Apparently this is a pseudonym for Charlotte Lamb and you can get the rereleased version on Kindle under the Charlotte Lamb name (with a different titApparently this is a pseudonym for Charlotte Lamb and you can get the rereleased version on Kindle under the Charlotte Lamb name (with a different title).
Normally, I don't make it this far in books I decide not to finish, but LEGACY OF HONOR tricked me! It had an amazing begin and then preceded to undulate in terms of quality; every time I thought about putting the book down, it got exciting. But I realized once I got to the 50% mark that I was doing more skimming than I probably should, and I've decided that I'm not going to read this book to the end.
My first book by this author was FIREFLY, and it is one of the best romances I've ever read: a Western romance with a heroine trapped under her cruel and manipulative family's thumb and a drunken doctor haunted by the past who wants to be redeemed. It is a romance in every sense of the word and, more than that, it's a tale of redemption, and of two wounded people taking solace in each other. I was moved to tears at points, heart in my throat. I was fully invested in the characters, and their pains and their victories felt like my own. I'd gladly recommend that book to anyone.
LEGACY OF HONOR, on the other hand, is a true bodice-ripper, replete with OTT wtfery and a cruel, morally grey hero who could easily double as the villain. Alexandra is an ingenue in Post-Revolutionary France. Her father was murdered by the guillotine. Now living with her aunt and step-uncle, she aspires to the trappings of the noble class, which is where she meets Mikhail.
Mikhail is a Russian count and a spy who wants to bring about the end of Napoleon's tyranny. He's taken with Alexandra and once he realizes how useful she is, he wants to use her as a spy. In some ways, LEGACY OF HONOR is like RED SPARROW, if RED SPARROW took place in the past and was written from the female gaze. Mikhail whores her out to people for information, resulting in a very strange and disturbing naked sex scene. He doesn't realize that she's a virgin until he has sex with her not-so-nicely, although that doesn't stop him from raping her later, in anger.
The scenes in this book are brutal but expected in a book about war. The hero is nearly whipped to death by the French. The heroine is held captive in a barn and subjected to sexual abuse. War is depicted as the zero-sum game that it is, and we see exactly what people do when they have either too much power or not enough of it. I know the disturbing content in this book will likely be too much for some. The whipping scene was definitely hard for me to read (and so was the rape). But what really put a nail in this book's coffin was that it felt WAY too long. It looks like the paperback is almost 600 pages, but it just felt like-- to me-- that there were too many scenes that were focused on wandering around or on side characters whose stories weren't all that focal to the plot.
I will say that I respect this author keeping her book intact. She has a foreword about how she considered making her book more palatable to modern audiences but decided to keep it in its original form. I like how vintage romance novels act as a snapshot of societal attitudes back in the day, and show the "tone" of how such knowledge of history was delivered. I've read books where the authors edited and rewrote their bodice-rippers and some of them, like Fern Michaels' end up being awful.
Even though this book wasn't for me, I think it will be a four or five star read for others. It has some very memorable scenes and I thought both leads were interesting. It was just too, well, boring.
Holy #StealthReads, Batman! It's been a while since I sneaked a book past GR's radar, but I've been so tired lately that I've mostly been napping on public transport instead of reading on it. I finally finished my most recent purse book, and that book was THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK by Victoria Holt (because you know that with a title like that, I couldn't help but buy it).
Victoria Holt is one of those authors I keep coming back to again and again, even though I have a love-hate relationship with her books. When she's on her game, she is on her game; but she also churns out a fair number of misses. For me, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK was one of her misses.
Unlike most of her Gothic romances, which are set in Victorian England, THE DEVIL ON HORSEBACK is set in Georgian England with the French Revolution looming close-by.
The heroine, Minella, is the daughter of a school teacher who has lofty aspirations for her daughter. These aspirations come to a bitter end with her untimely death - especially when the nobleman who was angling after Minella is corralled back into his family's clutches, basically leaving her alone and penniless. Minella has a friend named Margot who is the daughter of a Comte, and she ends up pregnant (out of wedlock). Her angry father sends the two of them away (blackmailing Minella into going by saying that the scandal would threaten her school) until Margot gives birth.
Minella continues to live with Margot and her father, much to the perplexity of their rich friends. She starts hearing whispers that make her uneasy - whispers whose truths are confirmed when the Comte asks her to be his mistress! She is attracted to him despite herself, traitorous body, etc. etc., but cannot give in to such wicked urges because propriety! So she tells him no, because he is married and she is not that kind of woman, etc. etc. How convenient then that the Comte's wife dies shortly thereafter, overdosing on her own medicine! How coincidental! Surely the two are not related, right? RIGHT?
Meanwhile, the French Revolution is happening and stones are thrown at glass houses and people are being attacked and executed. It's really more of a backdrop thing than an actual addition to the setting until the very end, and only when it directly impacts one of the two main characters. This plot twist fails to capture the horror of the French Revolution, however, and is resolved bloodlessly and quickly.
I am disappointed by this book. My friend Naksed said that this book reminded her of a watered down DEMON LOVER, and even though I did not like DEMON LOVER, I think that is true. The plot and the writing were so much better in DEMON LOVER, and if it weren't for how spineless the heroine was and how unrealistic her reactions were to the brutish hero's actions, I would have given it a much higher rating. The wicked Comte had a few good lines:
"When we transgress," he went on, "we must pay for our sins. This is the payment I ask." He took my face in his hands and kissed me on the lips - not once but many times (22)
And,
"I assure you I am the tireless hunter. I never give up until I have my prey" (157)
But mostly, he just came across as a creepy older dude who was obsessed with the best friend of his daughter, at the expense of his still-very-much-alive-until-one-point wife. I spent most of this novel feeling very bored, and that is a very terrible way to feel while reading a book.
When I was in college, I went through this phase of ritualistically devouring fluffy, chick-lit style historical fiction a la Philippa Gregory. It really didn't matter if they were good, bad, or downright awful - I read them all, and I read them with glee.
THE QUEEN'S DOLLMAKER felt like a throwback to that time. Without demeaning this book, THE QUEEN'S DOLLMAKER is a work of fiction that is very much intended with women in mind as the audience. You can tell from the way its packaged - that gorgeous dress, the elaborate cover, the fact that the fellow author blurb that they decided to showcase on the cover says, "Exuberant, sparkling, beguiling!"
The story itself also feels very fluffy. It's about a girl named Claudette who loses her family in a fire and ends up going to England, along with a group of other women. To their collective horror, they are bound as prostitutes. Only a suspicion of sketchy documents and an unwillingness to sign whatever is presented to them saves Claudette, as well as Elizabeth and Beatrice and her young daughter Marguerite, from their fates.
Beatrice and Claudette end up working as servants for this hilariously caricatured social climber named Maude Ashby. It's rough living, but when a doll she's made for Marguerite is spotted by one of the male servants, he comes up with a brilliant money-making scheme to line their pockets with extra cash. It takes off, and soon Claudette is making more and more dolls, flush with coin, and filled with a new sense of self-confidence. It doesn't even matter when the jealousy of the servants reaches a fever pitch and results in her getting fired: Maude Ashby can take her aspirations and shove them!
At one point, Claudette becomes so famous that her talents reaches the ears of Marie Antoinette herself, who requests commissioned dolls for herself and her friends. This is when the book gets a little weird, because when she goes to France, she meets her childhood friend, Jean-Phillipe, and the meeting awakens some awkward feelings in her... which is annoying, because back home she has this great guy named William Greycliffe, who is perfectly willing to marry down because he loves her so much and finds her (admittedly annoying) personality charming. He isn't thrilled when Claudette goes to France, and the wishy-washy love triangle that sort-of-but-not-really ensues feels forced.
Where the book really jumped the shark for me, though, is when Claudette receives a letter - mid French Revolution, mind - from the "queen," requesting her presence in this time of terror, with the escort of Jean-Phillipe. Claudette goes off without a thought... and let's just say that this ends very badly for her. I felt bad about what happened - but at the same time, man, how stupid can you be? French Revolution, aside, why would you ditch your husband yet again to be alone with an impassioned, crazy guy who basically said he would do anything to have you? Not smart.
The last one hundred pages or so achieve bodice-ripper levels of craziness, with deception, imprisonment, rape attempts, people being rended limb from limb by screaming mobs only to have their organs paraded tauntingly before the windows of the nobility, descriptions of the guillotine that are almost excessively colorful, and a general feeling of rage and hysteria as the old is quite forcibly shoved aside to make way for the new. Imagine this - and now, imagine alternating chapters that set scenes of happy domestic bliss in England between Claudette and William. Oh no, someone has put the Princess of Lamballe's head on a pike... but look, somebody's getting married! Robespierre is screaming his way to the guillotine with a gag in his mouth... but oh, that dratted Mrs. Ashby just got hoisted by her own petard, L-O-L. It was very jarring, tone-wise, and had me blinking several times.
Overall, though, I really enjoyed this story. I love these saga-like tales that start off with the heroine as a child or adolescent and then follow her adventures over the years until she reaches adulthood. I feel like it really lets the reader get to know the character and feel for the character in a way that some of the more straightforward timelines don't. If you don't mind a bit of craziness with your historical fiction and aren't totally put off by stupid decision-making, you should read this book. It's fun.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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