get the pin back within [some time frame] because Farrier is coming back, don't let your father find out because he'll be furious. And when Horatio does talk to the earl, he is furious about something else, they just don't get along very well because of Horatio's political leanings which could apparently get all of them executed. I think this is the bit where the earl tells Horatio not to consider him his father (incidentally, my grandfather did this).
I will give Veryan this: a lot of historical series tend to have everyone good on one side (generally the one the present likes most/finds the most romantic), but this one has a mix. Horatio doesn't like the house of Hanover, the League doesn't like any kings, and the rest of the heroes don't have strong feelings about the monarchy, they're opposed to the League because they're ruining people's lives.
Horatio and Morris ride out after the Pin, coming across Trethaway by an amazing stroke of luck - he was sailing to France - but Trethaway knocks Morris out and ties Horatio up to a tree (also kicks his wounded foot). Horatio can only watch as Trethaway's ship sinks, taking the Pin away forever. The rest of the heroes are doing something with Sir Owen Furlong, who works in the Horse Guards, and needs to come to Bowers-Malden's estate - I think I've missed a bit, Horatio goes back to the house at some point with Amy, and his father calls her a whore, but then Horatio tells him he's got to denounce him to the government to save Michael and Marguerite (the step-sister, who is beautiful and sweet because everyone in this series has a beautiful, sweet sister), and the earl is ~dumbstruck~. It's a lovely melodramatic scene.
Anyway, Horatio gets loose and goes back home, dejected that he's lost the Pin and knowing he's going to have to take the fall. Farrier is gloating at having not given Bowers-Malden a chance to denounce Horatio (he wants them all to die because the League wants specific estates to be seized by the crown and sold). All seems lost! But then Amy marches out, covered in the countess's jewelry, pretending to be a maid or something, and the countess is like omg, it's the Comyn Pin! They compare it to a drawing and kick Farrier out. The Pin is actually a fake made by Ab, who is an art forger oh I should have said that earlier. Horatio and Amy are going to get married and everyone will tell about how she was ~stolen at birth~; happy endings for all except Falcon, who still has not gotten his duel (spoiler: he won't until the last book).
I somehow really liked this one when I was a teenager, probably for the class difference. Now I think Amy's whiplash shifts between "oh, I love you so tenderly, teach me to speak properly" and "I am SO ANGRY, you're ashamed of me because I'm ignorant and you're going to dump me as soon as you can" are annoying. (Also her rhyming slang, Veryan is in love with rhyming slang and must have someone saying it in each book despite it being anachronistic.) And the way everyone comes to the conclusion that Amy was ~stolen~ as a child from a good family because ... she's beautiful? when you tell her how to speak Standard English she can speak Standard English? IDEK ... is pretty sketchy, especially as it's never resolved. I mean, it's sketchy enough that Veryan made the beautiful romantic interest have been literally stolen by gypsies (leading me to search on the topic, read a thread on Straight Dope that has an interesting bit at the end which suggests young Romani women might have run away from their family and claimed to have been stolen for social acceptance - kind of a Cherokee princess thing?), but that could have been somewhat mitigated if they'd found her family and they were related to the plot at all. But that didn't happen, and it just seems like a too-easy way to have both a) a romance with an exotic lower-class woman that can ~never be~ and b) a happy, married ending without any difficulty at all in the future. However, there are a lot of bits where people DESPAIR and FEEL DREADFUL, so if you like that sort of thing it's worth a read, I guess.
The local library doesn't have the third book, Ask Me No Questions, so I'm skipping to the fourth, A Shadow's Bliss. Maybe I'll go back afterward and request it from the system, IDK.
