The Quest, Part 3

 

 The great quest for a new genre, or two continues with three more books, a historical romance, a regency romance, and a gay mystery story.

The Hummingbird and the Sea by Jenny Bond DNF 54%

This novel opens on a summer’s day in 1716 in the Puritan society of a New England town. Our female main character, Maria, a daughter of the wealthy farmer, observes a stave fighting match between the local champion and a newcomer who has arrived to build the school. She finds herself immediately drawn to this newcomer, and falls in love with him over the next couple of days. However, her childhood friend, the son of the Puritan minister has just returned from Harvard where he was taught to be a minister as well, and expects to marry Maria. But having fallen for the buff new guy, and she declines to accept his proposal for marriage. The spurned lover discovers that the buff new guy is a deserter from a British warship and could be hanged, so our buff hero must flee, not before proposing to Maria and being accepted by her and her father. He flees with the husband of Maria’s older sister who has been scrapping by as a silversmith and wants to better himself financially. They head off to join a ship to find their fortunes in the Caribbean Sea. The spurned suitor, her childhood friend, then rapes Maria.

The story shifts to the Caribbean to follow our buff hero and his sidekick, the silversmith, where they fall in with pirates, and work their way up the chain of command until the buff hero has a pirate ship of his own and is making a good living at it. Our buff hero also falls in love with the young madam of a tavern/whorehouse, for the love triangle trope.

It is winter now, and the story returns to New England and Maria is… wait for it... pregnant. This was the point where I called it quits. Now, I’ve watched and enjoyed some pretty soapy K-Dramas, but the soap opera melodrama of this and the Jackson stories are too predictable and too over the top for me. To start out, I don’t believe that Maria’s lifelong childhood friend, a newly ordained minister, would ever rape her, but to get her pregnant in doing so… Really? Is that really necessary to tell an entertaining story of hardships overcome? Or is it simply required tropes? I don’t know, and I’m not going to set out to find out. Moving on…

A Lady’s Luck by Maggie M Dallen C, on the curve
Unlike the previous story, this one has a Regency era female heroine who is standing on her own and supporting her useless brother. With the estate left in debt with the death of their parents, Henrietta as restored their fortune by betting on foibles of the English aristocracy. Don’t ask me how this works. I don’t think it’s a thing, but let's just go with it. An earl, with a lot of secrets to keep, including running a privateer, and supporting a brother who has faked his death to become an (anti-slavery) pirate gets involved with Henrietta on account of a bet she placed on whether or not he was the father of an actress' baby. Spark reluctantly fly, and this being a romance, the happy ever after ending is insured, though not being a steamy one, they only kiss on the pages. I’m not sure there’s an actual plot here, just a series of meeting at various locales. During their meetings the dialog is spaced out by paragraphs describing the thoughts of both the Earl and Henrietta making conversations hard to follow. But I guess it's their thoughts – do I? Don’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I? What’s going on him/her/me?- that count here. Not my cup of tea again, no surprise to either you or me, but I guess it’s serviceable for the genre.

A Death in Bloombury, The Simon Sampson Mysteries Book 1 by David C Dawson C+
In my scowling through the free titles under “Historical Fiction” I came across this mystery book. And since it was set in 1932 London, it sounded promising. The hero, Simon Sampson is an ex-crime reporter for a London paper and now an announcer for the evening news on the BBC. He is also a homosexual. It turns out that David C. Dawson is an award winning author of gay mysteries and romances. This is a quest, and having looked into some female orientated fiction, why not gay?

Our hero, Simon Sampson, in this story discovers a dying lady in a London alley. He collects a few clues before running for help. But the lady is no longer there when he brings back the constable. Returning to the scene later, he and his pal discover some blueprints and some code in German hidden at the scene. The next day the police (possible fake) are cleaning up the scene and are very unhelpful. He turns to a lesbian friend “Bill” for help to translate the documents and things spiral out of control after that. Not wanting to give too many spoilers away, I’ll only say that while the story is well written, I did have some problems with it. Don’t I always?

First of all, though the author did do a lot of research into London of 1932 and some of the most famous personalities –however, perhaps because of that, the story seems to be told from the present day rather than from within the story. What I mean by that is that much of the color and background is introduced almost as a lecture. This includes not only about the background history, but about the life of homosexuals in England during this period, when it was a criminal offense to be one. In a historical story like this you need to create a world that the reader might be unfamiliar with, while the characters in the story the world would be commonplace. How do you get that background into the story while keeping what the characters see, think, and experience within the story authentic? It is hard, and I don’t think Dawson nailed it. As I said, he would introduce all these facts – from the lives of homosexuals, to that of Noel Coward, to National Socialism in Germany in too much detail that they seemed, as I said, like lectures instead of color and world building. But that might just be me, as a writer. Points off.

My second gripe is also a personal one. I really dislike it when murder mystery writers feel that they need to increase the body count from one to – in this case – four in order to ramp up the tension. I am quite sure that he could’ve written just as good of a story with only one murder. He did, however, make the subsequent murders mean something to the two main characters. But still. Points off.

And finally, I like understated things, and this story when from a murder mystery to something much wider in scope, a scope which I found completely unconvincing – way over the top. It is the type of story that breaks history. Again points off.

This is not a “steamy” story, and can easily be read as a straight mystery adventure with the homosexual aspects of it just as an interesting spotlight on the hidden world of England in the 1930’s (to the, what, 1960’s when the decriminalized homosexual activity?). Still grading it on the pulp curve with my nitpicking I gave it a C+, however it could be a straight B grade adventure story for you, if your tastes are different than mine.

I have one more book to read in this first batch: Discerning Grace by Emma Lombard. It concerns a girl fleeing a forced marriage to a cruel old man in 1826 who, disguised as a boy, joins the Royal Navy.

But don’t despair, I have download a new batch of free novels, this time “Free Urban Fantasy Adventures.” Stay turned!