The Saturday Morning Post (No. 112)

 

Another Regency Story this week as well. Did it fare any better than the last two? Am I growing tried reading this genre?

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.

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer  C

To answer the lede question, sort of. For both questions. This book is the third book in a loose series of stories starting with These Old Shades. That book had as its main character the cold and ruthless Duke of Avon. The second book, The Devil's Cub tells the story of his son, and in this one, we meet his granddaughter, Barbara, and two of her brothers. Most of them take more after the Duke than his wife, meaning that they are bold, seemingly heartless, and prone to scandals.

While the story has a romance, such as it is, of the wild and headstrong Barbara with an aide de camp to Field Marshall Wellington, it is at its heart, a work of historical fiction set during he 100 Days after Napoleon returned from his exile to his defeat at Waterloo. The first three quarters of the story is set in Brussels and begins several months before that famous battle, as the English slowly gather an army of local allies and their own troops. Meanwhile, the wealthy society, having flocked to the continent after the defeat of Napoleon (the first time) find themselves seemingly in the way of the French army, though it is only a distant storm cloud at first. In this part we have all the domestic drama of an ill-advised romance, and the affairs of the wealthy families residing in Brussels - lots of names, lots of people, lots of parties and such. Heyer also weaves in historical characters into her story, drawing on the memoirs of the people involved in those events to recreate the time and mood. Truth be told, I did not find the story all that engaging, perhaps because all of the side characters as well as with a focus on Barbara, who's not likable.

The last quarter of the story is a description of the battle of Waterloo, in great detail, as she weaves her fictional characters into the action of the battle's final day. As I have remarked before, not having the ability to create pictures, much less movies in my mind, I find that all the elaborate description and detail accounts of the action to be wasted on me. I just find them tedious, a string of words that create nothing but confusion. These days I don't even bother to read them. I skimmed the battle almost entirely, picking things up again in the final pages to find out what happened. 

I haven't been very lucky with my last several Regency books. I probably should take some time away from them. Ah, but what to read next? At the time I'm writing this I still have a month plus of Kindle Unlimited, but I find it very hard to find books that appeal to me there. I find it hard to find books there, period. They only show you so many of them in certain categories. I think you need know what you're looking for to find what you're looking for. At the moment. I don't. Stay tuned to find out what I did find to read next.