Historical romances and me
Dec. 18th, 2014 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenaySo, way back on December 10th, I was supposed to talk about historical romance for netgirl_y2k, but in the rush to finish Yuletide and so forth, it got...postponed. NOT FORGOTTEN. It's just that this is a trickier one for me to write, and my brain crumbled away and died whenever I tried.
I am currently feeling utterly awful due a bad cold, but ideas have had time to percolate so hopefully this will be coherent.
For the December talking meme,netgirl_y2k asked me to talk about what I like about historical romances and give some recs.
I have been reading romance novels, on and off, since my teens. More off than on a lot of the time, and that's because I tend to go through a phase of reading them and then the problematic parts overwhelm me and I have to step back for a while. Even back in my teens, it was the historical stuff that I enjoyed the most, although back then there seemed to be much less of it around to enjoy than there is now. It was all imprints of Harlequin and Mills and Book, at least in my local library
I can't remember the title or author, but the book that still stands out to me as the first romance I really enjoyed was a story about a woman who disguises herself as a boy and runs away to sea. Twenty years later, I can't remember exactly why she did it, just that she had some very good reason to need to go to America and the only way she could do it was the aforementioned disguise and running. Inevitably, she ends up being discovered by the ship's captain, who shelters her and shenanigans occur, as they are wont to do in historical romance. The thing that stood out to me is that it was one of the few romances I'd ever read where the female character had her own agency, made her own choices, and I didn't get that 'unwilling seduction' vibe from her relationship with the ship's captain. I remember borrowing it from the library multiple times and loving it each time.
And that's when I fell for historical romances.
I have very little patience for contemporary romances. They're too straight, they're too focused on the romance with no other plot, and usually I can read the same ideas done better in fic. I could write a whole essay about why fic--particularly m/m and f/f slash--works better for me when I want to read romance. Maybe I should do that some day.
Historical romance is the exception. Not all historical romance, because there's a hell of a lot of terrible and problematic historical romance out there, but I feel like I've had more success at finding the dynamics I want in this genre. The stories are often far more focused on the female character and her problems that the contemporary romances. And when the male characters are centre stage, their stories have more variety and more interest for me, and their story isn't being told at the expense of the female character.
The good historicals have more to them than just a romance. There's usually a solid plot there, something external that has to be overcome for our heroes to live happily ever after together. That's what I want in my romances: a dash of adventure, maybe a bit of politics, a problematic family causing real problems, and our heroes having to figure out how their relationship works while resolving all those other elements.
I also love relationships where the female characters have agency and make decisions for themselves. Yes, a lot of the time in historicals, her decisions are restricted. She can't decide to run for parliament or go into space, for example. Her decisions are more personal, about who has ownership of her body and her future, and sometimes there are tight limits on how much choice she has about her future. That's why I love the stories where the woman takes charge, makes the choice to go outside society's limits, because they feel delightfully subversive in a way that I don't get in contemporary romance. My big narrative kink is subversive historical romance, I guess.
My recommendation list is short at the moment, largely because I tend to binge read one author at a time, and also because I borrow a lot from the library and quit early if a book is tending to the problematic. BUT. I still have a few.
I'm sure most people have already found Courtney Milan, but she's the author that pulled me back into historicals last year after a long break. She's also an author who has really benefited from self-publishing, because I'm pretty damn sure that her Brothers Sinister series would never have made it through a traditional publisher in its current format. And that's the series that I really, really love.
(I'm not wild about her Turner series. It demonstrates all the reasons I don't love the Harlequin format and left me cold. Just as a warning.)
I love all the books in the Brothers Sinister series and it's worth reading them in order, because getting to know the characters makes the later books really pay off. The third book, the Countess Conspiracy, is my favourite because it's all about women in science and learning to express sexuality in non-standard ways when sexual compatibility is at stake. The central characters are prickly and difficult, and if you hadn't experienced them in the first books, I can understand why some readers found them initially difficult to love in their own book. I thought they were wonderful and I'd been itching to know more about them from the start, so the book hit every button I had. The fourth book, The Suffragette Scandal, is also wonderful because it's about women's rights and features lovely queer relationships in addition to the central straight romance. I can't wait to see what Milan does next.
(As a tip, follow her Twitter feed--![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
courtneymilan--because she regularly talks about other books and authors and I've had good luck with a lot of her recs.)
I just finished the first book in Tessa Dare's Castles Ever After series (Romancing the Duke) and was so delighted by it that I read it in two sittings and mourned that it was over. I've got the second one preordered. There's a blind hero (with no magical healing love resolution!), there's a heroine who charmed the hell out of me, and finding the joy in stories and make believe was an important plot point. The writing was also incredibly witty and bright, and had me actually chuckling at times. I have no idea what her Spindle Cove series is like, but I do plan to check it out soon.
Laura Lee Guhrke has a series called Girl Bachelors, where all our heroines are working career women in the late eighteen hundreds. It makes such a lovely contrast from all the heroines who can't work because they're gentlemen's daughters or nobility. I'm eating those up.
Mary Balogh is my current binge read. Her Bedwyn Saga series is wonderful. I've just finished Slightly Wicked and I can't say enough good things about it. Heroine with agency! Who takes charge of her own body! Who takes her one chance at sex and revels in it! And then the rest of the book is about family politics and the hero slowly winning her into loving him, in a non-creepy way, which made me ridiculously happy. I'd pick up anything by Mary Balogh, because her writing is darned fantastic.
As a total cheat, I'm also throwing in the Mercedes Lackey Elemental Masters series. They're historical romances with magic and adventure. Blood Red and Home from the Sea didn't do much for me, but I've reread the others so often it's ridiculous.
I've got Julia Quinn's The Viscount Who Loved Me on my list to read soon, due to recs from various people who keep telling me the banter is fantastic, and Three Weeks with Lady X by Eloisa James has also been recced to me from various sources for the same reason. I'll make a note somewhere here if they're any good when I read them :-)
netgirl_y2k, but in the rush to finish Yuletide and so forth, it got...postponed. NOT FORGOTTEN. It's just that this is a trickier one for me to write, and my brain crumbled away and died whenever I tried.I am currently feeling utterly awful due a bad cold, but ideas have had time to percolate so hopefully this will be coherent.
For the December talking meme,
netgirl_y2k asked me to talk about what I like about historical romances and give some recs.I have been reading romance novels, on and off, since my teens. More off than on a lot of the time, and that's because I tend to go through a phase of reading them and then the problematic parts overwhelm me and I have to step back for a while. Even back in my teens, it was the historical stuff that I enjoyed the most, although back then there seemed to be much less of it around to enjoy than there is now. It was all imprints of Harlequin and Mills and Book, at least in my local library
I can't remember the title or author, but the book that still stands out to me as the first romance I really enjoyed was a story about a woman who disguises herself as a boy and runs away to sea. Twenty years later, I can't remember exactly why she did it, just that she had some very good reason to need to go to America and the only way she could do it was the aforementioned disguise and running. Inevitably, she ends up being discovered by the ship's captain, who shelters her and shenanigans occur, as they are wont to do in historical romance. The thing that stood out to me is that it was one of the few romances I'd ever read where the female character had her own agency, made her own choices, and I didn't get that 'unwilling seduction' vibe from her relationship with the ship's captain. I remember borrowing it from the library multiple times and loving it each time.
And that's when I fell for historical romances.
I have very little patience for contemporary romances. They're too straight, they're too focused on the romance with no other plot, and usually I can read the same ideas done better in fic. I could write a whole essay about why fic--particularly m/m and f/f slash--works better for me when I want to read romance. Maybe I should do that some day.
Historical romance is the exception. Not all historical romance, because there's a hell of a lot of terrible and problematic historical romance out there, but I feel like I've had more success at finding the dynamics I want in this genre. The stories are often far more focused on the female character and her problems that the contemporary romances. And when the male characters are centre stage, their stories have more variety and more interest for me, and their story isn't being told at the expense of the female character.
The good historicals have more to them than just a romance. There's usually a solid plot there, something external that has to be overcome for our heroes to live happily ever after together. That's what I want in my romances: a dash of adventure, maybe a bit of politics, a problematic family causing real problems, and our heroes having to figure out how their relationship works while resolving all those other elements.
I also love relationships where the female characters have agency and make decisions for themselves. Yes, a lot of the time in historicals, her decisions are restricted. She can't decide to run for parliament or go into space, for example. Her decisions are more personal, about who has ownership of her body and her future, and sometimes there are tight limits on how much choice she has about her future. That's why I love the stories where the woman takes charge, makes the choice to go outside society's limits, because they feel delightfully subversive in a way that I don't get in contemporary romance. My big narrative kink is subversive historical romance, I guess.
My recommendation list is short at the moment, largely because I tend to binge read one author at a time, and also because I borrow a lot from the library and quit early if a book is tending to the problematic. BUT. I still have a few.
I'm sure most people have already found Courtney Milan, but she's the author that pulled me back into historicals last year after a long break. She's also an author who has really benefited from self-publishing, because I'm pretty damn sure that her Brothers Sinister series would never have made it through a traditional publisher in its current format. And that's the series that I really, really love.
(I'm not wild about her Turner series. It demonstrates all the reasons I don't love the Harlequin format and left me cold. Just as a warning.)
I love all the books in the Brothers Sinister series and it's worth reading them in order, because getting to know the characters makes the later books really pay off. The third book, the Countess Conspiracy, is my favourite because it's all about women in science and learning to express sexuality in non-standard ways when sexual compatibility is at stake. The central characters are prickly and difficult, and if you hadn't experienced them in the first books, I can understand why some readers found them initially difficult to love in their own book. I thought they were wonderful and I'd been itching to know more about them from the start, so the book hit every button I had. The fourth book, The Suffragette Scandal, is also wonderful because it's about women's rights and features lovely queer relationships in addition to the central straight romance. I can't wait to see what Milan does next.
(As a tip, follow her Twitter feed--
I just finished the first book in Tessa Dare's Castles Ever After series (Romancing the Duke) and was so delighted by it that I read it in two sittings and mourned that it was over. I've got the second one preordered. There's a blind hero (with no magical healing love resolution!), there's a heroine who charmed the hell out of me, and finding the joy in stories and make believe was an important plot point. The writing was also incredibly witty and bright, and had me actually chuckling at times. I have no idea what her Spindle Cove series is like, but I do plan to check it out soon.
Laura Lee Guhrke has a series called Girl Bachelors, where all our heroines are working career women in the late eighteen hundreds. It makes such a lovely contrast from all the heroines who can't work because they're gentlemen's daughters or nobility. I'm eating those up.
Mary Balogh is my current binge read. Her Bedwyn Saga series is wonderful. I've just finished Slightly Wicked and I can't say enough good things about it. Heroine with agency! Who takes charge of her own body! Who takes her one chance at sex and revels in it! And then the rest of the book is about family politics and the hero slowly winning her into loving him, in a non-creepy way, which made me ridiculously happy. I'd pick up anything by Mary Balogh, because her writing is darned fantastic.
As a total cheat, I'm also throwing in the Mercedes Lackey Elemental Masters series. They're historical romances with magic and adventure. Blood Red and Home from the Sea didn't do much for me, but I've reread the others so often it's ridiculous.
I've got Julia Quinn's The Viscount Who Loved Me on my list to read soon, due to recs from various people who keep telling me the banter is fantastic, and Three Weeks with Lady X by Eloisa James has also been recced to me from various sources for the same reason. I'll make a note somewhere here if they're any good when I read them :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 05:06 pm (UTC)I like JQ with a few minor reservations (come talk to me when/if you start reading her, I don't want to tip you in any direction) and I really do love EJ, even when I'm not totally jazzed about her plots, because there is always, always, always a female friendship that makes my heart happy, no matter what's going on with the TwuWuv.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-19 08:10 pm (UTC)I know that JQ isn't always perfect, but as long as she's not too problematic, I'll probably be fine. I'm probably going to library hold her until I know whether I'm loving her stuff or not.
Romances with good female friendships make me so happy, so it sounds like I need to push EJ higher on my list :-) I think that's one of the things I really enjoyed about the authors I recced - there's usually some great female friendships in there.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-19 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-19 11:45 pm (UTC)I do like Christie's more thriller-ish books, ridiculous or not. I picked up a second-hand edition that has both The Man in the Brown Suit and They Came to Baghdad bound in one book, and like both the heroines, Anne and Victoria and their spirit of adventure in those.
I have a Courtney Milan lined up as part of my Christmas reading. I bounced hard off the one Julia Quinn I've read, but I see she's written quite a few, so I hope you find one you enjoy.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-22 03:42 pm (UTC)The Courtney Milan gets better with each book in the series. I bounced hard off her previous one, but the Brothers Sinister made me deeply happy.
I've been recced a specific Julia Quinn, by people who have made some good recs for me previously, so I remain hopeful that it will work for me.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-19 10:18 pm (UTC)I bloody adored the Brothers Sinister a few months ago (the Countess Conspiracy was my favourite too), but since then I've been casting about for where to go with historical romance, because I don't want to pick up the wrong thing and get turned off the whole genre. Not that reading many, many terrible SF/F books has turned me off those genres; but I feel like the wrong series might be laden with tropes that would send me scurrying back to the land of spaceships and pseudo-medieval queens with nary a backward glance, and I don't want to miss anything I might love as much as Brothers Sinister.
I feel much more confident in my baby steps armed with your recs. Girl Bachelors especially sounds right up my alley; Romancing the Duke, too. And thank you for the tip about Milan's Turner series, which I'd been considering picking up, but hadn't because of the Harlequin thing.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-22 03:47 pm (UTC)Romance is a genre with a lot mines waiting to be trigger, so I can understand your hesitation! I'll make sure to note here whenever I find something I love and why, if that's going to help :-)
Girl Bachelors especially sounds right up my alley; Romancing the Duke, too
With Romancing the Duke, I kept expecting it to hit the tropes that drive me nuts and there was the odd moment when it very nearly went there...and then it went in a different direction. I think that's what made me so happy - the idea that people are seeing those traps and subverting them. Girl Bachelors was something I didn't know I needed until I found them :-)
And thank you for the tip about Milan's Turner series, which I'd been considering picking up, but hadn't because of the Harlequin thing.
Yeah, the Harlequin thing made me wary, and I'm glad I picked up the one I had on sale so it was only a dollar and a few hours of my life wasted. Milan's writing has definitely benefited from the freedom that self-pub gives her. Harlequin is probably the worst publisher for requiring their books to have all the tropes that make me run a mile.