Book Review #14 The Plight of the Darcy Brothers by Marsha Altman

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers
by Marsha Altman

Genre: Romance, Fan-Fiction
Ages: 14 and up
Sequel to The Darcys and the Bingleys

This book is considerably darker than the first one, but it has you laughing soon enough at the "colorful" antics of Georgie Bingley and Geoffrey Darcy. (One should never leave the children alone with the menfolk, it can get messy.) Once again, Ms. Altman's wonderful sense of humor keeps you laughing even when the Darcy family faces its most difficult times.

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers begins on a sad note, Elizabeth has just miscarried for a second time. Both she and Darcy are heartbroken, but society dictates that they pretend that nothing happened. Distraction from their grief arrives in the form of a mysterious letter from Mary Bennet, who has been abroad on the Continent. Her missive requests that Jane come to Brighton alone to meet her. Elizabeth, of course, decides to come along, and so the two sisters leave their husbands in charge of the children. Both Elizabeth and Jane are shocked when Mary reveals that she is pregnant. The father is a young Italian who claims he cannot marry her, and so Elizabeth and Darcy embark on a journey to find this young man and make him do the right thing by Mary and the child. Their trip leads to unexpected places, and Darcy discovers things about his family that he had never even dreamed of before.
While this book is not as bright and cheerful as The Darcys and the Bingleys, it delves deeper into the emotions and personalities of the characters, especially Darcy. I can hardly wait to see what happens next in this beautifully written series!

There is no profanity in this novel, but a less-than-polite term for one of illegitimate birth is used several times, and a couple of women are called (or call themselves) a rude name, so I give it a 5.10.

There are some sexual references, as well as a pervading theme of illegitimacy, and a prostitute plays a major role in the plot, so it rates a 6.10.

There is one scene of bloody violence and one of the characters is a flagellant, so it gets a 6.10.

                                                      Lieder Madchen

Book Review #13 Cleopatra's Heir + Interview with Author Gillian Bradshaw

Cleopatra's Heir
by Gillian Bradshaw
Review and Interview with Gillian Bradshaw

Genre: Historical Fiction

Ages: This one is very difficult for me to put an age to, my sister read it at 12, and liked it, but from what she said it may have been better to wait a year. I first read it when I was 14, and it didn't bother me at all. 13 might be the perfect number. :)



This book is on my top-ten historical fiction books, what number it is exactly, I cannot say. I have never been able to pick out a Number One, but this one could be it. I have always loved Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and Cleopatra's Heir blends all three cultures beautifully. I have read it three times since I first discovered it.

Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and Julius Caeser, was supposed to die. History says that he was killed, betrayed, but what if he survived? What if, somehow, he escaped? Wounded, wracked by epileptic seizures, he stumbled away from his own funeral pyre, stumbling as far as he could before collapsing on the road. The merchant Ani, a pious Egyptian, came across this wounded boy in the desert and took him in, caring for his wounds with absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into.

Caesarion is a proud, arrogant, determined and utterly impractical person who is portrayed in a completely believable fashion. One would think that such a person would be no fun to be around, but I found myself hoping as the story went along that he would somehow survive and find a new life.

There is hardly any languague in this book, though there is some calling on of mythical god, I give it a 4.10.

There are scenes of violence scattered throughout, including some ancient medical practices that are basically torture, so it gets a 6.10.

There are some sexual references as well as a somewhat disturbing scene where slavers inspect a young girl, so I rate it a 4.10.

I am pleased to welcome Gillian Bradshaw to Songs and Stories, she has graciously agreed to answer a few questions and it is absolutely wonderful to have her here. :)

What made you decide to write a story about Caesarion?

I suppose I was intrigued by the contrast between his background as the son of two of history's most legendary figures and his own insignificance. (It's surprising how many people don't realize that Cleopatra had children at all.) I wondered what it would have been like for him, and what would have happened if he hadn't died so young.  I did a bit of research, decided he would probably have been a monster, like his parents, put the project aside for a bit--then hit on the epilepsy angle, which made me sympathize with him again.

In all of your research and studying, who is your favorite out of all of the historical figures you have come across?

Eh.  Hard one: it tends to vary with what I'm reading now; there's also a distinction between figures I like and those I find fascinating. (A lot of the most fascinating figures in history aren't very likable--e.g., Augustus, Constantine, Oliver Cromwell . . .)  At the moment the one I like most would be John Lilburne, or possibly his wife Elizabeth--Levellers, who campaigned for democracy during the English Civil War.  He was excitable, quarrelsome, generous and self-sacrificing; she was incredibly brave and loyal. I like Athanasios of Alexandria, too, though he undoubtedly was a rabble-rouser, and Socrates always seems utterly charming. 

Which genre do you enjoy writing more, historical or science fiction?

Which do you prefer, cheese or apples? I like both, at different times.  Writing something with a contemporary setting means I have more freedom in the language and metaphors I can use, and I can communicate things about the characters from, e.g., the clothes they wear or the sort of car they drive.  On the other hand, I love history.

That said, my science fiction got steadily more and more realistic, until the last one I wrote (Bloodwood) was entirely a realistic novel (apart from the hallucinations.)   This is odd, because I love science fiction and fantasy, and find it much easier to write than realistic contemporary fiction, as well as more fun to read.  Blood was a painful struggle all the way through: why did I have to do it?  I don't know, though I'm very proud of that book, even though practically nobody's read it.  In contrast, the few fantasies I've written were very easy, done between more serious books just for fun. (These aren't the Arthurian books, which were the first novels I ever wrote, but some others that couldn't find a publisher.  I'm thinking of self-publishing one on Amazon for the Kindle, if you're interested.)

If you could meet one of your inventions, which one would it be?

Archimedes, I suppose.  Though I think that of all the characters I've invented the one I feel most sympathy for is Caesarion.  I was very pleased that you liked him too.

Do you ever think about what happens after the book ends? Such as, what happens to Arion and Melanthe after the end of Cleopatra's Heir?

Oh, I often think about what happens to the characters after the book ends!  But I can only write about it if it's a proper story.  Obviously, Arion and Melanthe are going to move back to Coptos, and the family will get rich from the Red Sea Trade, which boomed big-time in the early Empire.  I think their marriage will have some rough patches, since his temperament isn't an easy one, but she'll keep it happy.

I'd  like to have Arion meet Hermogenes, from 'Render Unto Caesar'.  They would have been contemporaries, and both involved in trade.  But I don't know if there's enough of a story there to sustain a whole book.

Are you working on anything new? Can you tell us anything about it?

I have another book coming out next month; it's called 'A Corruptible Crown', and is the sequel to 'London in Chains', my Civil War book. It's set in 1648, and the chapters alternate between Lucy, the heroine of 'London in Chains' and her husband Jamie.  I've also about finished research the next one, which will be set in 1688 in England and the Netherlands; this is to tie off some of the themes (printing and radical politics) of the last book.  After that I may go back to the classical period or I may do something completely different.

As I mentioned, I'm also intending to self-publish a fantasy book and see whether anybody reads it!

I hope that's some help.  I am most impressed with your efforts as a blogger!

Best wishes,

Gillian Bradshaw

Thank you for answering my questions! It was wonderful getting to talk to you after having read so many of your books. I hope you do publish that fantasy story, I would definitely read it! A Corruptible Crown sounds great, I really liked London in Chains and I would love to see those characters again. :)

                                          Good Luck!
                                                   Lieder Madchen

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday, set up by Laura Fabiani of Good Clean Reads, looked like so much fun that I had to give it a try. :) I haven't actually got anything in my mailbox, but apparently e-books count so I will go with that. :) I just got a copy of Lydia Bennet's Story from sourcebooks.com, and I am very excited about it! I haven't read anything by Jane Odiwe yet, but her books look great. :) I am sure there will be a review on this one before too long...

                                                            Lieder Madchen

Book Review # 12 The Darcys and the Bingleys by Marsha Altman

The Darcys and the Bingleys
by Marsha Altman

 

Genre: Romance
Ages: 14 and up

The Darcys and the Bingleys is my favorite of all the Pride and Prejudice sequels I have read so far. I love the humour and the wonderful brotherly rivalry between Darcy and Bingley, it made me laugh many times, especially when they were betting about whose wife would have a baby first. :)

Part one chronicles the first year of marriage, beginning right before the double wedding of Darcy and Elizabeth and Jane and Charles. Both couples struggle with pre-marital nerves and a great deal of unsolicited advice from numerous relations, with everyone concerned wishing that the wedding could be done with so that they can actually spend some time with their respective spouses.
Part two takes Darcy on another adventure into the world of marriage-prevention when Bingley asks his favor in investigating a suitor of Caroline Bingley's. This seemingly straightforward task leads to excitement and peril that nobody suspected, and that may place all of their lives in danger.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves comedy, romance, and adventure. I, personally, will definitely be re-reading this one in the future, as well as keeping an eye out for later books in the series.

There is some very occasional and mostly mild language in this book, so it gets a 2.10.

There is quite a bit of innuendo and references, but any scenes of sexuality fade away before anything happens, which I like. I give it a 5.10.

There are two scenes of violence in this novel, so I rate it a 5.10.

                                                  Lieder Madchen

Book Review #11 The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson

The Healer's Apprentice
by Melanie Dickerson

Genre: Fantasy, Fairytale Re-telling
Ages: 12 and up

Once again I must thank people at the SurLaLune blog for posting that this book was available for free on Kindle, I had never heard of The Healer's Apprentice until then. :)

The Healer's Apprentice is the story of young Christian girl named Rose. Her family is poor, so her mother is constantly trying to marry her off to this merchant or that, but Rose will have none of it. She intends to be the healer when her mentor, Geruscha, gets too old, and the healer doesn't have to marry anyone.
Lord Wilhelm Hamlin, the Duke's heir, is betrothed to the Lady Salomea, whom he has never met. She has been in hiding for years, sent away by her father who wished to keep her safe from the evil Moncore. Wilhelm has been trying to find and neutralize this threat, but he is always one step behind.

This is a lovely re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, the characters are wonderful, their personalities rich and complex. They struggle to fulfill their duties to their families even while they are desperate to break free, which keeps one hoping that somehow there will be a miracle for them. The minor characters are also interesting, Hildy, Gunthor, Rupert, and Geruscha especially. I liked how realistic it was in the medieval sense of how important reputation and honor was, and how horrible a loss of either would be. This is Melanie Dickerson's first novel, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for any more.

There is no profanity in this book.

There are some sexual references and innuendos, as well as one aborted assault, so it rates a 6.10.

There are several scenes of violence scattered through this novel, mostly mild but with one that was a little disturbing, so I give it a 5.10.

                                                                Lieder Madchen

Time Travel Reading Challenge 2011

I found this reading challenge on the At Home With Books blog, and it looked like a lot of fun. I love time travel stories and I feel quite positive that I can find at least twenty novels that fit the category. :) My first book is Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro. Here is a link for anyone else who wants to take up he challenge! Time Travel 2011 Reading Challenge

1. Catch the Lighting by Catherine Asaro, Book 2 in her Skolian series. (It does not really have anything to do with the first one.) A futuristic, not-quite-human soldier crash lands in an alternate late eighties Los Angeles, where he befriends a troubled young woman, well, perhaps more than befriends. :) Ages 15 and up.
2. The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale by Christine Bell
3. Rise of the Darklings by Paul Crilley
4. Unleash the Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon
5. Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon
6. Ruby Red by Kristin Gier
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I will keep updating this list as I go along. :)

                                       Lieder Madchen

Book Review #10 The Orchid Affair + Interview with Author Lauren Willig

The Orchid Affair
by Lauren Willig
Review and Interview

Genre: Historical Romance
Ages: 14 and up. However, some of the earlier books in the series are more of a 15 and up.
Book 8 in the Pink Carnation Series by Lauren Willig


Laura Grey has been a governess for sixteen years, and wanted to get her feet wet before she got old. However, when she joined the League of the Pink Carnation, she did not know that she would be right back at her old job of watching other people's children, albeit the children of an agent of the French police. The plan is simple, spy on Andrè Jaouen, teach his children, and report back to the Pink Carnation. However, nobody is as they seem and things rarely go as planned... Meanwhile, in the present, Eloise and Colin are in Paris, and Colin is having more difficulties with his rather dysfunctional relations while Eloise is still determinedly researching new material for her ever-expanding dissertation.


The Orchid Affair has the same brilliant humor that has characterized Lauren Willig's other novels. Where else would a spinster governess get to wield a sword? Where else would you find lovers of marzipan pigs? The Orchid Affair is a pure, fun, swashbuckling, adventure romance with great characters who are always managing to get themselves into the most complicated, and often ridiculous, situations, and one never knows how they are going to get out or what they might do next.

There is only some rare usage of profanity in this novel, but one use of the f-word means that I rate it a 5.10.

There are a couple of scenes of violence and some references to torture, but there isn't anything very graphic so I give it a 4.10.

There are some sexual innuendos and references, as well as one scene between an unmarried couple that fades away before it gets beyond touching, so it gets a 6.10.


This book was so much fun that I read through it in a single afternoon. On an impulse, without letting myself think long enough to get nervous, I e-mailed Lauren Willig and asked her if she would like to do do an interview, and I was absolutely thrilled when she wrote back and said that she would! Without further ado, I would like to welcome Lauren Willig to the Songs and Stories blog, and here are seven questions and her answers...

Lauren, how did you come to be interested in the French Revolution? When did you first decide to write a book set in that time?

Blame it on 80’s TV mini-series!  When I was ten, a Napoleon and Josephine miniseries aired on one of our local television stations.  Before that, my two historical obsessions had been Eleanor of Aquitaine and Queen Victoria.  After that, it was all about the Bonapartes.  I nagged all the adults in my life for Bonaparte-related books and even named the guppies from my 5^th grade science experiment after Napoleon’s numerous relations.  It wasn’t much of a surprise when Napoleon ate the rest of the guppies, but my interest outlasted the fish.  In my senior year of high school, I managed to persuade the History and English departments to let me research and write a novel about Napoleon’s stepdaughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, my very favorite of the Bonaparte clan.  It wasn’t a very good novel, but it did mean that I became very, very familiar with the private lives of the Bonapartes.

I wandered away from the French Revolution for a bit.  I majored in Renaissance Studies in college and then toddled off to grad school to pursue a degree in Tudor/Stuart England, dismissing anything after 1714 as just hopelessly modern.  But Napoleonic France was still there, waiting for me.  When I decided to write a novel for my own entertainment, at the end of my second year of grad school, I wanted to pick an area far enough away from my dissertation topic to feel like vacation but near enough to my own areas of expertise to be familiar.  And what better time period than my old stomping grounds, Napoleonic France?  I set the book in 1803, because I needed to have an English heroine in Paris, and the Peace of Amiens was the one time that would be realistically possible—and the rest all followed from there!

The characters in The Orchid Affair are somewhat different than in your previous novels, Laura and Andre are older than your other characters, and there are two children involved. How did you like writing about older and younger characters than you usually do?

Historical romance tends towards ingénues—but I was thirty-two when I began writing The Orchid Affair.  I’d written a couple of slightly older heroines, with all the usual excuses—the years on the marriage market, the family that couldn’t afford to pay for a Season, the villain who had locked the heroine in a box—but even that meant that my oldest heroine was twenty-five.  I decided it was time to write about a different sort of heroine, one who wasn’t part of that structured social world, one who had been around the block—or, in Keats’ more elegant phrase, much had she traveled in the realms of gold and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.  The result was thirty-two year old governess Laura Grey, a woman with a lot of life under her belt. 

Making my heroine older meant that I could write about an older hero without worrying that he should be on a sex offender registry somewhere.  My hero is thirty-six, and, like my heroine, he’s not your standard aristocratic dilettante.  He’s a hard-working former lawyer, now employed by the Prefecture of Paris, working eighteen and twenty hour days, seven days a week.  As a lapsed lawyer with lots of friends in the fields of finance and law, I know many thirty-something workaholics.  Having seen them navigating the shoals of work and family life, often with great difficulty, I had many excellent models to use for my hero as he struggles with the problem of being a single dad with a demanding job and two young children.

Since I don’t have any children of my own, I was very nervous about tackling children as characters.  Children in fiction are tough; I didn’t want to make them too sickeningly adorable or too mind-numbingly precocious, since those are the major pitfalls in trying to write convincing child characters.  Fortunately, I have two much younger siblings, who, while they’re all grown up now, provided excellent research opportunities back in the day, as well as an old friend who has two fabulous kids who just happen to be about the same age as Gabrielle and Pierre-Andre (um, not like there was any overlap there or anything).  She was lovely about loaning them out for tea parties, even though they are (a) sickeningly adorable, and (b) mind-numbingly precocious,

Augustus Whittlesby seems to keep popping up, will he be starring in his own book soon? Maybe alongside the Pink Carnation?

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Augustus Whittlesby will be starring in the next book, Pink IX, which comes out in January 2012.  There’s been a great deal of speculation about Augustus’ relationship with Jane, so I’ll tell you this right out: although Jane plays a large role in Pink IX, she is not the heroine.  We meet Augustus’ heroine, Emma Delagardie, briefly in The Orchid Affair.  Don’t be fooled by the French last name.  She’s actually an American, from upstate New York.

Here’s the Pink IX blurb:

As Napoleon pursues his plans for the invasion of England, English operative Augustus Whittlesby gets wind of a top secret device, to be demonstrated over the course of a house party at Malmaison.  The catch?  The only way in is to join forces with that annoying American socialite, Emma Morris Delagardie, who has been commissioned to write a masque for the weekend’s entertainment.  Even so, it should leave plenty of alone time with Augustus’ colleague (and goddess), Jane Wooliston, who has been tapped to play the heroine.  Or so Augustus tells himself.  In this complicated masque within a masque, nothing seems to go quite as scripted… especially Emma.

I’ve been posting bits and pieces about Emma and Augustus (and bits and pieces of the new book) on a new feature on the News page of my website called Teaser Tuesdays.

Warning: each chapter of Pink IX begins with a snippet of Augustus’ poetry.  If you can call it poetry.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

Do you think Eloise and Colin will ever get their own full-blown adventure?

Eloise and Colin are certainly off for more adventures after Orchid Affair… but as to whether they’ll ever get a full-length book, I can’t say.  It’s an idea with which I toy from time to time.  Right now, I’m itching to write a mystery novel—in which Eloise and Colin are the suspects in a murder case.  We’ll see if that happens.  I have some other ideas for them, as well.

In your acknowledgements, you name Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche as a source of inspiration. Out of personal curiosity, have you read his other works? (My favorite of his books is the Sea-Hawk.)

Although I do love Captain Blood, my favorite Sabatini has always been Scaramouche.  I hate to say it, but the movie version of The Sea Hawk spoiled me for the book.  I’d grown up on the Errol Flynn swashbuckler, so was terribly disappointed to read the book and find it so very different from the movie.  I’ll have to give it another go one of these days.

What is your favorite time period other than the French Revolution?

My real scholarly field, the one in which I was working when I began writing The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, is Tudor/Stuart England.  I started as a mid-Tudor girl, with a sideline in Renaissance Scotland, and wound up specializing in the English Civil War.  But my favorite time period, the one in which I most like to vacation, is the early eighteenth century.  Jacobite rebellions, broad-skirted dresses, men in elaborate frock coats, poems by Pope and scandalous theatrical performances—what’s not to love?

Is there a new novel that you are working on? What flower are you considering for it?

Now that Pink IX is all done (see above), I’m just getting going on Pink X.  For those of you who have read the past books, this is Tommy Fluellen’s story.  While it deals with a missing Indian treasure, the book has surprised me by wanting to be largely set in Wales.  I’ve been learning all sorts of interesting facts about Welsh history… and about Tommy! 

I’m dreadful with the flower-picking, so if anyone has any good suggestions, let me know….

Thanks so much, Natalie, for having me here on your blog!  And if anyone wants to know more about the books, you can always find me on my website, www.laurenwillig.com, or my Facebook author page, http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Lauren-Willig/10504674644.

Happy reading!

Thank you so much for answering my questions and being my first interviewee, it was great to have you here! I am looking forward to Pink IX and I hope we can do this again sometime!

                                                      Natalie (Lieder Madchen)