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The Duchess War
Jan. 8th, 2013 01:03 pmTitle: The Duchess War
Author: Courtney Milan
Genre: Historical romance
I don't really know what to say about this without spoiling it. It does have some plot twists, such that even the back cover copy is confusing if you aren't some distance into the book already. So I'll just say why I enjoyed the hell out of this book and try to keep it in vague terms:
- It is set in 1863. Not some vaguely Victorian period, but 1863. In that characters talk about how different traveling was when they were kids, which is when a lot of the rail lines were being built. The non-romance plot is about labor agitation in Leicester, an industrial town. The antagonist is very much affected by having had to police the Chartist riots some years previously. One character, who is sequel bait and will probably be the star of the third book in the series, is a Darwinian. He was just offered a post at Cambridge, because in order to take it, he'd have to be Anglican, and his opponents are offering this to him to try to force him to back down from his atheism. So it is really set in 1863, and after so many swishy vaguely historical books, that is so, so nice.
- It is really understandable why the hero and heroine like each other, and no, it isn't tingling in their nether parts. At the same time, it's also clear that when they are initially attracted to each other, they still don't know each other very well. So their relationship follows the progression of infatuation to deeper understanding, all without using the lazy, hornypants shortcut that most romance authors rely on.
- The obstacles to the romance are real, and are not cast aside. There are real-world constraints on what both the hero, a duke, and the heroine, a middle-class spinster, can and can't do that make their relationship very difficult. For the heroine, getting wooed by a duke is not some fantasy that solves all her problems. It actually creates a lot of problems.
- Both characters have deep-seated fears that drive their actions, and falling in love with each other does not stop these. They aren't magically cured. Even after they get together, they keep tripping over these fear-based actions. By the end of the book they've learned better how to handle them and help each other, without changing these fundamental parts of their character.
- The hero is a person of enormous privelege (as a duke) who wants to help workers. But because of his privelege, he starts out phenomenally crap at it. He blunders about and makes people's lives extremely difficult because he just doesn't understand what the consequences of his actions are for someone without his privelege. This means he can be boneheaded while still being sympathetic--he's trying, but doesn't know how. And it means his understanding grows throughout the book.
- There aren't any cardboard cut-out villains. Even the antagonists have reasons for what they are doing. Basically, it's a book where all of the characters are doing what they think they have to, and the conflicts come from that. Not from people withholding information or keeping stupid secrets or blindly doing stuff on their own.
I had a sense in the middle of the book that Milan had lost the thread a little bit--the pacing's, I won't say off but unusual. And this book starts with the main characters hiding out from a ball, which I think must be a law somewhere that you must start all nineteenth-century romances with people hiding from balls. But I was so genuinely enjoying the book the entire time, it does not bother me that it's not the cleanest narrative.
What Milan has the very rare ability for, in both this and the prequel novella, The Governess Affair, is for creating very likable, individual characters that you want to spend time with. Her characters aren't archetypes, even if the book is following an archetypical romance form. Her characters are people. It's just fun to spend time with them. So I think I will be diving into more of her books in the future, and eagerly awaiting the continuation of this series.
Author: Courtney Milan
Genre: Historical romance
I don't really know what to say about this without spoiling it. It does have some plot twists, such that even the back cover copy is confusing if you aren't some distance into the book already. So I'll just say why I enjoyed the hell out of this book and try to keep it in vague terms:
- It is set in 1863. Not some vaguely Victorian period, but 1863. In that characters talk about how different traveling was when they were kids, which is when a lot of the rail lines were being built. The non-romance plot is about labor agitation in Leicester, an industrial town. The antagonist is very much affected by having had to police the Chartist riots some years previously. One character, who is sequel bait and will probably be the star of the third book in the series, is a Darwinian. He was just offered a post at Cambridge, because in order to take it, he'd have to be Anglican, and his opponents are offering this to him to try to force him to back down from his atheism. So it is really set in 1863, and after so many swishy vaguely historical books, that is so, so nice.
- It is really understandable why the hero and heroine like each other, and no, it isn't tingling in their nether parts. At the same time, it's also clear that when they are initially attracted to each other, they still don't know each other very well. So their relationship follows the progression of infatuation to deeper understanding, all without using the lazy, hornypants shortcut that most romance authors rely on.
- The obstacles to the romance are real, and are not cast aside. There are real-world constraints on what both the hero, a duke, and the heroine, a middle-class spinster, can and can't do that make their relationship very difficult. For the heroine, getting wooed by a duke is not some fantasy that solves all her problems. It actually creates a lot of problems.
- Both characters have deep-seated fears that drive their actions, and falling in love with each other does not stop these. They aren't magically cured. Even after they get together, they keep tripping over these fear-based actions. By the end of the book they've learned better how to handle them and help each other, without changing these fundamental parts of their character.
- The hero is a person of enormous privelege (as a duke) who wants to help workers. But because of his privelege, he starts out phenomenally crap at it. He blunders about and makes people's lives extremely difficult because he just doesn't understand what the consequences of his actions are for someone without his privelege. This means he can be boneheaded while still being sympathetic--he's trying, but doesn't know how. And it means his understanding grows throughout the book.
- There aren't any cardboard cut-out villains. Even the antagonists have reasons for what they are doing. Basically, it's a book where all of the characters are doing what they think they have to, and the conflicts come from that. Not from people withholding information or keeping stupid secrets or blindly doing stuff on their own.
I had a sense in the middle of the book that Milan had lost the thread a little bit--the pacing's, I won't say off but unusual. And this book starts with the main characters hiding out from a ball, which I think must be a law somewhere that you must start all nineteenth-century romances with people hiding from balls. But I was so genuinely enjoying the book the entire time, it does not bother me that it's not the cleanest narrative.
What Milan has the very rare ability for, in both this and the prequel novella, The Governess Affair, is for creating very likable, individual characters that you want to spend time with. Her characters aren't archetypes, even if the book is following an archetypical romance form. Her characters are people. It's just fun to spend time with them. So I think I will be diving into more of her books in the future, and eagerly awaiting the continuation of this series.