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Dec. 31st, 2018 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThere were so many books I meant to write up this year and never managed to get round to, and I hope I still will get round to some of them in the New Year! But for my last post of this year I'm going to aim to knock out as many as I can in one post by writing up K.J. Charles' Society of Gentlemen series, all three novels of which I read this year, generally on airplanes.
All three of these books are queer Regency romances between a.) one member of a club of gay aristocratic buddies and b.) someone who is pretty much not an aristocrat:
A Fashionable Indulgence, in which a dandy takes on the My Fair Lady-ing of a junior impoverished radical who comes into an inheritance and now wants to be an aristocrat instead of a radical. This is a difficult premise for me because on the one hand, being Very Tired by All The Bad Things and just wanting to relax and have a nice life IS very relatable and I sort of respect Charles for leaning into that, but on the other hand, aristocracy IS a poison and the one percent ARE morally reprehensible and it's also hard to frame 'and I decided to just lean into the fact that following my dreams means living a pleasantly boring life with all my inherited wealth!' as an act of moral courage per se....
A Seditious Affair, in which an actually serious radical printer and an aristocrat who work for the Home Office have been carrying on secret anonymous assignations for ages and then have to deal with it when they realize that They Are Political Enemies. For me this was by far the most interesting of the trilogy and also the most successful as a book. I'm very into romances where the main obstacle is Genuine Idealism; Silas the pragmatic middle-aged lower-class revolutionary printing press owner is a character designed to appeal to me and the narrative actually manages to set up his romance with a conservative aristocrat in a way that doesn't require him to compromise more of his ideals than I found livable, although of course it does that by setting up a convenient 'well this particular revolution is stupid and badly constructed and probably a trap anyway!' like yes, okay, but so is the class system...
A Gentleman's Position, in which an aristocrat who thinks of himself as Very Moral is uncomfortable about banging his valet, for moral reasons; the plot thinks that this actually means he wasn't respecting his valet's agency and I can understand why his valet would be annoyed about that but I still think honestly from a moral perspective he was probably right. Had a minimum of radicals and therefore I don't remember much else.
In addition to these three novels there is also at least one novella and several short stories that I have not read. I did read a novella of hers called Wanted, A Gentleman which I thought was part of this series but turned out not to be, which was probably for the best; it was about an amoral printer and a wealthy black freedman who have to work together to ... stop someone eloping to Gretna Green maybe? I don't actually remember much about the plot but I think I did find it overall pretty enjoyable.
The thing here honestly is that Charles is genuinely trying to do more with class and social issues than many Regency romances and I do have a lot of respect for that, but as soon as a Regency romance hands me a single reminder of the existence of radical political movements I immediately start wanting to spend all my time with them and wondering why we have to care about aristocrats at all. (I mean, I know why, and it's because dukes rake in the dollars, but.)
Anyway my real favorite KJ Charles book that I read this year was The Henchman of Zenda, unapologetic Rupert of Hentzau/Jasper Detchard Ruritanian adventure slash fanfic. I didn't think poor Rudolf Rassendyll needed to be quite as vilified as he was but otherwise I enjoyed this very much; I was initially quite dubious about anyone trying to force cheerfully amoral Rupert and Jasper into traditional romantic true love molds and fortunately this book does not at all attempt to. Also, it hits a very good style balance of feeling just enough like Zenda pastiche to get the flavor while also being modern enough to do the rest of what it wants to do. Feels like very good Yuletide fic and I mean that as a compliment.
All three of these books are queer Regency romances between a.) one member of a club of gay aristocratic buddies and b.) someone who is pretty much not an aristocrat:
A Fashionable Indulgence, in which a dandy takes on the My Fair Lady-ing of a junior impoverished radical who comes into an inheritance and now wants to be an aristocrat instead of a radical. This is a difficult premise for me because on the one hand, being Very Tired by All The Bad Things and just wanting to relax and have a nice life IS very relatable and I sort of respect Charles for leaning into that, but on the other hand, aristocracy IS a poison and the one percent ARE morally reprehensible and it's also hard to frame 'and I decided to just lean into the fact that following my dreams means living a pleasantly boring life with all my inherited wealth!' as an act of moral courage per se....
A Seditious Affair, in which an actually serious radical printer and an aristocrat who work for the Home Office have been carrying on secret anonymous assignations for ages and then have to deal with it when they realize that They Are Political Enemies. For me this was by far the most interesting of the trilogy and also the most successful as a book. I'm very into romances where the main obstacle is Genuine Idealism; Silas the pragmatic middle-aged lower-class revolutionary printing press owner is a character designed to appeal to me and the narrative actually manages to set up his romance with a conservative aristocrat in a way that doesn't require him to compromise more of his ideals than I found livable, although of course it does that by setting up a convenient 'well this particular revolution is stupid and badly constructed and probably a trap anyway!' like yes, okay, but so is the class system...
A Gentleman's Position, in which an aristocrat who thinks of himself as Very Moral is uncomfortable about banging his valet, for moral reasons; the plot thinks that this actually means he wasn't respecting his valet's agency and I can understand why his valet would be annoyed about that but I still think honestly from a moral perspective he was probably right. Had a minimum of radicals and therefore I don't remember much else.
In addition to these three novels there is also at least one novella and several short stories that I have not read. I did read a novella of hers called Wanted, A Gentleman which I thought was part of this series but turned out not to be, which was probably for the best; it was about an amoral printer and a wealthy black freedman who have to work together to ... stop someone eloping to Gretna Green maybe? I don't actually remember much about the plot but I think I did find it overall pretty enjoyable.
The thing here honestly is that Charles is genuinely trying to do more with class and social issues than many Regency romances and I do have a lot of respect for that, but as soon as a Regency romance hands me a single reminder of the existence of radical political movements I immediately start wanting to spend all my time with them and wondering why we have to care about aristocrats at all. (I mean, I know why, and it's because dukes rake in the dollars, but.)
Anyway my real favorite KJ Charles book that I read this year was The Henchman of Zenda, unapologetic Rupert of Hentzau/Jasper Detchard Ruritanian adventure slash fanfic. I didn't think poor Rudolf Rassendyll needed to be quite as vilified as he was but otherwise I enjoyed this very much; I was initially quite dubious about anyone trying to force cheerfully amoral Rupert and Jasper into traditional romantic true love molds and fortunately this book does not at all attempt to. Also, it hits a very good style balance of feeling just enough like Zenda pastiche to get the flavor while also being modern enough to do the rest of what it wants to do. Feels like very good Yuletide fic and I mean that as a compliment.
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Date: 2018-12-31 05:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, hard agree on that one. I found it really interesting to read, because I enjoy the tension of how a romance author is going to build up the barriers so they're real and solid but find a way past, and KJC is such a good author that I was confident she was going to do it, and then at the end it was just like, oh, okay, but maybe this is exactly as terrible as we worried it would be at the start?
I am so deeply unsurprised that the wacky intertextual Ruritanian caper was your favourite. :D
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Date: 2018-12-31 06:37 pm (UTC)Henchman of Zenda was so restful by comparison, everyone was explicitly amoral and I didn't have to worry about feudal ethics at all and could just sit back and enjoy the swashbuckling.
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Date: 2018-12-31 09:33 pm (UTC)I will have to read this one.
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Date: 2019-01-01 09:38 am (UTC)I read the first of these books, and I fully agree with the above!
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Date: 2019-01-01 09:38 am (UTC)It took me quite a few goes to get me through A Fashionable Indulgence despite the revolutionaries, but A Seditious Affair was quite different (and scorchingly hot). I haven't read any other historical m/m with that dynamic. Sadly.
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