Since I read Devil’s Cub (the sequel to These Old Shades), I knew some of the characters already and the twixt that Leon is actually Leonie. I’ve always kinda like the trope of girls dressing up as boys. It’s always a good source of comedy. TV Tropes calls it Bixfauxnen. It’s usually really amusing and it was here too.

I liked this more than the Black Moth because the structure of it was better than Heyer’s first novel. It was more cohesive and there was less abrupt jumps between sets of characters. As usual, I liked the secondary and supporting characters. You get a sense that amidst the comedy, abductions, and the wild plots that these characters like each other and care for one another.

As for Leonie and the Duke. The latter is standard bad man in need of reform. I like that their union is about how she loves him for who he is and sees the little good in him. I do think that her worship of him was a little too much at times and she could be impertinent and rude. She made up for it by being incredibly charming by the end though and in Devil’s Cub when she matured more.

This is my fourth Heyer and my third in which a kidnapping of a female happens. It’s a harsh reminder how completely without rights women were back then. Even Lady Fanny tells her husband that she is his wife and not his chattel, but apparently, this doesn’t apply to unmarried females because they tend to get kidnapped so often in these books.

This was a fun Heyer novel and a good one to start off probably, but I still think I like A Civil Contract best. That was one of her later works though and I am trying to go through Heyer’s bibliography more or less chronologically.

Read May 21st-27th 2012. This was my 25th book of this year.

This was Georegette Heyer’s first novel and published in 1921 when Heyer was just 19. The novel inspires These Old Shades (which is the book I am reading after this one) which will set off Devil’s Cub and An Infamous Army.

As it happened with Devil’s Club, this book was a bit slow to start off, but it had some charming moments. Heyer gives her characters some delightful interactions and dialogue. I’ve noticed that her villains and antagonists go around blaming their genes and blood for their bad habits and addictions
which I guess would be appropriate for the time. The antagonists in this novel are fairly annoying, but they all seemed to be redeemed by the end. Even Tracy’s kidnappings are somewhat swept under a rug.

The best part of the novels were around Jack, Diana, Miss Betty and the O’Haras. Miss Betty steals almost every scene she is in. Diana was described as having “a tragic mouth that belied a usually cheerful disposition, and hinted at a tendency to look on the gloomy side of life”. If only I could have written like that at 17! While Heyer is not super literary or luminary in some ways, there is talent in writing characters, plots and stories with such appeal and seeming ease.

The biggest issue I had with this novel was actually the lack of page time for the above characters. Why was there so much time spent on secondary characters and not the main romance? I liked Diana, but I didn’t think the viewer read enough of her as a heroine. There was a lack of character and relationship development there. Too much on the antagonists and the periphery characters, unless they were suppose to be the protagonists? In any case, the most winsome characters had the least amount of attention in this book.

Still, an engaging first novel for any writer and enjoyable Heyer as usual.

Read May 20th 2012.