Where Freyja Punches the Guy. Twice.

Slightly Scandalous by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm pretty convinced Mary Balogh makes little bets with herself that she can make rough characters sympathetic and make unlikely couples somehow work. IMO, based on seven or eight books so far, she's batting 1000. But I thought she gave herself too hard a task this time.

Freyja Bedwyn is hard to make romantic. She's usually angry; she's combative; she's not terribly pretty; she's impatient; she's a tomboy; she's grouchy, and grumpy, and utterly opposed to sentimentality; and she is quite prone to violence. I mean, there's still a lot to work with: she is active and competitive and proud, and though she can be mean she can also be funny. Not content with that challenge, the author made her even more difficult than necessary for the first 200 or 250 pages. TBH, I wished she had given her softer edges well before that, make it a little easier for the reader to feel sympathy and connection, but she wanted to wait until the last minute...

Kinda the same with the MMC, Joshua Moore. He is framed as a a rogue, almost a cad, who is always laughing and calling Freyja "Sweetheart" in a (in my mind anyway) condescending and insulting way. I was not loving him. Then their meet cute was more weird than cute (he ran through her room at in inn trying to get away from an angry mob and she punched him in the nose). When they bump into each other in Bath later they continue their odd dance--he's joking and insincere; she's angry and aggressive. You can see how he could be right for her, because she would never go for a sweet, sincere, sedate kind of guy, nor would he like a mousy woman. But they remain badly matched almost all the way through, long after they get into one of those fake engagements. (Not my favorite trope.) Their attraction is similarly violent, but doesn't feel like it has legs. If you know what I mean.

What finally works, nearer the end than I would have liked, is that both reluctantly and accidentally reveal how kind and loving they actually can be. They meet each other's families, where they are shown to advantage. They're not softies, but they are good people. It turns out he isn't really a rogue, because he takes care of his cousins and other vulnerable folks, and she's not really a misanthrope, because she has a bunch of family that love her and she loves back. She likes that about him; he likes that about her. And they both like that they're still very highly charged, competitive people.

So, the author wins her bet. She pulls it off. They were both a little unsympathetic at first and their connection was unlikely, but I like them both at the end and feel like their romance makes good. I wasn't feeling it for more than half the book, though, and almost all the fun is in the second half. (IMO.) In any case, I'm sure lots of people will enjoy their battling at the beginning more than I did.

Recommended. Good series.

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Where Quentin Makes the Most of His Opportunity

Quentin Durward by Walter Scott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a huge Sir Walter Scott fan, and this one is right down the middle for me. Great book. All five stars.

Our main character is a Scot, but he's in France, finding a place (with the help of his uncle) in the Scottish Archers, a troop of Scots nobles who served Louis XI. In this period, the Duke of Burgundy was richer and more powerful than the king himself, and the story deals with their conflict.

Quentin is one of those somewhat naive but very earnest young gentlemen who make good impression on jaded old soldiers (or rulers). He's kidded a little by others, but he's well-liked and even respected, and even though he's brand new in his position, he's called in for doing the king a special service immediately. A pair of high-born women--a youth named Isabelle and her aunt--have run from Burgundy because Isabelle is being forced into a marriage she doesn't want, and take refuge with the king. This is embarrassing to him, because he knows he can't protect her. Louis choses to send Quentin with Isabelle and her aunt to Liege to take refuge with a bishop of that city, one of his relatives. But the king is planning to have them ambushed on the way so that she can be carried away by another nobleman who is helping Louis disrupt the city of Liege, trying to weaken his enemy, Burgundy. Louis gets his help with an uprising; De la Marck gets a pretty young wife.

On the way, Quentin falls in love with Isabelle, of course. He also uses his wits to discover the plan, letting him avoid the ambush. The king is frustrated that the young man he chose performed too well; Quentin is angry that the king he vowed to serve would set him up. There's tons of action and intrigue here, history and politics, and lots of great characters. The villains--a couple of Bohemians who work secretly for the king--are some of the most interesting. Scott always has a soft spot for dangerous people on the edge of society.

Near the end, there is a showdown between Burgundy and France, and then an awkward joint attack on Liege, where Quentin has a chance to win Isabelle's hand.

This is the quintessential medieval romance (or 19th century romance if you prefer, set in medieval times). Knights and castles, ladies and fools, battles and debates. It's all written in an elevated, kinda wordy style, but if you've read Scott before, you already know. I love it.

Recommended. :)

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Where Mitch Rapp Goes Roguish

Enemy of the State by Kyle Mills
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(My gut says 4.5 stars. Goodreads makes you choose. It costs nothing, so...)

This is a very good thriller. I am not, generally, a fan of thrillers, but this is the second book in the series that I have read so far--completely out of order--and I really enjoyed both. The action is literally almost nonstop, and it just keeps rolling. But I've read other thrillers with similar levels of action that didn't work at all for me. It isn't enough just to have one fight after another, one confrontation after another. I'm not sure what's the secret ingredient; I think the author (Kyle Mills in this case) makes the reader connect with the MC better than some other authors do.

I'm not quite sure. I think that's it.

Mitch Rapp is very good character and a lot of fun to watch. I know some people don't like protagonists like him, but I do--guys who are not superheroes, but are still very, very capable, performing at a level beyond what you think a real person can achieve. Some people think that's cheating or something. I don't. Is Sherlock too smart, too "overpowered," to be a good MC? Obviously not. Is John Wick too efficient, too good a shot? Doesn't seem to be the consensus. In modern TV, there's Morgan Gillory on High Potential, a woman who knows so much more than you think is possible--but that's part of what makes her such a cool character. (She's also kinda dysfunctional, if loving, so that makes her really fun.) Anyway, Mitch Rapp is like that. He's really good at his job--a great shot, very athletic, super poised, filled with ideas. He's not made of iron, though; he has limits, and often gets pretty badly injured. He's not Superman, but he is, more or less, Jason Bourne.

As always, he goes up against terrorists and other global threats. In this case, he's exposing and terminating the secret alliance between high-ranking Saudis and ISIS. He can't do that officially as a CIA agent, so he's forced to "retire" and go rogue (wink wink). It works. It's fun. As far as I can tell, the geopolitics are pretty accurate. (Where they aren't, I'm not the guy to notice.)

A key to the success of this character, IMO, is how he scrupulously avoids harming innocent people just doing their job. It's hard to support violence, even fictional violence on the page, and it requires the author to thread the needle--bad guys harming people are targets, but good guys or regular people must be protected. Real life isn't quite like that, unfortunately, but I don't think this series would work so well if Mitch Rapp wasn't so careful about protecting innocent people anywhere in the world.

In this essay....

Anyway, I liked it, and I've grabbed a couple more, still way out of order. It's always fun to find a new author to enjoy, especially in a genre that you (I) seldom read in.

Recommended.

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Where He Should Have Risked It

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yes. It *is* that good. For real. 5 stars.

I first read this back in 10th grade. Mr. Vanciu (he was awesome) made us do book reports in world history class, and this was one of my choices. Even then, reading it on my own, going into it without a great deal of interest, I liked it. Almost fifty years further on, after enjoying a few different adaptations, I've finally come back to the original (in translation still, obviously), and found it entertaining and engrossing and thought-provoking and touching (and infuriating!) all at once. I'm a big fan of happy endings, but once in a while a really good story can have a sad ending (kinda sad; mostly sad) that still works for my brain and my psyche, and this is one of them.

The language is great. The plot is classic. And the love story is beautifully tragic. (You idiot! Take a risk! Speak to her!) But that's Cyrano. He's brilliant and brave and utterly, immovably stubborn. He loves the beautiful woman, but his appearance prevents him from taking a chance with Roxane. Instead, he puts all of his love and all of his poetry in letters that he sends under Christian's name. He's already handsome; with Cyrano's fine words, his compliments and deep thoughts, Roxane falls completely in love with the young soldier. But it was really the words that won her, not Christian's handsomeness. She has loved the man behind the letters the whole time without knowing it was Cyrano she loved; Cyrano didn't believe Roxane could truly love him until it was too late to matter.

Damn.

Anyway, the updated adaptations are fun, but this doesn't really need any updating. It's perfectly comprehensible as is, and the story does everything it needs to do for a modern audience to totally get it, IMO. Even just reading it, the play works. (I wonder if there's a novelization?) Yes, again, it's that good.

Highly recommended.

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Where Anne Goes to College

Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a good reason these books have quietly survived in the culture, on a slow boil for the last 100+ years. This one, like the other books in the series, is a real pleasure to read, and I enjoyed it.

It's not for everyone. It wasn't for a younger version of me. There's a rosy tinge of optimism that can be too much, I think, for some readers, maybe a little too much sentimentality, and I wouldn't argue the point (even though I don't agree). I like that the story is cozy, somewhat; I like that Anne is an optimist; I like that she is a catalyst for joy in other people's lives; I like that she accepts people who are difficult; I like that she doesn't settle for second-best. Those elements are balanced by the harsh realities of life--the early death of friends and loved ones; the heartbreak of love affairs; the disappointment of hopes. Nothing is easy, and not everyone gets a happy ending. It feels painfully real, but presented with joy just the same.

One of the most significant themes in this book and the series is that there is a cost for not taking a risk, for not starting your life, for not marrying that person you loved. Lonely old people are all through the series. The stories allow for people doing late in life what they should have done sooner--better late than never--but it shows over and over how crucial it is that people make connections and support one another and listen to their hearts from the start. Time is short; don't wait. Don't let life pass you by.

Most of the book is Anne's college years, and even though it's 70 earlier than my own college years, it gives me a real sense of nostalgia as if I were there. It's a mixed feeling. I can sense the exhilaration of being young at school even while I'm feeling the well-worn, sentimental yearning for a period of my life that is now well past. Those years are short, and even in the novel they fly by. As in the rest of the book, we're reminded not to wait. Get after it. Live well. Love well. Look around you today.

Anne isn't quite as sunny in this book as she is elsewhere, but she's still well ahead of the curve. Readers who can't take that kind of MC may never read this series with pleasure. There's also a touch of churchiness here (about as much as Jane Austen has) that I don't love, but it's reasonable for the time. Still, I find these books surprisingly modern in tone. A little subversive, even, especially regarding women's rights and freedoms. Just making a novel about women going to college back in the early 1900s, treating that experience as natural and commonplace, feels modern, and I suspect it had a positive effect on readers at that time.

I liked it. I think many readers could read this with pleasure (if they were to give it a chance), but even more than that, I think readers could find themselves motivated by the novel to adopt a new attitude toward some things, maybe even make some changes in their lives. In the same way that many of us, trying to be a better person, have asked ourselves more than half-seriously, "What would Ted Lasso do?" some of us unmotivated people might also ask ourselves, "What would Anne do?" She'd go have some fun, probably.

Ted would have liked Anne. She's curious.

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Where I Thought Indy Got a Bit Boring

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark by Ryder Windham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I meant to buy the regular novelization and accidentally got the junior novelization. That's okay; I have a bookcase full of MG and YA novels and sometimes enjoy them as much as or more than mainstream novels. So I read it, somewhat hopefully, and it was fairly entertaining. But I didn't love it. 3 stars.

Honestly? It was acceptable, and the story is engaging enough that it's still fun, so 3 stars feels fair. (A surprising number of readers gave it 4s and 5s, so listen to whoever you trust.) But IMO, while condensing the action and making it mostly inoffensive for a younger audience (which I acknowledge is a difficult task), this exciting adventure story becomes very... plain. The mood tends toward cozy and playful rather than thrilling or menacing. There are a few scenes that still mostly work, where the tension is maintained, but much of the book is matter-of-fact. Because huge sections of action have to be summarized in narration, the reader is drawn farther and farther from the action until it doesn't feel very real. Much of the danger is erased, the exotic feels everyday, and the plot becomes strangely bland.

In general, I'm in favor of junior novelizations for younger readers and reluctant readers, and this version might work for many of them. But I feel like the changes made for readability unfortunately cut out a lot of the drama and tension.

Still pretty good, IMO. Just not awesome.

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Where Blaise Spies on the Rebels

The King's Cavalier by Samuel Shellabarger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This 1950 historical fiction novel is one of the best things I've read in in the last year. Set in 1500s France, it tells a story of spies, international intrigue, romance, and sword fighting in the best tradition of The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride. (No ROUS's, but pretty much everything else.) It was fun all the way through, tightly plotted and action-filled, but it was also very well written, with fantastic prose. Nothing missing here. All five stars, easy.

Blaise Lalliere is a soldier from a minor noble family. He's not considered all that clever, but when his family sides with their liege, the Duke of Bourbon, against the king, he doesn't go along with it. When he defends de Surcy, one of the king's counselors, from the conspirators, he is enlisted to help with covert actions by him and the king's mother, and it is on this mission that he and others discover that he does have a flair for intrigue, that there's more to him than the simple soldier. A good part of the book has him escorting an English woman to Geneva for the regent, keeping an eye on her. The king is interested in her, but she is also a suspected spy. The rest of the book is set up by that start, with new and trickier dilemmas for the main characters; he and Anne Russell are intelligent, noble, and honorable, and both are conflicted by various allegiances that make every action fraught with danger one way or another.

If an action novel this engaging and exciting had been written 200 years ago by Scott or Dumas, I would have read it long ago, along with a million others, and it would probably be a classic with its own Wikipedia page. If it had been written last year, I'd be hearing about it on TikTok. But until I happened on a book by this author in a used book store, I'd never heard of it or him. 1950 is an awkward place for genre fiction like this--both too new and too old to come to our attention except by accident.

Look this one up. I loved it.

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