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May. 19th, 2018 10:01 amI didn't like An Extraordinary Union, the first book in Alyssa Cole's romance novel series about Civil War Spies, as much as I wanted to. I've just read A Hope Divided, the second book, and I thought it was a lot more interesting -- it makes some ambitious and unexpected choices, though I don't know if all of them necessarily work.
The premise: our heroine Marlie is the daughter of a former slave, raised since childhood by an abolitionist white woman whom she figures has to be her half-sister, although The Exact Details Are Never Spoken. She learned herbal remedies from her mother and Scientific Medicine from her studies and has a chemistry lab in the attic that she uses to support the family's Secret Pro-Union Activities, but otherwise rarely leaves the safety of home and her white family's well-meant but stifling protection, because, you know, the Civil War South.
...and her love interest, Ewan, is a Northern POW who spent the war reluctantly serving as a torture expert for the Union army.
THIS IS QUITE A CAREER FOR A ROMANCE HERO. Most of Ewan's romantic angst throughout the book is, understandably, 'I am so into Marlie and I think she should probably date someone who's not a torture expert.'
(Marlie's romantic angst, meanwhile, even more understandably: 'I am so into Ewan but it's the 1860s and trusting any white guy to be a good relationship partner seems! unwise!'
...with a brief detour after the reveal to 'I also think I should probably date someone who's not a torture expert.')
Ewan is also pretty clearly written as being on the autistic spectrum, and I do not feel particularly qualified to write about how that's handled and, in particular, the link between Ewan's autism and the fact that the Union army tapped him to be their torture guy. Either way, it does make for an interesting romance storyline that falls outside of a lot of the standard beats.
Meanwhile, the external plot -- external to the room where Ewan and Marlie spend a good half the book Tropetastically Trapped In Close Proximity while Ewan hides from the evil general who has decided to quarter himself in Marlie's house -- revolves heavily around the clash between the local soldiers and a group of deserters and draft-dodgers who have no interest in participating in the Confederate Army. Which is also an interesting and unusual choice, for a book set in the Civil War South.
I do wish there was more time to deal with all that and give some kind of resolution for Marlie's relationship with her white family, which is also interesting and complicated and then sort of gets dropped in the middle of the book after a Dramatic Revelation Smokebomb, but there IS an awful lot going on already and I can see that the plot would make this structurally difficult ....
The premise: our heroine Marlie is the daughter of a former slave, raised since childhood by an abolitionist white woman whom she figures has to be her half-sister, although The Exact Details Are Never Spoken. She learned herbal remedies from her mother and Scientific Medicine from her studies and has a chemistry lab in the attic that she uses to support the family's Secret Pro-Union Activities, but otherwise rarely leaves the safety of home and her white family's well-meant but stifling protection, because, you know, the Civil War South.
...and her love interest, Ewan, is a Northern POW who spent the war reluctantly serving as a torture expert for the Union army.
THIS IS QUITE A CAREER FOR A ROMANCE HERO. Most of Ewan's romantic angst throughout the book is, understandably, 'I am so into Marlie and I think she should probably date someone who's not a torture expert.'
(Marlie's romantic angst, meanwhile, even more understandably: 'I am so into Ewan but it's the 1860s and trusting any white guy to be a good relationship partner seems! unwise!'
...with a brief detour after the reveal to 'I also think I should probably date someone who's not a torture expert.')
Ewan is also pretty clearly written as being on the autistic spectrum, and I do not feel particularly qualified to write about how that's handled and, in particular, the link between Ewan's autism and the fact that the Union army tapped him to be their torture guy. Either way, it does make for an interesting romance storyline that falls outside of a lot of the standard beats.
Meanwhile, the external plot -- external to the room where Ewan and Marlie spend a good half the book Tropetastically Trapped In Close Proximity while Ewan hides from the evil general who has decided to quarter himself in Marlie's house -- revolves heavily around the clash between the local soldiers and a group of deserters and draft-dodgers who have no interest in participating in the Confederate Army. Which is also an interesting and unusual choice, for a book set in the Civil War South.
I do wish there was more time to deal with all that and give some kind of resolution for Marlie's relationship with her white family, which is also interesting and complicated and then sort of gets dropped in the middle of the book after a Dramatic Revelation Smokebomb, but there IS an awful lot going on already and I can see that the plot would make this structurally difficult ....
