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Tag: historical fiction

A Review of a Nazis Book Where the Lesbians Survive

I am about to review a World War II book in which the lesbians survive. If knowing which characters survive is a spoiler that would taint your enjoyment of a book, now would be a good time to stop reading this post. Ordinarily I would start by saying the name of the book and talking about its other qualities and eventually, with spoiler tags, I would add that the lesbians survive. But honestly, in this, the darkest timeline, the lesbians surviving is a big part of what made the book so meaningful to me, and I thought I would probably…

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Review: An Unconditional Freedom, Alyssa Cole

Alyssa Cole is one of the best romance novelists working, and a new book from her is always cause for celebration. An Unconditional Freedom is the third in her Loyal League series, which follows Union spies working behind Confederate lines to ensure an end to slavery. Daniel Cumberland joined the Loyal League to seek revenge: Born free, then sold into slavery by white men pretending to be abolitionists, Daniel has never recovered from the psychological scars his years in slavery inflicted. He has no interest in a new partner, let alone one as pretty and vivacious as Janeta Sanchez, a…

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However Shall I Think of an Adjective to Describe Glorious

There is something so intensely satisfying about finally reading a book that has been lingering on one’s TBR list for years and years. For the book to be as good as Bernice McFadden’s Glorious is just the cherry on top of an already almost perfect ice cream sundae experience. (I read another book that’s been on my TBR list for four years — The Pendragon Legend, by Antal Szerb — and learned that right now is not a good moment for me to be reading books published in 1934 with all the attendant sexism that implies. Ha ha I wanted…

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Review: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley

My concerns going into The Watchmaker of Filigree Street were, one, that it would be too twee, and two, that I didn’t care much about solving a mysterious bombing at Victorian Scotland Yard by Irish freedom fighters. Happily for my peace of mind, though it starts off seeming like a rather twee mystery about a bombing at Victorian Scotland yard by Irish freedom fighters, that really isn’t what the book is at all. Our hero, Thaniel Steepleton, comes home from a difficult day at the telegraph office (bomb threat, something something) to find that his flat has been broken into,…

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Review: Freedom and Necessity, Steven Brust and Emma Bull

How Freedom and Necessity was described to me by Anastasia: An epistolary novel set in Victorian times, with magic! What I pictured: Sorcery and Cecelia The primary topic of the first forty pages of Freedom and Necessity: Hegel, I swear to God. You know, the philosopher. And his concepts of idealism. So, yeah. Me and Freedom and Necessity got off to a bumpy start. Luckily, I was on the bus and had nothing else of interest for my eyes to rest on for the duration of the bus ride, which meant that perforce I read past the first 40 pages…

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Review: The Night Flower, Sarah Stovell

Way long ago (well, in 2010), I read Sarah Stovell’s first novel Mothernight. Although I thought it went a teensy bit overboard on the misfortune, I thought Stovell’s writing was absolutely gorgeous, and I wanted to read some of her sentences fifteen times. So when the publisher of her second book (at last!), Night Flower, emailed to ask if I wanted to participate in a blog tour, I jumped at the chance (of course). The beginning: Ah Sarah Stovell. The way she won my heart in the first place was the way she wrote about time in Mothernight. She begins…

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Review: The Long Song, Andrea Levy

At last I have read something by Andrea Levy! I have been meaning to do so for many moons now, and when my book club decided to go with Angela Carter instead of Andrea Levy for next month, I trotted round to the library and got The Long Song. I wanted Small Island but it turned out I couldn’t be bothered climbing all the way up the stairs to the second floor where they keep the non-new fiction. (I know Long Song came out in 2010. Don’t ask me to explain the new/not new classification system of the New York…

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Review: The Oracle of Stamboul, Michael David Lukas

And magical realism rears its ugly — no, I’m kidding. The Oracle of Stamboul has the tiniest ever amount of magical realism, actually the perfect amount. At the start of the story, when our protagonist Eleonora is about to be born, the author mentions a flock of hoopoes (they look like this, if you’re curious) that comes to settle near her house on the night of her birth. After that, I was on red alert, as my displeasure with an excess of magical realism is rapid and permanent. But first-time author Michael David Lukas has a light touch with the…

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I will never catch up on reviews

…if I don’t do a bunch of short ones all at once. Thus: The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon I checked this out on Gavin’s recommendation and because I love Alexander the Great. Your claims that he was a psychotic alcoholic have no effect on me because in my mind he is exactly the way Mary Renault writes him in Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy. The Golden Mean is about Aristotle when he comes to Macedon to tutor young Alexander. Though Lyon was clearly influenced by Mary Renault’s books, she gives a more nuanced picture of Alexander, showing a…

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