Book Review: When a poet writes queer historical romance…

Solomon's Crown, by Natasha Siegel (Dell)

When a poet writes queer historical romance…

The relationship between Richard I (“Lionheart”) of England and Philip II (“Dieudonné”) of France has been the subject of much debate, particularly whether it was of a romantic and sexual nature, as a number of medieval and modern scholars attest, or an intense friendship at a time when sharing a bed was a common expression of trust. Historically, the relationship turned bitter and ended only with Richard’s death in 1199.

Historical fiction, especially romantic historical fantasy, takes such questions as these as a starting place. It goes beyond the dry facts and dates to the juicy question of, “What If?’ What if Richard (then Duke of Aquitaine), larger-than-life action hero, and introverted, cautious Philip fell in love the first time they met? Richard was not then heir to the throne and had a contentious relationship with his father, Henry II. Philip, newly ascended, had to contend with repairing the damage to France caused by the weakness of his late father. But what if they each found solace, completion, and joy in one another?

In the hands (or rather, the pen) of a brilliant poet, the answer is a heartbreakingly beautiful story whose words sing on every page. The author relates how she used history as a starting point and then followed where the story lead her. This is the “romantic fantasy” aspect of Solomon’s Crown. This love story shaped Western Europe perhaps never happened but should have. It is not altogether accurate regarding the social attitudes of 12^th Century C.E. England and France. I agree with most of Siegel’s choices and with her commitment to make the story emotionally true.

My favorite character was neither Richard nor Philip, but Philip’s wife, Isabella of Hainaut. In Siegel’s version, by the time Philip was forced into marriage, he had had enough lustful encounters with Richard to have figured out his sexuality, to the point of severe doubts he can perform on his wedding night. She’s very young (only eleven years old) and terrified of pregnancy (the desired result of said wedding night) and its high mortality rate. When she summons the courage to beg Philip to postpone intercourse, he’s relieved. But he’s a kind person, so when she lies beside him, unable to sleep, he soothes her by reciting her favorite poem (in Latin). The next day, she memorizes the following part to recite to him. With such a beginning, they become friends. She turns out to be a perceptive, resourceful person who has no issues with Philip’s relationship with Richard, not just the sex but the love. Like Richard’s mother, the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella matures into a force in her own right. While Philip and Richard wrestle with inner demons and family power struggles, Isabella’s character growth and essential decency stand out.

 I loved every page of this book, even though I knew the romance would eventually fizzle and Richard would die. Those sad events remain in the future, and perhaps in Siegel’s world, the lovers will remain joyously devoted and grow old together.

Short Book Reviews: A Sweet M/M Historical Romance

 Resurrection Men, by Steven Harper (Darwin Press)

Life in the late 1800s wasn’t easy for medical students from poor backgrounds like Arthur, and one of the few ways to pay tuition was through the illegal “resurrection” of buried corpses for use in anatomy laboratories. Life wasn’t much easier for Jesse, who fled his ultra-controlling, wealthy socialite family and ended up as a grave-digger. Now a vengeful judge is looking for a reason to throw Arthur in jail, and Arthur’s budding romance with Jesse might provide just the excuse.

The pacing of this historical novel is perfectly balanced, from desperate action to the sweet, slowing unfolding of a deep connection between the two men. Historical details create a vivid setting that heightens the stakes, drawing the reader ever deeper into this compelling story.

Short Book Reviews: Barbara Hambly Returns to the Roaring 20s

Scandal in Babylon, by Barbara Hambly (Severn House)

I loved Barbara Hambly’s Bride of the Rat God, a fantasy set in Roaring 1920s Hollywood. Now she returns to that era, with its glamorous silent film stars, bootleggers, gangsters, drug use, widespread corruption, and the frenzied exuberance that followed World War I. In this story, a murder mystery (without Bride’s supernatural elements) the viewpoint character is Emma, a young British widow who now works as a companion and secretary for her superstar sister-in-law, Kitty. Classically trained, Emma is constantly affronted by the wildly inaccurate movie scripts (Kitty is currently starring in The Empress of Babylon), many of which she is called upon to rewrite on the spur of the moment. She’s also embarked on a possible new romance with cameraman Zak. To complicate matters further, Kitty’s real life is as melodramatic as her screen characters. She is a generous person for all her antics, especially loving to her three adorable Pekinese. When Kitty’s dissolute ex-husband, Rex, is found murdered, it looks very much as if someone is trying to set Kitty up to take the blame and is doing a very bad job of it. A deliberately bad job?

Drenched in atmosphere and fascinating historical details, featuring vivid characters and snappy dialog, Scandal in Babylon is Hambly at the top of her form. The pacing and depth of the scenes are wonderful, just the right combination of page-turning action, whodunit tension, and moments of reflection and personal growth.

Rumor has it that Scandal in Babylon will be the first of a new series. If so, sign me up!

Guest Blog: Italian Author Luca Azzolini Takes On Roman History

 

History offers a rich, fascinating treasure trove of people, events, and customs. Today, I'm delighted to host Italian writer Luca Azzolini as he shares with us his journey from a kid who was curious about everything to the author of a new trilogy, "Romulus."

The luck of living in a country like Italy is that you can touch history every time, everywhere. We cannot avoid seeing it, experiencing it, touching it or breathing it. Everything around us tells us about a mythical and distant past. And in some places you can live this even stronger than in others.

Mantua is the city where I live, and it is a stratification of different eras that coexist with each other. There are the remains of the Etruscan age, the Roman ruins, the medieval castle, the Renaissance palaces and squares.

I think my love for history began here. I read as much as I could. Especially essays. I realize I've always been a weird kid! Which 12-year-old would passionately study the contents of Canopic jars? Which twelve-year-old would be passionate about the genealogies of the great noble dynasties of Italy? From the Gonzaga, to the Este and to the Sforza.

Well, I was that kind of kid!

The love for novels came immediately after. There was a key moment that I remember very well. At the age of fourteen I faced a crucial choice. Of those that can change your life forever. I wanted two books and could only buy one. I was very torn.

The first was an essay by a well-known Italian astrophysicist, Margherita Hack, whose title I no longer remember.

The second was a novel, in a brightly colored cover, by an author unknown to me at the time: The Planet Savers, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I chose the astrophysics essay. I stayed for more than an hour in the bookshop with that book in hand.

Then I went back to the shelves, put down the essay, and took The Planet Savers away with me.

I owe a lot to that novel. Reading that book, and the whole Darkover saga, was perhaps the most beautiful, adventurous and exciting journey of my life. Not only I discovered a distant planet where I felt at home, but I also realized I wanted to write novels. Since then I have set my whole life on that choice. At the age of nineteen I chose a faculty at the University of Verona that would allow me to discover “as many stories as possible, and as many lives as possible.” My choice fell on Art History. I never imagined that, over a decade later, that choice would pay back.

Short Book Reviews: Fear and Longing in 19th Century Spiritualism

House of the Patriarch, by Barbara Hambly (Severn House)

This latest “Benjamin January” mystery begins with yet another commission to find a missing daughter. In this case, the lost girl is a young lady from a modestly well-to-do white family, recently introduced into society but given to fanciful questions. The last thing Ben wants is to leave his family and put himself at risk of being nabbed by slave-catchers, or worse. But the fee will mean his family’s security during a long lean season.

That said, House of the Patriarch stands apart in its depiction of the social experiments that flourished at the time. Spiritualism (séances, communicating with the dead), communal living, charismatic leaders, all abounded. The Mormon church and others trace their beginnings to this time. The “House” to which Ben ventures is the resident of one such leader. Since the leader has also a reputation for helping escaped slaves on their route to Canada, Ben disguises himself as such and quickly infiltrates the hidden areas of the house. Needless to say, plot twists and dark secrets abound.

Hambly marries her knowledge of history and social customs to a pitch-perfect story of human fears and longing.

Short Book Reviews: A Black Detective in Slave-Holding Texas

Lady of Perdition, by Barbara Hambly

A new Benjamin January novel is an occasion of delight. I’ve loved the series since the very first volume, Free Man of Color. In pre-Civil War New Orleans, the French-influenced culture viewed race in a very different, nuanced way than their slave-holding American neighbors to the north. Benjamin, born a slave of an African father, has studied medicine in Paris, yet finds the only way to earn a living in the New World is as a pianist at balls and other social events. This, of course, is the perfect combination of skills with which to solve a murder. Now, many mysteries and adventures later, he’s married, with connections in both the white and the many gradations of colored communities. When a spoiled, rebellious young student at his wife’s school runs off with a man of dubious character and even more problematic intentions, Ben goes after her, ably assisted by his white friends, a Yankee lawman and a consumptive, classically educated fiddler.

As Ben feared, the girl has been sold into slavery, then beaten and raped into submission. Getting her free will be tough enough, but she’s been taken into the Republic of Texas, which which prides itself on being a slave-holding nation. Ben himself is now at risk of being captured and claimed as a slave, for papers can be destroyed as easily as they can be forged. Texas itself is in turmoil, with those who want to join the US coming to (literal) blows with those who want to remain independent. In an escapade based on historical incident, one party steals the official State Archives.

That’s just the initial set-up, the action that gets him and his friends to Texas. Once there, he runs into an old nemesis, Valentina de Castellón, now Valentina Taggart (from Days of the Dead), who lands in a serious mess when her rancher husband is found murdered and she is the most likely suspect. Her husband’s family wants the title to her land rights, inherited from an original Spanish land grant, and her allies are few, so she turns to Ben as a skilled detective, able to gather information from “invisible” witnesses, such as servants and slaves.

Hambly effortlessly weaves vibrant characters, dramatic tension, and history – with all its quirks and dangers – into a murder mystery. This is the 17^th Benjamin January adventure, and like its predecessors, it stands well on its own. The series remains fresh and captivating as American history and social history unfold into a panorama that informs and shapes each new mystery. Reading Lady of Perdition makes me want to get the previous stories off the bookshelf and reread them all.

Guest Blog: P.G. Nagle on the Amazing Life of Emma Edmonds

P. G. Nagle: As the world adjusts to chaos and, at best, a new lifestyle of isolation and restricted movement, I’m reminded of how Emma Edmonds must have felt in the unusual life she crafted for herself, living as a man in 19th century America. Born and raised on a farm in Canada, she learned skills such as hunting, shooting, and fishing, that would serve her well later on. As a young woman, she assumed a male persona and became very successful selling Bibles and other high-quality books door-to-door. She reveled in the freedom from societal restrictions that she enjoyed as a male, but the price was risk. If she had been discovered, she would have faced imprisonment, and likely abuse as well. She dared not tell even her closest friends; certainly not her family. Hers was at its core a life of isolation, and she chose to accept this along with the risk.

Moving to America and eventually settling in Flint, Michigan, Edmonds (in her persona of Franklin Thompson) continued to enjoy prosperity, an active social life, and community including her church, of which her landlord was the pastor. Perhaps she was comfortable, having lived as a man for several years by then. Yet her comfort was soon challenged by the outbreak of secession and war.

Edmonds loved her adopted country so well that she felt compelled to offer her service, and so Frank Thompson enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry. Her risk accelerated; now she was living in close quarters with a hundred men, at first in barracks, and later in camps. No doubt her ingenuity was tested. The emotional strain of being constantly on guard against detection—constantly aware of everyone around her and alert to what they might be thinking—must have been something like what we face today.

I find this new awareness to be a kind of enforced mindfulness. We have no choice but to be vigilant, if we want ourselves and our loved ones—some of whom may be more at risk than ourselves—to survive this pandemic. We are aware of the consequences of each movement—the risk of touching doors, objects, things that other people have touched. The risk, even, of breathing the air that another has breathed.

Edmonds must also have been acutely aware of her every movement, knowing that she might be watched with suspicion at any time. Such vigilance forces one to live in the moment. Distractions bring a heavy cost; we must keep our focus. It is a new way of being.

Ultimately, Edmonds fell victim to sickness and faced a painful choice. Unable to care for herself in her illness, she had to flee in order to escape certain discovery. This cost her not only her reputation (Frank Thompson was proclaimed a deserter), but her very persona itself. Never again did she live in masculine freedom. She had to build a new life.

We, too, are building a new life. In a few years, the stress and tragedy of the time we are now entering will be softened in memory, and eventually this time will become an interesting paragraph of history. Yet now, as we prepare for what we know will be, at best, some level of devastation, the present feels stark. The near future looms with pending grief. We know it will be hard. Our only choice is how vigilant each of us will be.

A Call to Arms by P. G. Nagle

The Civil War Adventures of Sarah Emma Edmonds, alias Private Frank Thompson

Winter Reading, part 3

The Spiral Path: A Tale of Ritual Magic, by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel (Book View Café, 2015). In this third book of “Night Calls,” the adventures of Alfreda Sorensson, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel has brought originality and insightfulness to the series. Set in an alternate, magical Colonial America, these are no ordinary Young Adult fantasies, and Allie is no ordinary heroine. In Allie’s confident and inimitable voice, Kimbriel weaves together the necessary survival skills of living in the forested Michigan frontier. One of the things I like best about her is how amazingly competent she is - even when she’s in over her head. Instead of creating an independent heroine by separating her from her family and community, Kimbriel weaves together the lives of Allie, her lively and affectionate family, and the people in their small town. Once Allie’s magical abilities have manifested, she also acquires a “teacher in the Wise Arts,” an older kinswoman. As part of her studies, Allie studies midwifery, never guessing that she will be called to use her wild, untutored magic to deliver the foal of a unicorn.  The birth of the unicorn forces Allie to leave her family and home because she is now the target of supernatural forces she has not yet acquired the power and training to defend against. To protect her and to speed up the process of learning, she travels to New York to study at a school of ritual magic. I jokingly call this “Allie at Hogwarts,” but The Spiral Path is anything but an imitation of the Harry Potter novels. Allie may not yet be adept in ritual magic, but she is competent in a host of other areas, able to think on her feet, draw upon her strengths, and act with courage and compassion. She is in the process of becoming an extraordinary and powerful “practitioner,” not because of inborn talent (although she has that in spades) but through knowledge, hard-won experience, and keen intelligence. I wish these novels had been around when I was a young teenager, but I’m glad I can read them now, nodding, “Yes, yes!” as Allie handles and grows from every twist and turn of the story. I can think of no better role model for Young Adults, boys as well as girls. Highly recommended.

Longbourne, by Jo Baker (Vintage, 2014). This is one of the most delightful riffs on Pride and

Prejudice I’ve come across. It’s not a mash-up, strictly speaking. No monsters or supernatural beings of any sort parade through the hallways of the Bennett family home. Instead, Baker takes us Downstairs (as in Upstairs, Downstairs) to flesh out the lives of the servants, both those mentioned in the Austen novel and others that are entirely her own invention but just as appropriate and real. She does it so well that this novel can be read and enjoyed by those without any familiarity with the source. However, it is not Austenian through-and-through. Baker has her own writing style, one I found delicious and almost poetic in its rhythm, and she does not restrict her focus to the social and marital concerns of the Bennett daughters. She begins there, but expands to the larger world and the brutal realities of the poor in a nation at war. One chapter we’re in Longbourne, comfortable and civilized, and the next we’re in the middle of a Bernard Cornwell “Sharpe” novel, slogging through the frozen mud of Spain with Napoleon’s army at our heels, quite a rude shock, I should imagine, if you were expecting everything to be tea and crumpets (did they have crumpets in Austen’s time?) Even so, this is a story of love and loyalty, lost and regained. I loved it, completely apart from the Austen inspiration, and will look for her other work.

Good Man Friday, by Barbara Hambly (Severn, 2014). I have adored the Benjamin Friday books ever since Free Man of Color came out in 1998, and am thrilled that Severn House is continuing their publication. Each one is a gem, an engaging story that brings to life a not-very-well explored chapter in American History (1830s New Orleans), with all the layers of social and political issues vividly portrayed through the experiences of the characters. Benjamin January is a “free man of color,” his skin as dark as his African father, and his mind as keen as any detective’s. Trained as a surgeon in France, he finds himself unable to practice medicine, so he earns his living playing piano at various evening entertainments in the homes of white folk, and also occasionally solves a mystery. Here he is enlisted by his sister’s white protector to find a friend who has gone missing in what will become Washington D.C. Washington is nothing like the city of today; it’s hot, bug-ridden, and swampy, but the politics are just as dirty as ever. Edgar Allan Poe makes a guest appearance, helping January solve a most excellent mystery (and in the process deciding to forgo a job as a postmaster in favor of his own writing!)

What I’m Reading – The Hospice Edition

When I packed to travel out of state to help care for my best friend and her family during her final weeks of life, I had no idea how long I would be away. The ereader my daughter had passed on to me provided the ideal solution of how to carry a variety of books with me. I read at night as part of my bedtime ritual and I couldn’t anticipate what I would need at the end of each day. Horror, which has never previously appealed to me, might resonate with the depth of the grief of this entire household as we let go of hope and say goodbye. Maybe not, but should I bring some just in case? What about my favorite and unabashedly unguilty pleasures – fantasy and science fiction? Something to challenge my mind and make me think? A genre I don’t usually read? Mystery? Nonfiction?

I loaded up my ereader with a stack of books from Book View Café, picking a few from authors I’ve loved and choosing others practically at random. Here’s what I’ve been reading and why.

I started with three pieces – two novellas and a novel -- by Marie Brennan. I’d never read her work before she joined Book View Café, so when I found Midnight Never Come in a bookstore (and it looked interesting), I grabbed it. It’s the first of a series called “The Onyx Court,” set London during the reign of Elizabeth I. My husband and I had gone through a phase of watching every film biography of Elizabeth I that we could find, so that was an automatic plus. Brennan created a second, faerie court, hidden belowground but interacting in secret ways for England’s benefit. Fits right in with Sir Francis Walsingham and Dr. John Dee, and other historical characters. I enjoyed the book immensely, so the first thing I read was more Brennan, a novella set in the same world although slightly later in time. Deeds of Men is a murder mystery, with characteristic Brennan twists. I was glad I’d already read Midnight Never Come because I was already in love with the main character, but this would also make a good introduction to the series. I also picked the two “Welton” pieces, a prequel novella called Welcome To Welton and then the novel Lies and Prophecy. Both reminded me a little of Pamela Dean’s excellent Tam Lin, only set at Hogwarts if Hogwarts was a college and magic was public and widely spread. What kind of curriculum would a college offer? Dorms, room mates, cafeteria food, professors, meddling parents, the whole shebang. But Brennan doesn’t leave the story there; it turns out that the reason people have magical abilities is that they’re descended from fae who mingled with humans during a time when Faerie was closer to Earth. And now the two worlds are drawing closer again, and the Seelie and UnSeelie Courts are in deadly competition for who gets to rule, whether to enslave or ally with humans. And our college kids are caught up in it all. Brennan’s easy prose and likeable characters drew me into her world, a lovely escape at the end of each day.