Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

I love your description of the globe scene, Sarah.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is with both the first part of the book and with Emma that didn’t work for me, and I think it’s that there’s a distance—narratively, I guess—I feel from her most of the time.  It’s especially prominent for me in the first part of the book (Jane had a very apt metaphor involving a scarf, I think, but I can’t recall it now). 

I know there’s a fine line between portraying a heroine who doesn’t want anyone to get too close and a narrative that keeps its distance from her.  I wanted the narrative to break through that distance in ways that it didn’t a lot of the time.  Now when it did . . . WOW!—raw and nearly overwhelming like those scenes in Kinsale’s Seize The Fire when Sheridan is trying to bring Olympia back from the brink, living link an animal outside on the ground. Which meant I missed it all the more when the distance re-established itself.

Your thoughts parallel mine to a marked degree, though it took me awhile to figure out that the thing that most kept me from madly adoring the story was Emma.  In Part I, during the scene on the roof at the Maharaja’s, she thinks something to herself (trying to keep things spoiler-free here, but hopefully that wasn’t *too* vague) and it seemed sometimes as though she was determined to keep that attitude throughout Part II out of some weird kind of stubbornness. As in, “I told myself this is what I would do, so therefore I must do it regardless of what the facts have revealed”.  It all translated to me to a treating Julian with a kind of cruel coldness that I didn’t think he deserved and which she should have realized he didn’t deserve as soon as he told her his side of things.

However, there were many marvelous moments throughout and I found the story well worth the read despite my misgivings about Emma.

There have been some terrific first efforts out lately like this one that have me really excited for the genre; I’m looking forward to watching Duran develop.

Yay, I bought it and, yay, it was good. I tend to consume my romance fairly uncritically compared to other genres so I all I can contribute is, “Yipeee! Another historical author-autobuy!” I really loved all those scenes set in India. The stuff at the end with the traitor sub-plot got a bit hokey for me but I still closed the book with a satisfied sigh.

I finished this one yesterday, and I loved it. Maybe because the book I read right before it was A Restless Knight, so compared to that mediocrity, it was refreshingly compelling.

But poor Emma, she really went through a Perils of Pauline phase, didn’t she? I mean, how many horrible things can happen to one young woman? Drownings and beatings, and insults, nearly raped and terrorized, and then living with the guilt of a horrible crime. Poor Emma! Give the girl a break, for heavens sake!

Speaking of the horrible crime, I like that Julian figured it out within a few minutes. Don’t you hate it when you know the answer to a mystery, but the main character doesn’t? Like you just want to shout at him, “Read the Urdu! Where do you think it came from!” But no such frustration with this book. Julian was a clever boy and got it right away.

I’ll admit the villain was pretty one-dimensional, but what the heck. I still really liked the book.

“Best historical you’ve read this year?

Nope.  “

What is the best you have read this year?

Just guessing from my feeble memory that she’d say that the best historical was “Spymaster’s Lady” by something-or-other Bourne.

I’d say this was a really close second and that I maybe even liked it better.

I didn’t love Emma, but I actually thought she was really well written as a depressive with post-traumatic stress disorder. I do agree that her education was mentioned and then she sometimes acted TSTL. but all she had was all book larnin’ and art lessons, not hand-to-hand combat or even Urdu lessons, so I gave her a break. She can’t be smart at everything.

I went a lot easier on Emma, I think.
I can’t discount what some off the nightmarish experiences she went through must have done to her.  I’d have collapsed entirely just after the scene with Anne Marie and her companion.  I went back to that passage several times before moving on.  It was so brutal, and the title of the painting depicting it - “As I laughed”.  I can’t imagine how someone is to cope with something like that afterward.

I liked the way that Duran makes use of Emma being an artist.  The descriptions of her obsession with painting and how she perceives the world - through the eyes of an artist - are very evocative.  And there is such a strong sense of place to the portions of the story set in India - the India Emma sees.  The people (good & bad) places, textures & colors, smells, clothing - you name it - are all so very vibrant and alive because you can feel Emma’s perceptions of them.  London, by contrast, is very one-dimensional and gray, but very much in keeping with the way the story (and Emma) evolves.  It reflects so well how her experiences in India have altered her; the loss of her own vibrant qualities, and Julian’s grief & anger over that loss.  The painting she does of him when she first returns from India, and the changes she makes to it when she starts to bloom again, because of him - so allegorical.