Deanna Raybourn

I received a copy A Perilous Undertaking, by Deanna Raybourn, from First To Read. I read and reviewed the first in the series, A Curious Beginning, last month.

Description from Goodreads:
London, 1887 . . Victorian adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell receives an invitation to visit the Curiosity Club, a ladies-only establishment for daring and intrepid women. There she meets the mysterious Lady Sundridge, who begs her to take on an impossible task saving society art patron Miles Ramsforth from execution. Accused of the brutal murder of his artist mistress Artemisia, Ramsforth will face the hangman’s noose in a week s time if Veronica cannot find the real killer.

But Lady Sundridge is not all that she seems and unmasking her true identity is only the first of the many secrets Veronica must uncover. Together with her natural historian colleague Stoker, Veronica races against time to find the true murderer a ruthless villain who not only took Artemisia s life in cold blood but is happy to see Ramsforth hang for the crime.

From a Bohemian artists colony to a royal palace to a subterranean grotto with a decadent history, the investigation proves to be a very perilous undertaking indeed….

Review:
I liked this second book in the series more than the first. Most of the aspects of book one that annoyed me were not present here and I really loved the friendship and relationship that has developed between Veronica and TV.

This book however found a whole new way to irritate me. Mainly by trying to present Veronica as worldly and sexually explorative, experienced even, while also trying to make her some appear as an ingénue. It was mostly used to play off TV’s discomfort for comedic effect. Except it really didn’t work. Plus, so very many of the women in the book make constant off color remarks and the whole plot revolved around Bohemian relations that I felt sex as a whole was made into a joke. It grated on my nerves like the cheap, easy jab it was. Low hanging fruit rarely feels worth the effort.

For all that, I did enjoy the story, the mystery and the characters pithy back and forwards wit. I’d be glad to read the next in the series.

I borrowed Deanna Raybourn‘s A Curious Beginning from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England now gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker—a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant, wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

Review:
A Curious Beginning is a bit like a non-paranormal Parasol Protectorate, except that Veronica Speedwell is no Alexia Tarabotti. I found her nowhere near as approachable. Frankly, I found Veronica emotionless and over the top in her forwardness. What’s more, I was excessively put off by how anachronistic her whole personality was. She held very modern ideals and went about behaving in a very free and modern way that I find hard to believe would even have been possible for a woman in 1887.

I appreciate that she was Sherlock Holmes smart and I did find her and the book in general amusing, but the whole thing just never really peaked for me. The entire read was just sort of a middle of the road, never bored, but never engrossed kind of middling experience. It felt like a copy of something else, I’m afraid, with some of the spark lost in the translation.

None of this was helped by the fact that book starts strong, with a break-in, adventure and murder, then the main characters run about doing little of importance for most of the book and the plot doesn’t come back around to anything pertinent until the end.

I didn’t dislike it and the writing is pretty good. I’ll likely read the next one, but I wasn’t blown away either.