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The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Tag Archives: history

Review of The Girl on the Golden Coin

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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Tags

book review, girl on the golden coin, Historical Cavaliers, historical fiction, history, seventeenth century, stuarts

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front recently, mainly because my wedding is getting ever closer – less than three weeks now – meaning I’m spending far more time looking critically at flowers and cakes than typing merrily away. On the plus side, in an attempt to keep my sanity intact, I’ve been reading loads, and have developed quite the back-log of reviews.

My last post was a list of my planned summer reading, and I described one of the entries on it like this:

“Precisely because I love history so much, I tend to be slightly wary of historical fiction, but from what I hear, this Restoration-era novel about Lady Frances Stewart is both well written and well researched, as well as full of intrigue. And more importantly, the main character marries the son of the real-life Lord George Stewart.”

On that basis, of all the books I’ve read recently, The Girl on the Golden Coin seemed by far the most fitting to review, especially as I read most of during a trip to Oxford to meet with my wedding photographer (who incidentally took some amazing practice shots)

So did the book deliver?

THE GIRL ON THE GOLDEN COIN – MARCI JEFFERSON

THE BLURB

Impoverished and exiled to the French countryside after the overthrow of the English Crown, Frances Stuart survives merely by her blood-relation to the Stuart Royals. But in 1660, the Restoration of Stuart Monarchy in England returns her family to favor. Frances discards threadbare gowns and springs to gilded Fontainebleau Palace, where she soon catches King Louis XIV’s eye. But Frances is no ordinary court beauty, she has Stuart secrets to keep and people to protect. The king turns vengeful when she rejects his offer to become his Official Mistress. He banishes her to England with orders to seduce King Charles II and stop a war.

Armed in pearls and silk, Frances maneuvers through the political turbulence of Whitehall Palace, but still can’t afford to stir a scandal. Her tactic to inspire King Charles to greatness captivates him. He believes her love can make him an honest man and even chooses Frances to pose as Britannia for England’s coins. Frances survives the Great Fire, the Great Plague, and the debauchery of the Restoration Court, yet loses her heart to the very king she must control. Until she is forced to choose between love or war.

On the eve of England’s Glorious Revolution, James II forces Frances to decide whether to remain loyal to her Stuart heritage or, like England, make her stand for Liberty. Her portrait as Britannia is minted on every copper coin. There she remains for generations, an enduring symbol of Britain’s independent spirit and her own struggle for freedom.

 

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MY REVIEW- 3 STARS

I love history, and the Stuart period is a particular favourite of mine – and one that often tends to get neglected by novelists and film makers in favour of the Tudor and Georgian periods that bracket it. Charles II is probably my favourite English King, and I also have a soft spot for Louis XIV and his French court, so this book was really quite an easy sell for me. I was expecting sex, glamour and intrigue – and it’s fair to say it delivered on some of those points and less so on others.

This wasn’t just a general book about the Restoration court. It focussed firmly on the adventures of one woman, Frances Stuart, and as a result, it was always going to stand or fall by a combination of how interesting that character was in real life and how sympathetic and intriguing the author managed to make her. Despite the fact that I used to study history reasonably seriously, I’ve always been far more interested in individuals than in grand, sweeping narratives or battles, so I was all ready for the author to make me develop a massive girl crush of Ms Stuart. Sadly, she mostly didn’t deliver. I went into this book knowing a handful of things about the character – that she’d been a mistress of Charles II, that she was very beautiful and set the fashions of the times, and that she eventually married a character I’d better not name for fear of spoilers (*see footnote), but who I was very interested in hearing more about. By the end of the book, I didn’t feel I’d learnt that much more about her, or forged any kind of real connection.

It’s probably a bit unfair to compare what’s basically a classier than average historical romance with a modern masterpiece, but I couldn’t help contrasting this with my experience of reading Wolf Hall, which also looked at historical events through the eyes of a character who is usually in the background of traditional retellings of the period. By the end of that, I felt that I knew Thomas Cromwell better than my best friends and that I would cheer him on whatever he did. Here, I struggled to get any understanding of Stuart’s motivations or real personality. Did she want to sleep with the French King or was his pursuit stressful and relentless? How about the English King? Who did she want to marry? Her approach to life seemed to vacillate wildly from one moment to the next, and I never knew quite what outcome I should be routing for. To makes matters worse, it was never quite clear what King Charles saw in her apart from her extreme beauty – which is probably quite historically accurate, but makes for a dull read. Throughout, I felt far more interested (and on the verge of cheering for) Frances’ main rival, Lady Castelmaine, who was also beautiful, but who combined it with wit, intelligence and some entertaining scheming.

On the plus side, rooms, clothes and events were lavishly described, and I got a real sense of what life was like for the wealthy and titled in this period. Some of the romance was very sweet and although it was never particularly graphic, some of the sex was really quite hot – indeed it was more interesting because of both the characters’ and the author’s restraint.

The blurb, some of the internet buzz, and the gorgeously classy cover gave me the impression that this was going to be about more than just romance, and that as well as who was sleeping with who, the book would delve into the politics of the time. Despite a few token references to religious conflict and wars, it fundamentally failed to deliver on this point. I haven’t marked it down for this, as it’s no crime for a book not to be quite the genre I was expecting, but if you’re considering whether or not to read this, it’s worth bearing in mind that it is basically just a standard historical romance. Similarly, I disagreed with some of the author’s interpretations of historical events (if you ask me, Louis XIV loved Charles I’s sister, and Frances Stuart loved her eventual husband to the extent she’d defy the king’s wrath to be with him) but again, that hasn’t affected my score – the author had clearly done some research, and part of the fun of history is that people can reach very different conclusions from the same source material.

So, to read or not to read? If you enjoy historical romance and either like the period or are looking for something slightly different, you may well enjoy this. It’s glamorous, sexy and fun, and a fairly easy read. Just don’t expect much from the main character, or much historical context.

*That’s what I wrote in my Goodreads review. I think the not revealing Frances’ eventual husband ship has rather sailed as far as this blog post is concerned, so I’ll just come right out and say I did not like the author’s portrayal of Lord Stewart Junior one little bit, but that’s just because I irrationally wanted him to read like my completely made up portrayal of his father.

 

Oxford Blood – The Review of Reviews

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

descriptions, drinking, history, Oxford Blood, reviews, university, vampires

There are lots of things I love about being an author, but one of the best is getting reviews of my books. Being human, I obviously prefer good ones, but either way, I love the feeling of knowing that someone has read something I’ve written, engaged with it and formed an opinion. It’s fascinating to see the books I’ve written through someone else’s eyes.

Between Amazon, Goodreads and various blogs, I’ve now had somewhere in the region of 40 reviews of Oxford Blood. I’ve had at least one of every star rating from 1 – 5, and readers have made all kinds of different points.  Reading through some of them again however, I was struck by the way there are similar points (good and bad) that come up again and again, across the whole spectrum of reviews. Based on these, I did a minor overhaul of Oxford Blood a few months ago, and I took account of some of the recurring points when finalising Screaming Spires. When I’m finally done with the Cavaliers and ready to start a new series/standalone novel, I suspect these reviews will give me lots of food for thought in developing things that it’s too late to change mid-series.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to summarise what the average reviewer seems to have to say about Oxford Blood.

Cover

Pretty much everyone seems to like the cover in the sense of thinking it looks professionally and is aesthetically pleasing (I can’t take much credit for this beyond having the taste to pick a good designer!). There have however been several comments that it makes the book look too much like a historical novel  and that either this would have put them off had someone not recommended the book to them.

Premise

Reassuringly, there seems to be near universal support for the basic idea of “Oxford University dining society whose members are secretly vampires that are controlling the country.” I suppose that’s sort of self-selecting – I guess if you didn’t like the premise, you’d never have started the book – maybe there are lots of people reading the blurb and thinking it sounds ridiculous, but I think that probably isn’t the case. I flatter myself that it’s quite an unusual premise and that anyone who likes vampires at all would be mildly intrigued.  Sadly, some reviews go on to say that they thought the premise was brilliant but the execution let it down. Many others however think it was played well.

Main character

There are some reviewers who really liked the main character, Harriet, but even in otherwise very positive reviews, she seems to come in for a fair amount of abuse. These criticisms seem to fall into three categories – that she’s a bit shallow and obsessed with clothes and men, that she needs fleshing out a bit more, and perhaps most interestingly, that she seems to show very little emotion or sense of self-preservation. Several reviewers suggest that they found her a bit shallow or one-dimensional early on in the book but that she grew on them as the story progressed.

 

Pretty dresses aren't shallow, pretty dresses are fun

Pretty dresses aren’t shallow, pretty dresses are fun

I arguably do describe Harriet’s outfits with unnecessary regularity, but they say “write the book you want to read,” and I personally like reading descriptions of glamorous clothes. On the emotions thing, I was very keen not to have a heroine who’s bursting into tears every five minutes, but perhaps I tilted a bit too far the other way. Honestly though, my first few weeks at Oxford were so surreal that I don’t think I’d have found discovering the existence of vampires to be much more of a shock to the system than any other aspect.

I was originally going to write Oxford Blood in the first person, and wrote the first two chapters this way before changing my mind. I think third person makes for a better book overall, but I think Harriet might have come across rather more sympathetically if she’d been allowed to tell her own story. I might put up one of these first person chapters up at some point to see what people think!

  • Love interests and relationships

Most reviewers who liked the book at all seem to have either quite liked or really loved the romance story. I was a bit worried about going down the well-trodden love triangle route, but I guess that ultimately, things become clichés because they work.

Love-Triangle

There’s some suggestion that there’s a bit too much love at first sight going on with Tom and Harriet. It’s definitely a problem that afflicts a lot of paranormal fiction, and I think if I was starting the book from scratch, I might have allowed them to get to know each other more gradually.

That said, I think I basically do believe in love or at least very strong attraction at first sight. It’s definitely something that’s happened to me, and the interesting thing is talking to someone who you’ve felt an instant connection too and gradually realising that you genuinely do have lots of things in common and get on really well.  I think the problem with the way it’s used in many books is that it’s never explained why the characters are so in lurve apart from the fact that they are both extremely physically attractive. I’ve tried to counteract that (especially since re-editing Oxford Blood) by making clear Harriet and Tom’s shared taste in music, books, politics etc.

Still, one of my favourite lines in the book is Caroline’s , “When you say he’s your soulmate, I think what you actually mean is that he’s utterly gorgeous and you’d really like to get him naked. Let’s not get too melodramatic here.”

I don’t really like the current trend for picking sides in romantic situations (as with so many things in life, I blame Twilight), but where reviewers have expressed a preference, there definitely seems to be a trend towards “Team George.” My starting point was that instead of the common good vampire/bad vampire dynamic, I wanted both vampires to be basically as bad as each other, (drinking human blood, seducing people constantly etc) but reviewers definitely seem to be thinking in terms of the bad boy/safe bet dichotomy.

I’ve tried to spell this out a bit in Screaming Spires:

“I suppose you’re right. But I met him first, and I felt something immediately. And he saved me from you that first night when you’d just have used and abused me out on the Walk.”

Harriet shuddered at the memory of that evening, a memory she usually managed to suppress.

George looked pained. “Do you really think he hasn’t done exactly the same thing to other women? He saved you because he was acting under orders from your mother. The slightest twist of roles and it could have been me saving you from him. I heard about the first time you met. What do you think he was taking you to an old hidden library for if not to have a taste of you?”

Harriet’s angry reply died on her tongue. She’d almost forgotten about that, the way Tom had charmed her on her very first day in Oxford, led her from a party to a darkened room and been utterly seductive until he’d seen her necklace and guessed who she was. When she thought about it at all, she considered it as a charming prelude to their relationship, proof that he’d liked her from the very beginning. But George’s words made a horrible sense. Of course Tom had been planning to mesmerise and bite her. That was what vampires did, and it was far too easy to think that Tom was different.”

  • Mothers and Daughters

Most reviewers quite like the Adelaide storyline, appreciating the rather unusual approach of the heroine finding out that her mother was a vampire, and enjoying the parallels between Harriet’s story and Adelaide’s experiences twenty something years previously.

One comment that has come up repeatedly, however, is that people have trouble with the way Harriet is so forgiving and unquestioning of the mother who walked out on her when she was a baby. It’s a fair point, but my own mother works in a children’s home, and it’s scary how willing people often are to forgive and want to forge relationships with parents who’ve properly abused or neglected them. I think that for better or worse, there is something  in human nature that makes people want to love their parents and want to make them love them back, and Harriet is just manifesting this.

Also, whilst I don’t think Adelaide is ever mesmerising Harriet as such (apart from the one scene where it’s made explicit)she naturally exudes an aura that makes people love and admire her and want to do what she says, and her daughter is far from immune.

 World building, vampires and history

One or two people have issues with it, but most reviewers praise the world-building. The details of the vampires generally get positive comments, as do the historical references. Some people wanted more of both real life history and the history and lore of The Cavaliers. I’d deliberately held myself back a bit in this regard, but I relaxed for Screaming Spires and will be throwing lots of this sort of thing into Ivory Terrors. Be careful what you wish for…

Don't encourage me to delve too deeply into Civil War politics. You won't like me when I'm historical

Don’t encourage me to delve too deeply into Civil War politics. You won’t like me when I’m historical

Plot and Pacing 

Comments on the plot inevitably run the full gamut from love to hate. One recurring theme is that the book gets better as it goes on, with many people suggesting the opening feels a bit rushed. Interestingly, in my very first draft, there were about four chapters before Harriet goes to Oxford (including a party at Adelaide’s London house, where Harriet meets Tom for the first time), but I was persuaded to cut them by an agent. On balance, I think this was the right decision, but I was possibly slightly too brutal in my approach.

There have also been some suggestions that either the different strands of the book don’t sit together entirely neatly and/or that the vampire murder plot feels a bit underplayed compared to the romance. Book Two and especially Book Three become a lot more plot heavy, which I think is quite a positive development.

 Descriptions 

Most reviewers thought Oxford was described very well, many of them saying it had wanted to make them visit the town. Beyond that, references to my descriptive prowess or otherwise manage only to prove that you can’t please everyone. Depending on who you believe, there’s too much description, not enough or it’s just right. Goldilocks would have been proud.

Oxford

From looking at some of the more thoughtful reviews and talking to my Book Two beta readers, I think the issue is that some things (clothes, the town) are very thoroughly described, while other things (rooms, people’s non-clothes based appearance, what people are doing during a conversation) are under-described. I tried to even this out a bit in the re-edit and to really keep this need for balance in mind for Screaming Spires.

 University life

One comment that’s come up a lot in reviews and that completely caught me by surprise is a suggestion that the characters drink and party too much, both absolutely, and in relation to the amount of work they do.

I’d say that the drinking is a pretty realistic portrayal of my time at university, and I was far from being the worst in that respect. Most of these comments were from American reviewers, and I suspect that the issue comes from the fact that with the higher legal drinking age, for all the frat parties and fake IDs you see on film about US university life, they probably just don’t drink as regularly because it’s much harder.

My fiancé clearing out the bottle stash on his last day in Oxford

My fiancé clearing out half of his bottle stash on his last day in Oxford

Regarding the work, you can rest assured that Harriet’s studying hard. The problem is that arts subjects at Oxford have very little structured learning. You have one or two tutorials a week and inbetween, you have to read lots of books and write a 2000 word essay or two. So it’s a lot of work, but not in the obvious “now it’s time for my class, now it’s time for my lecture” kind of way.

I thought (probably correctly) that lots of scenes of Harriet reading in her room  would get very dull, very fast. I was also slightly concerned that given half the chance, I’d end up filling half the book with historical analysis, so deliberately held back. The first draft of Screaming Spires was full of tutorial scenes, but I lost my nerve and cut most of them.

 Book Two

Interestingly, even quite bad reviews often end with “but I do want to read the next book to see what happens.” Good reviews tend to be very excited about the sequel. So I suppose that shows I’m doing something right. There haven’t yet been enough reviews of Screaming Spires to draw meaningful conclusions, but several reviewers have commented that they enjoyed it more than the first book.

You can see a good selection of the reviews here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16097723-oxford-blood It’s always good to have more though, so if you’ve read Oxford Blood and never reviewed it, please do. 

If you’ve read the book, would you say this is a fair summary? And if you write, have you found any useful comments in reviews that have influenced your future writing?

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