Recent reading
Jul. 22nd, 2024 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaThe Pastor's Fire-side Vol 3 by Jane Porter (1817)
I still find the style overwrought (and arrgh, sometimes I want to prune back her adjectives), but I can't deny that Jane Porter can spin a good yarn. I find it quite page-turney now! Alas, Louis becoming disillusioned with the morals of the beautiful Otteline did not spell the end of that affair: Otteline is the favorite of the Austrian empress and Louis's father Duke Ripperda needs her political good will for the treaty with Spain to go through. So Louis is promised to Otteline. Meanwhile, Ripperda meets Wharton at a social occasion; they quarrel and duel, and Wharton falls to the floor pierced by Ripperda's sword! Whoa, did not expect that. Ripperda conceals the duelling from Louis, saying Wharton has left town. But! It turns out Wharton did not die; he quickly heals and starts playing a cat-and-mouse game with Ripperda, stealing the dispatches coming from Spain and returning them to Ripperda as a mysterious benefactor when the latter is on his way to Spain. All the dispatches, that is, except the Spanish queen's permission for Louis to marry Otteline! Aww, looking out for Louis.
With Ripperda gone, it's clear that the Austrian-Spanish treaty has many enemies, and Louis is hard put to it to defend it with his father gone. In another twist, it turns out the young Maria Theresa (future Empress of Austria) is infatuated with Louis! Her father the Emperor (who is against the Spanish marriage) uses this to fasten her affection on her future actual husband, Francis of Lorraine, who conveniently looks a lot like Louis. Wharton comes back to find Louis beset by difficulties, and he falls in Wharton's arms! Wharton tells him that he has news of a conspiracy against Ripperda, and will help Louis if he will only...actually I don't quite understand what the thing is that he wants Louis to do, except that it involves an unnamed lady! Possibly have sex with her, though I don't understand to what end? Also he makes an impassioned speech for the Stuart cause. Louis finds the thing, whatever it is, deeply dishonourable, and refuses to do it. They part as anguished enemies. Ripperda falls from his pinnacle of power in Spain; Wharton is there to save him dramatically from the angry mob, and tries and fails to recruit him to his own political ends, while simultaneously (apparently?) plotting with Ripperda's enemies.
As an aside, I'm enjoying the narrative tools the author is using here: the novel is in omniscient POV and frequently makes value judgments on people's characters and tell us what they're plotting and doing--for everyone but Wharton. All the value judgments about him and much of the information of what he's doing off-stage is said by other people, not the narrator! This makes for enjoyable uncertainty about his motives. Anyway, Otteline conveniently rejects Louis now that his father has fallen from power and Louis rushes to Spain, where he finds his father has escaped, but he himself ends up in a Spanish prison. Louis hears more about Wharton's treachery, but the narrator helpfully qualifies his feelings as "he now believed he hated Wharton".
Oh, and also Louis meets the demure and honourable young woman Marcella who I assume will be his future love interest, though her father is trying to force her into a convent. She's tied up with previous plot threads I deemed too small to sum up before (she's the sister of Ferdinand who visited Louis in England in the beginning of the book and fell in love with Louis's cousin Alice; Ferdinand is trying to convince his father to let him marry Alice and is selfishly trying to recruit Marcella to make the Ferdinand/Alice marriage a condition of her willingly entering the convent, since she'll be forced into it anyway). To be continued!
The Blood of the Hentzaus, by El Staplador (2012)
A novel-length Ruritanian f/f fic about the next generation of the Prisoner of Zenda characters, complete with a villainous Hentzau, an unwise attachment, plotting for the next throne succession, and swashbuckling at the castle of Zenda. Quite enjoyable!
A reason to live (a reason it is not permissible to die) bychestnut_pod (2022)
This is a Silmarillion fic about Elwing and her pregnancy in the refugee colony at the mouth of Sirion, seen from the POV of an elvish midwife/nurse. The author says it was written as an emotional response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, but this was not apparent to me at all when I read the fic! Anyway, Elwing is so young and does not know what it will mean to be a half-human, half-elf, and does not know how pregnancy happens. Elwing also has a will of iron and pours herself into making the community of Sirion work. I really appreciated that the style of this is so different from Tolkien's, allowing us to see the world from another angle. (Usually I only review novel-length fics in my book posts, but this one is 27K, and hey, I don't have to follow my own rules.)
I still find the style overwrought (and arrgh, sometimes I want to prune back her adjectives), but I can't deny that Jane Porter can spin a good yarn. I find it quite page-turney now! Alas, Louis becoming disillusioned with the morals of the beautiful Otteline did not spell the end of that affair: Otteline is the favorite of the Austrian empress and Louis's father Duke Ripperda needs her political good will for the treaty with Spain to go through. So Louis is promised to Otteline. Meanwhile, Ripperda meets Wharton at a social occasion; they quarrel and duel, and Wharton falls to the floor pierced by Ripperda's sword! Whoa, did not expect that. Ripperda conceals the duelling from Louis, saying Wharton has left town. But! It turns out Wharton did not die; he quickly heals and starts playing a cat-and-mouse game with Ripperda, stealing the dispatches coming from Spain and returning them to Ripperda as a mysterious benefactor when the latter is on his way to Spain. All the dispatches, that is, except the Spanish queen's permission for Louis to marry Otteline! Aww, looking out for Louis.
With Ripperda gone, it's clear that the Austrian-Spanish treaty has many enemies, and Louis is hard put to it to defend it with his father gone. In another twist, it turns out the young Maria Theresa (future Empress of Austria) is infatuated with Louis! Her father the Emperor (who is against the Spanish marriage) uses this to fasten her affection on her future actual husband, Francis of Lorraine, who conveniently looks a lot like Louis. Wharton comes back to find Louis beset by difficulties, and he falls in Wharton's arms! Wharton tells him that he has news of a conspiracy against Ripperda, and will help Louis if he will only...actually I don't quite understand what the thing is that he wants Louis to do, except that it involves an unnamed lady! Possibly have sex with her, though I don't understand to what end? Also he makes an impassioned speech for the Stuart cause. Louis finds the thing, whatever it is, deeply dishonourable, and refuses to do it. They part as anguished enemies. Ripperda falls from his pinnacle of power in Spain; Wharton is there to save him dramatically from the angry mob, and tries and fails to recruit him to his own political ends, while simultaneously (apparently?) plotting with Ripperda's enemies.
As an aside, I'm enjoying the narrative tools the author is using here: the novel is in omniscient POV and frequently makes value judgments on people's characters and tell us what they're plotting and doing--for everyone but Wharton. All the value judgments about him and much of the information of what he's doing off-stage is said by other people, not the narrator! This makes for enjoyable uncertainty about his motives. Anyway, Otteline conveniently rejects Louis now that his father has fallen from power and Louis rushes to Spain, where he finds his father has escaped, but he himself ends up in a Spanish prison. Louis hears more about Wharton's treachery, but the narrator helpfully qualifies his feelings as "he now believed he hated Wharton".
Oh, and also Louis meets the demure and honourable young woman Marcella who I assume will be his future love interest, though her father is trying to force her into a convent. She's tied up with previous plot threads I deemed too small to sum up before (she's the sister of Ferdinand who visited Louis in England in the beginning of the book and fell in love with Louis's cousin Alice; Ferdinand is trying to convince his father to let him marry Alice and is selfishly trying to recruit Marcella to make the Ferdinand/Alice marriage a condition of her willingly entering the convent, since she'll be forced into it anyway). To be continued!
The Blood of the Hentzaus, by El Staplador (2012)
A novel-length Ruritanian f/f fic about the next generation of the Prisoner of Zenda characters, complete with a villainous Hentzau, an unwise attachment, plotting for the next throne succession, and swashbuckling at the castle of Zenda. Quite enjoyable!
A reason to live (a reason it is not permissible to die) by
chestnut_pod (2022)This is a Silmarillion fic about Elwing and her pregnancy in the refugee colony at the mouth of Sirion, seen from the POV of an elvish midwife/nurse. The author says it was written as an emotional response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, but this was not apparent to me at all when I read the fic! Anyway, Elwing is so young and does not know what it will mean to be a half-human, half-elf, and does not know how pregnancy happens. Elwing also has a will of iron and pours herself into making the community of Sirion work. I really appreciated that the style of this is so different from Tolkien's, allowing us to see the world from another angle. (Usually I only review novel-length fics in my book posts, but this one is 27K, and hey, I don't have to follow my own rules.)
