skygiants | (no subject)

Coincidentally I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately that is somehow related to the Opium Wars. I was not expecting Courtney Milan's latest series to join the collection, but I am excited by the discovery!

Taken by itself, Once Upon A Marquess is cute but not the strongest of Milan's romances. Our Heroine Judith is the daughter of a disgraced former member of the nobility who was convicted of treason in China, along with her beloved brother, and has spent the last nine years desperately trying to support her younger siblings and achieve for them the opportunities they've lost; also she makes clockwork. Our Hero Christian is her former suitor, who also happens to have been her brother's best friend, who also happens to be the person whose testimony got her father and brother convicted of treason; also he has a history of opium addiction and what seems to be some form of OCD; also he's incapable of not making jokes.

(I spent the entire book hearing the voice of Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins doing all Christian's dialog. I don't know if there's any evidence that Courtney Milan has played Dragon Age but if she does I refuse to believe there wasn't an influence.)

Christian and Judith, as mentioned above, are reasonably cute, and I tend to find romances with significant emotional backstory more plausible than lust at first sight. But honestly the weight of the book is not really on their dynamic so much as it is on Judith's relationships with her siblings (as we all know sibling stuff is my favorite stuff!) and on setting up SIGNIFICANTLY MORE ONGOING PLOT, and specifically geopolitical/worldbuilding/history plot, than I think Milan has ever really done in her romance series before.

This is probably in large part due to Amitav Ghosh, but the timing is really perfect, because right now I am SO INTO a 'let's go AU and fix the Opium Wars!' plot. YES OK LET'S. LET'S DO IT. I'M HERE FOR IT.

(I was also really into the whole 'Anthony is too moral to have betrayed his country!' 'um the thing is I think he is too moral NOT to betray his country if his country is morally ... the worst .....' thing. Bless Courtney Milan's anti-colonialist agenda.)

I am also very excited for a.) lots and lots of ongoing complex sibling stuff, MY KRYPTONITE, b.) what covers (and dropped hints) suggest will be at least one book with a Chinese protagonist, and c.) what covers suggest will be at least one book with a black protagonist. Basically I am ready to give Courtney Milan money for this series.)

Also I read Her Every Wish, the companion novella about Judith's friend Daisy, a flower-shop girl who's entered a competition for seed funds to open her own business, and Daisy's ex Crash, a mixed-race bisexual bicyclist and numbers man. I liked everything about the outlines of this plot, which is about how layers of toxic assumptions can work at cross-directions to hurt people who care about each other, and thought it needed about four times the page space to actually do the emotional arc justice -- like, there were enough real issues in Daisy and Crash's initial split that fixing all of their internalized prejudices and insecurities with one or two mildly anvilicious clue-bat conversations didn't quite feel believable or satisfying to me.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/445487.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rymenhild

Siblings! I would like to read much more about Theresa, and not necessarily in a traditional romance novel way.

I got a strong whiff of past Christian/Anthony in the setup, but if so it's subtext and I could have been imagining things.

From:

skygiants

Meeeeeee too. I'm very curious about whether Theresa will get her own book, and, if so, what it will look like.

I got super straight vibes off Christian, but that's probably entirely because Alistair is basically the straightest of all Dragon Age love interests.

From:

agonistes

1) ....clearly you haven't read enough dragon age fic

2) for me the christian/anthony subtext was there from the beginning because of how bad christian wanted the journals. "I BET HE WROTE SOMETHING ABOUT ME, DID HE GIVE ME A NICKNAME" = my mental conception of christian's thought process

From:

skygiants

1) well that is because I am still mid-Inquisition and it is all spoilery >:(

2) lololol I mean HE PROBABLY DID. I hope someday we see excerpts and it's like, Anthony is Eagle One, Christian is It Happened Once In A Dream. (Theresa is Eagle Two.)

From:

rymenhild

I want Theresa's book to break the mold. I don't care how. Ace with no love interest, ace with love interest, poly and completely unconcerned about dating two people who are in turn dating other people, political quest story that ignores/transcends any romance genre traditions, anything that makes Theresa happy in her own particular way. Plus several dozen kittens, I assume.

Edited Date: 2016-06-16 11:54 pm (UTC)

From:

skygiants

Yes, that's EXACTLY what I want, and I very much hope Milan will deliver it. (I mean, heck, I would read the book that was just Theresa and the several dozen kittens.)

That said, given genre constraints and marketability, I'm keeping my expectations low; I will be pleased if we get a Theresa novella.

From:

kore

Our Hero Christian is her former suitor, who also happens to have been her brother's best friend, who also happens to be the person whose testimony got her father and brother convicted of treason; also he has a history of opium addiction and what seems to be some form of OCD; also he's incapable of not making jokes.

....aaaahahaha I do not have a type nope nope no

From:

sovay

....aaaahahaha I do not have a type nope nope no

May I join you on the Group W Bench?

From:

kore

Plenty of room! -- I think it's the "incapable of not making jokes" that really sealed it.

From:

skygiants

lol I was gonna say 'I suspect you are not alone there' even before I saw

sovay's comment

From:

kore

I bet it's a BIG comfy bench.

From:

thistleingrey

I spent the entire book hearing the voice of Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins doing all Christian's dialog.

ha! I haven't read this book yet, but that sentence pretty much guarantees that I will hear it that way, too. Thanks? :)

From:

skygiants

I am here to help :D

From:

sovay

Coincidentally I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately that is somehow related to the Opium Wars.

What else have you got?

From:

skygiants

Primarily Amitav Ghosh's >Ibis trilogy, which absorbed my brain and attention for quite a while; more tangentially, Karen Joy Fowler's Sarah Canary, which has a Chinese immigrant protagonist, and even more tangentially The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and a nonfiction book about early MI6, both of which touched upon some of the lasting resonances. Not much other nonfiction, though I feel that should probably change at this point.

From:

sovay

Primarily Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy, which absorbed my brain and attention for quite a while; more tangentially, Karen Joy Fowler's Sarah Canary, which has a Chinese immigrant protagonist, and even more tangentially The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and a nonfiction book about early MI6, both of which touched upon some of the lasting resonances.

I think my first encounter with the Opium Wars was in Laurence Yep's Dragon's Gate (1993), which I read the year it came out; they are recent history to the narrator and his family. I always think there should be something about them in Mountain Light (1985), but that's the Taiping Rebellion. Man, I wish my books were not in boxes. The Serpent's Children (1984) and Mountain Light are decades-old comfort reading for me. [edit] Oh, jeez, and I left you a horrifically run-on comment to that effect on your post about them. I'm sorry about that.

Not much other nonfiction, though I feel that should probably change at this point.

Let me know what you find?

Edited (attempted to follow tags and leave comment, discovered had already left comment, comment blithered on forever, am removing myself from the internet now) Date: 2016-06-17 09:30 am (UTC)

From:

skygiants

Ha, yes you did but I am always happy to revisit & reminisce about them because I love them too! THOSE BOOKS ARE SO WONDERFUL.

I will definitely let you know if I dig up anything good. :D

From:

evewithanapple

This is probably the wrong thing to get stuck on, but . . . the nineteenth-century love interest is named Crash?

From:

skygiants

Nicknamed Crash, which still seems a bit motorcycle gang, but on the other hand if that's an in-joke meant to convey the mental image of a VICTORIAN VELOCIPEDE GANG I guess I'm not complaining.

From:

happydork

Maybe this is old news to people who actually pay attention to things, but have we talked about the fact that one day there will be a Courtney Milan f/f novel???