Julia Roseingrave - Marjorie Bowen writing as Robert Paye

I've been on holiday for a week and struggled to read much while I was away. That turned out to be partly because the prescription for my new glasses isn't very good - three times they've had to be sent back for re-adjustment, and they're still blurring things around the edges. It's headache inducing, and annoying because each set of adjustments seems to have made the issue worse and now I think I just need to go to another optician.

It's been a few weeks then since I read Julia Roseingrave - a deeply silly book that was tremendous fun. I think it's set some time in the reign of Charles II - or thereabouts but it doesn't matter very much. One moonlit night a traveler who appears to be the devil arrives at Holcot Grange claiming he is it's owner. The Grange is meant to have some sort of curse on it so the owners have been absent for some long time. The house keeper reluctantly admits the stranger and then seeks the advice of the nearest thing to an educated neighbour she has. 

Julia Roseingrave is a youngish woman (late 20s) very beautiful, who lives with her paralised mother and a sister with learning difficulties. She's a distant relative of the master of the Grange and agrees to come and see what's going on. She determines that the devil guise is nothing but fancy dress and hatches a plan to escape her life of rural seclusion by marrying the young man.

He's easily enthralled and makes even easier promises - but can he keep them? No, he can't, because he's already married, his wife turns up and Julia gets desperate. And this is where it gets interesting. She's been consorting with a  local wise woman and has plans to dispose of unwanted wives so we go from Julia being ambitious but sympathetic, to full on villainous mode, and then there's a final twist and nothing was clear anymore. 

I'd say this, and its accompanying short stories are more curiosity than anything else - the style is somewhat overblown, but both Julia Roseingrave as the main story and the other sorts included are worth the time to read and think about. there's some interesting messages there from the 1930s and if it's all a bit much at times, it's also always fun. 

The Crimson Road - A. G. Slatter

I seem to be in a fantasy sort of mood at the moment, maybe because I've had a run of pretty decent luck with fantasy novels that have been engaging to read and suitably distracting from real life. This is the first Slatter I've read but I'm quite tempted to try more.

The Crimson Road is a vampire novel with shades of Buffy about it. Violet Zennor has been trained to be fighter since childhood when her mother died giving birth to a still born son, her immensely rich father preparing her for something. 

The book opens with his death and Violet's hope that she can be free of the control he has exerted over her life to date. Unfortunately not. Hedrek Zennor made a particularly ill-judged bargain on the night his wife died and after a number of assassins come after her,, and her loved ones, Violet realises that she doesn't really have a choice when it comes to fixing the mess he made. 

If it wasn't for some fairly graphic violence and descriptions of abuse that Hedrek inflicted on Violet this could be a young adult novel - 20 year old girl sets out to save the world picking up found family on her quest. As it is, it's got genuinely dark moments that verge on horror and a convincingly gothic atmosphere to compliment the world building. 

If there's a fault it's that the timeline doesn't always make complete sense when it comes to the Vampires (called Leech lords here). There is a prophecy, and a lot seems to happen in a relatively short decade compared to the many hundreds of years that some of the Leech lords have been around for. This book takes place in the same world as Slatter's earlier novels - it works fine as a standalone, but possibly if I'd read them all my timeline niggles would be settled.

Overall I really enjoyed this, there were intriguing ideas in the lore building and Violet is a complex heroine who succeeds because of the help she finds along the way, mostly from other women. She stays alive because her enemies underestimate her and how much help she can muster, but it does feel that there's real jepordy along the way. I've been disappointed by books from bigger names (Alice Christina Henry and V E Schwab - but I've only tried one of each and might well be missing out on the really good stuff) working in the same sort of area - this book had whatever it was that I felt was missing for me in those. For good gothic times you could do a lot worse than The Crimson Road.

The Wycherleys - Annaliese Avery

 I've not given up on this little bit of the internet, but life does seem to have other plans for my time right now. Bear with.

I read The Wycherleys as it's the first teen/young adult book of the month work has showcased and I was curious to see what was going to set the tone. I'm mostly impressed with what I found. Billed as Bridgerton with witches - but honestly, better than that sounds. I'm not sure if it's strictly accurate to say it's aimed at the younger end of the age range, but it's absolutely fair to say it's age appropriate from 12 up, and younger if your reader doesn't mind a little bit of kissing. 

On the plus side, you get a sweet romance, likeable main characters, excellent friendships, nice sibling relationships, an intriguing set up for a continuing series, and an excellent adventure that feels complete enough in itself despite the plans for a series. 

On the downside, there's a lot of repetition, which I absolutely do not understand. You could cut 50 pages worth of the same couple of points being made over and over to end up with a standout introduction to historical fantasy, a genre that would work as well for an adult looking for some cosy fantasy as it would for a younger reader looking for romantic fantasy. The  plot is not particularly original (okay, it's very predictable) but it's handled more than well enough for that not to matter. 

The setting is a sort of alternative regency period, there are a couple of historical references, and a Princess regent Georgianna who is aware of the magical world - the state harnesses it, but not entirely approving of it. The action mostly takes place in magical areas of London where different customs and manners prevail - it nicely avoids the need to get bogged down in detail and makes potential anachronisms irrelevant. Fun details include the witching world being a matriarchy where children take their mothers names - and an interesting arrangement whereby witches need to be tethered to another witch, but that tether doesn't have to involve a romantic element, and it's frequently same sex.

This means lots of blended families, and an implicit acceptance of queer relationships even if they're not specifically explored. It's the kind of ambiguity I'd have liked to see more of in books when I was a teen, and like now - a space full of possibilities rather than certainties. 

Overall there's a lot to like here - and maybe the best thing I can say about it is that after reading Tik Tok phenomenon Fourth Wing in a similar spirit, I find I want to see what happens next to the Wycherleys, I have not read any more Rebecca Yarros.