Regency romances have been a “thing” since the Silver Fork novels of the 1830s, which I suspect Georgette Heyer grew up reading. I started reading Heyer as a teen, which taste combined with my love of the Hornblower series by C.S. Forester and … Continue reading
The idea of using fans as a semaphore system is instant story fodder for a lot of storytellers. For me as a young writer it certainly was, but not until decades later, when I invented more complicated social histories that … Continue reading
In my own particular mental map of the modern novel’s river, the watershed is Jane Austen. Her books were romantic, but she was not writing romance as it later came to be understood. Romance in the early sense could be … Continue reading
These days there has been a lot of talk about daring narrative voices and experimental playing with fiction and truth (as in real life experience, to skirt around the gigantic elephant of what constitutes “truth”), and it’s great that more … Continue reading
This review and the following interview are a year late, because the author had to flee her home in Australia last year as the firestorm raged across the landscape. The publisher also had to flee. Then came Covid. But they … Continue reading
Two words, power and privilege. What’s not to like? What’s not to hate? Whatever those words power and privilege evoke to us, it’s usually not boredom. It’s tough to get away from the fact that human beings tend … Continue reading
This space opera/mystery, the first in the Chronicles of Nuala series, is just as much fun to read as it was when it first came out. Kimbriel has created a fascinatingly complex culture in the Nualans, who have adapted to a … Continue reading
One of my favorite women of history is Liselotte von der Pfalz. Liselotte was properly styled Princess Palatine Elizabeth Charlotte, or, in German, Pfalzprinzessin Elisabeth Charlotte. She was born in Heidelberg, 27 May 1652, and died at Saint-Cloud, 8 December … Continue reading
The thing that stands out about Sara Stamey’s prose, for me, is how taut it is, while managing to convey an image-rich atmosphere while keeping the pace headlong. All her books are like that—running action and image in tight-wired tandem, … Continue reading
When I first immerse into a book I am no longer I, but ego dissolves away into an eye, absorbed completely into the world of the story, remerging at the end with that snap of the spiritual umbilicus. I use … Continue reading
