Tag Archives: historical fiction

Book Review of A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell #1), by Deanna Raybourn

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A Curious BeginningI 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.

The Whitechapel Demon

Book Review of The Whitechapel Demon (The Adventures Of The Royal Occultist #1), Joshua Reynolds

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The Whitechapel DemonI picked up a copy of Josh Reynolds‘ The Whitechapel Demon from Amazon when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Formed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the post of the Royal Occultist was created to safeguard the British Empire against threats occult, otherworldly, infernal and divine. 

It is now 1920, and the title and offices have fallen to Charles St. Cyprian. Accompanied by his apprentice Ebe Gallowglass, they defend the battered empire from the forces of darkness.

In the wake of a séance gone wrong, a monstrous killer is summoned from the depths of nightmare by a deadly murder-cult. The entity hunts its prey with inhuman tenacity even as its worshippers stop at nothing to bring the entity into its full power… It’s up to St. Cyprian and Gallowglass to stop the bloodthirsty horror before another notch is added to its gory tally, but will they become the next victims of the horror guised as London’s most famous killer?

Review:
I quite enjoyed that, but since it’s a holiday here you get an abbreviated review.

Things I liked:

  • Interesting characters
  • smooth, humorous dialogue
  • two male/female partnerships that didn’t involve romance (that’s possible you know)
  • incidental inclusion of LGBT individuals (ok, a gay man, but it’s a start)

Things I didn’t like:

  • the villains were too slapstick
  • the era-speak and witticisms in the face of danger went over the top
  • the evil entity was defeated too easily
  • too many easy, throw-away deaths
  • needed a tad more editing
Serena

Book Review of Serena, by Ron Rash

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SerenaI’m kind of excited to have joined a book club, as in a real life, in person, book club. woo-hoo. Serena, by Ron Rash, was the book they chose this month. I picked a copy up from the library.

Description from Goodreads:
The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains—but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

Review:
Can I just say how happy I am to be done with this book? I think it took me forever and a day to read it. It’s not that it’s a particularly bad book, but it was not to my tastes and frankly I was bored for most of it. The events alluded to in the synopsis don’t really happen until the last quarter of the book and the child and his mother play a very small role in it. The rest is largely the day-to-day happenings of the logging camp.

I enjoyed the loggers’ uneducated observations about their bosses, but was less enamored with those bosses themselves. They were such intensely dislikable people (as they were meant to be). He was simply a snobbish product of his time. She, however, was a homicidal psychopath.

All in all, probably a fine read for someone more inclined to enjoy the genre. I read it because my book club chose it this month. It’s unlikely I would have picked it up otherwise.