So Many Books... - Yet another Sartorias-sparked ramble

04:16 pm - Yet another Sartorias-sparked ramble

AKA 'another one of those nice confluences to which serendipity sometimes treats us'; in this case, 2 books and 1 post. I recently finished Elizabeth C. Bunce's A Curse Dark as Gold, which I liked a lot, with some reservations. Then sartorias posted this about paranormals. More than ever after reading comments I'm unsure about the differences between the various types of books involved, but what Sherwood said about romance in historicals was very interesting, and I was chiming in with many others on the dislike for the Big Mis as the keep-'em-apart device for the romance. Meanwhile I was reading Madeleine E. Robins' Point of Honour, and finished yesterday, though a crashing headache kept me from doing more than a quick Goodreads rating then.

Short version is that the two quite different books - one decidedly fantasy (based on the fairy-tale 'Rumplestiltskin') and the other only fantastic in being a slightly alternate Regency England - won me over big-time for the same thing, and disappointed me in the romances which they could be said to inherit from their (much-changed) original sub-genres. The win-over: both took a type of story in which economic realities are either brushed over sketchily or have protagonists who are poor but will by the end of the story marry out of poverty. Both books treated economics very seriously indeed, dealing with a particular level of society usually ignored in their sub-genre of origin: the small, struggling mill-owner determined to keep the business alive in Curse and the 'Fallen Woman' who manages to maintain her independence in Point of Honour. In neither case did marriage rescue the heroine from her financial troubles, though the marriage of the fairy-tale did take place, in recognisable form.



A Curse Dark as Gold is set in a fictitious village in the late 1700s, a world 'strongly influenced by the real woolen in Britain and America', though for my money, the setting feels far more like England than America. Show me the Stowe river and sheep-shearing, and early imprinting brings up The Wool-Pack! (It's the 'Stow' in the real Cotswolds, I know, but that's easy to miss, as is Harrowgate instead of the UK Harrogate.) The book opens as Charlotte's father is being buried, and she and her younger sister Rosie are left with the task of running the mill, discovering more and more problems as they go on. As I said, the details of running the mill, including both the actual jobs performed by the workers and the financial side of it all, are done very well, and thoroughly. (Okay, there was one goof about merino wool appearing at the market, but this can come under the escape clause of not real world.) I love this kind of down-to-earth fantasy. A lot.

The way all the elements of the fairy-tale were worked in was mostly impressive too. Obviously Charlotte wasn't going to be 'rewarded' with marriage to the king's son just for her ability to satisfy the king's greed by spinning gold from straw. And yet Randall's position in the story made a lot of sense. Unfortunately their romance didn't, for my taste, at any rate. When Randall (somewhat puzzlingly, given the amount of contact they've had) asks Charlotte to marry him she thinks first that he's a good man, but immediately after:

I wasn't likely to find a better prospect among the men in Shearing; in fact I'd never dreamed of making so good a match. Marrying Randall Woodstone could solve so many problems. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was not so foolish as to pass it up.

It's certainly possible to go from this point to seeing Charlotte as really loving Randall (which she does come to do), but he knows, as is later apparent, that she wasn't in love with him as he was with her. And then when a nasty comment about her being seen as just a gold-digger is thrown at her, it seems to lead her into all kinds of idiocy, starting with not confiding in him and going on to outright lies and eventually risking their child's life. Randall is a little too good to be true - or possibly a little too 'good' (in the sense of self-sacrificing) to be emotionally healthy, and that weakens the romance also. The main problem was that there wasn't sufficiently compelling reasoning behind her refusal to clear up the secrecy, and their relationship seemed as if it could have been sorted at any point by her just opening up to him. Big Mis-light, possibly, but still.

Point of Honour is less centred on the romance perhaps, as it's more of a mix between two forms with quite different conventions about the romance: the Regency romance and the hardboiled detective. I'll try not to spoil too much - and nothing about the mystery, but a little bit of spoiling is perhaps inevitable (one reason I put Curse first.) Again - well, it wasn't just that l loved it - how could anyone not love the book's heroine and her job? Or anyone who's read a number of Regency romances, at any rate. Take the first line:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fallen Woman of a good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom.

Wonderful stuff. Sarah Tolerance (her last name taken because her family has totally rejected her) lives in a tiny guest-house in the garden of her aunt's (respectable and classy) brothel, and keeps herself by doing P.I. work, mostly for upper-class clients. There's a lot of hard economic consideration of women like her, whose reputations have been ruined and who have to keep themselves fed. That's wonderful, and is certainly not the type of character focussed on in the Regency romance.

However, I found the romance in the book quite unconvincing. Not so much from Sarah's side, as she was a well-drawn character, with an understandable degree of hyper-sensitivity about being treated as a third-class citizen (despite sympathising with the women who work in the brothels or are mistresses of rich men). And she's lonely and occasionally prone to regrets about the life of security and luxury she could have had. Despite her wariness and independence, she's won over by the man whose lover - but not mistress! - she eventually becomes. There's a lovely moment where she tries to warn him off from mistaking the adrenaline-rush of the adventures they've had together for anything romantic, which reminded me forcibly of Annie in Speed. A little bit of treating-you-as-politely-as-he-would-a-Respectable-Woman and a fair amount of charm doesn't make for the kind of love she professed to feel for him though, or for her acceptance of his Bad Deed.

The element from the detective noir which could be loosely summed up as 'Everyone's crap and they'll all betray you or die' fits quite neatly into this world in general. But back to the romance, the other side of it was that there was no way this dude was going to lose his head to the point of an involvement any deeper than a socially-acceptable one (i.e., keeping her in some lavish flat in the part of London where all the mistresses are kept). She had very good arguments against this type of arrangement too, quite aside from the question of how much she should value herself and expect from him. His offering more was not something I could buy.

That said, neither of these books was a Romance really, so the unsatisfying romance element didn't ruin them. And as I said about each in the Goodreads write-ups, I'm looking forward to reading more by the authors. (Only one more Sarah Tolerance book for now, unfortunately, but there's always hope that a publisher will be found soon for the mostly-finished third one. It looks unlikely that financial problems will affect Bunce similarly atm - otherwise it'd be easy to see why fantasy writers might want to stay away from writing these economically realistic novels.)

Point? I was supposed to have a point? Only point is the fun of seeing associations between books, especially unexpected ones, and of continuing an interesting 'conversation' started by sartorias.