A couple of weeks ago I began a quest to discover a new genre of fiction to read, since I realized that my old stalwart, science fiction no longer appealed to me. I knew fantasy wasn't it either, so I decided to try historical fiction. I went on Amazon and downloaded nine books that came up under "Free Historical Fiction." I went with novels (and one novella) and cast my net wide. Below are two more of the books I tried.
But before I talk about them, a word about how I am rating these books. In my last installment of my quest, I mentioned that I was grading those books on the curve. I’ve given the subject a little more thought, and can now say with a little more precision just what I meant. Basically I'm reading them as pulp fiction. I’ve long seen books written primarily as ebooks primarily for selling on Amazon as being the 21st century version of pulp fiction. Those first books, and most of the ones going forward strike me as being written by people who were familiar with these books and said to themselves, "Heck, I can write stuff like this, just as good, if not better." So they did, and did. Not having read widely in these genre, I can't say if they are as good or better than most of the other books of their type, but I think I can safely say that I don’t detect any higher ambition in most (but not all) of these stories to be different than the other books in their chosen genre, so I will grade them all on that curve - pulp fiction stories. So let’s get on to the next two.
Impossible Dream by Gemma Jackson C+
This is a novel set in Dublin Ireland in 1899, and the story opens in a convent orphanage. Three of the 13 year old female orphans are selected to be placed, as servants, in the household of a lady who is related to one of the nuns. This was standard practice – the children would be trained as servants and their wages paid to the convent until they were 16. I expected their experiences would be the focus of the story, but once placed in the household they became secondary characters, as the focus of the story shifted to the woman of the house, the physically and mentally abused wife of a cruel sea captain and his five sons from previous marriage.
The basic plot is that wife, who had inherited and owns the house is being abused and starved by her cruel husband. This is possible because women of that age were powerless. The only thing she owned after marriage was the house and its fittings, otherwise she was dependent on her husband who controlled all the money, even the money she brought with her dowry. Her husband gets run over by a cart and loses both his legs. He is confined to a hospital, and the five sons go off to sea. However, the husband still controls the finances and he doesn’t give her any money, all the while blackening her reputation from the hospital. With the help of some old friends she gets her side of the story out and attracts the attention of some wealthy women who approach her with the idea of using her house as a school to train women fleeing from forced marriages, or virtual slavery, to train them to live on their own and make a living all on their own. The point of the story was to show just how totally dependent women were on men in that time. They could be used and abused as they will, with almost no options to make a respectable living all on their own.
I am not a student of history, and I assume that Jackson has done her homework, so I have no doubt that this was the case. And while there were likely men as cruel as those depicted in this story, I still felt that the cruelty and helplessness seemed a little over the top – but maybe that’s expected in the genre. The story, however, was more ambitiously written than some of the others, though incidents were introduced and then resolved rather quickly at times. Plus, being the first book in a series, it had the feel of just serving to set up more books rather than a standalone novel. While we followed the thoughts and actions of the wife, the supporting cast was little more than names to me. I skimmed at bit towards the end, as the lessons it wanted to impart got a bit repetitious. And in some ways, off message, as one of the thing these girls were being trained to do is to be come waitresses for the Harvey House Restaurants in the southwest of the U.S. at that time. The incentive t become these waitress at this chain of railroad restaurants, they would have the opportunity to land rich husbands, which were thick upon the ground in female starved west of the time. So much for independence.
All in all, not a
bad book, clearly a subject close to the writer’s heart, hence my C+
rating on the curve, but not my cup of tea. I won't be going on in the series.
Krista’s Escape by Gemma Jackson DNF 5%
Though a random choice it turns out that this is a novella by the author of Impossible Dream. This time we find ourselves in the year 1938 in a French city on the border with Germany. The heroine, Krista, a young woman, is the daughter of an innkeeper. As you can see, I didn't get very far into it before I called it a day. I got as far as when she goes downstairs to make coffee and open the cafe. There she has to fight off the advances of a brutal Hitler Youth who intends to marry her and then she is verbally abused by her three brothers… I decided that I'd been there, read that. Apparently women being abused by men and escaping for a better life is either Ms Jackson’s or a genre’s trope. As I've said already, it's not my cup of tea, so I had no desire to continue on.
More adventures in "Free Historical Fantasy" this coming Friday with The Hummingbird and the Sea, A Lady's Luck, and A Death in Bloomsbury. Stay tuned!
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