My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
A Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer DNF 31%
The story involves a marriage between a rather raffish duke who wants to produce a heir to keep the title and estate out of the hands of his obnoxious cousin, and the daughter of a noble family whose males have gambled away their fortune. The elder daughter is selected to marry the duke, but she's in love with a poor, but good soldier, who she must give up to save the family. Her 17 year old younger sister decides to save her, so she visits the duke and offers to marry him herself so that her sister can marry for love. She says that she won't interfere with his life, (and mistress) and so he agrees. A story with potential, the reverse of the Reluctant Widow. Alas, it didn't work for me.
It didn't click because I didn't like the two leads. The thoughtful little sister turns into a gambling spendthrift, becoming the darling of the ton, which seemed out of character, since she was supposed to be the thoughtful daughter. Her husband the duke was the typical Heyer male - cool, soft spoken, who has everything under control. His new bride decides to string along her husband's enemy because she wants to gamble with him - gambling being the family addiction. Nothing seemed very convincing, and while I'm sure we get the happy ever after ending, all I could see where familiar games to get there. Oh well, you can't win them all. Hopefully the next one will be better.
Emma by Jane Austen DNF 6%
It had been my intention to read all of Jane Austen's novels. I'm not so certain now. I do know that I won't be returning to this one, anyway. I have two complaints about Emma.
The first is that its beginning is incredibly tedious. A mundane recounting of the marriage of Emma's governess/companion, her subsequent relationship with her father, the arrival of a new young lady, and other sundry events, seemingly of little consequence. I don't mind slow starts, but this seemed to promise nothing of interest, at least to me.
My second objection can be applied to all the Austen books I've read, And that is that Austen inserts herself between her story and her readers. Sometimes overtly, making comments on the actions of her characters, but always, in my view, in the rather remote manner she tells her stories. You always know she's telling you a story, rather than allowing the story to take on a life of its own. Austen is always there, an unseen, but present, narrator, lurking liked the Cheshire Cat, with a little smile, watching and reporting on her characters; their appearance, their thoughts, flaws, triumphs and failures. It's like a layer of glass between the reader and the story. While it can be amusing to read at times, it removes any resemblance of living life out of the story, at least for me. Her stories are just that, a story. Gossip as literature. And in this case, extremely mundane gossip, at least as far as I could make my way into it, which wasn't far before I decided that I had better things to do with my time.
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