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sophia_sol) wrote2016-12-22 07:36 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2016-12-22 07:36 pm
The Brothers Sinister series, by Courtney Milan, part 1
First: shoutout to china_shop for recommending Courtney Milan's historicals to me last year and giving me spoilers for Duchess War and Heiress Effect - it was helpful to have a sense of what to expect from these books before I'd read enough to get a handle on Courtney Milan's trustworthiness as an author!
So this is the first half or so of the Brothers Sinister series, read slightly out of order because my hold on the Heiress Effect took too long to come in. (The Heiress Effect will be in my next post about the Brothers Sinister, which will be after the Turner trilogy and also some more Tamora Pierce.)
The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan
Time for more romance by Courtney Milan! This is the first in a historical series set in the Victorian era. I really like how Milan does romance novels. There's always a bunch more going on than just romance (in this one there's a bunch of plot about workers' rights), and the characters are real and rounded and often have complicated lives.
And as always Milan is great at secondary characters. I really appreciate the friendship between Minnie and her bff Lydia. And Robert's devotion to his half-brother Oliver. And, to my complete surprise given the way she's first talked about by Robert, my favourite character in this book is Robert's mother, the dowager Duchess Clermont. She's so interesting!
A Kiss For Midwinter, by Courtney Milan
A novella sequel to The Duchess War, this one about Minnie's bff Lydia! Featuring as hero a doctor with a propensity for telling more truth than polite society would generally warrant, and a habit of making jokes about death. I like the idea of him, but the plot of the book (the wager he makes with Lydia) rather makes him come off as a dick. Which is too bad because otherwise I could see myself really loving him! Especially with his talk about how the truth is a precious gift. I definitely loved Lydia though, who very determinedly finds things in life to be optimistic about no matter what.
The Governess Affair, by Courtney Milan
A prequel novella, set a generation before the others in this series. I liked the premise and the characters, but I felt like it needed to be a bit longer to make more sense of the transition between the two leads being enemies and being totally accepting of their being in love. Hugo's pretty terrible to Serena for a while and I feel like she's able to overcome/overlook that rather too easily.
The sister relationship between Serena and Frederica is fascinating though. I love how they're both so worried about and baffled by each other, and each has no framework for appreciating the life choices the other makes.
The Countess Conspiracy, by Courtney Milan
The thing about reading too many romance novels in a row is that I start to get really bored of heterosexuality. I liked this book a lot! But there's straight people EVERYWHERE in these books and I'm just getting really bored of it, I think. (...note that this doesn't mean I stopped my breakneck readthrough of Courtney Milan's books......)
At any rate: this book is a book about women scientists in the Victorian era and how the only way to be a female scientist whose work is actually talked about is to have a man take credit for your work. And the book ends with our main character being accepted in public for the excellent scientist she is! And as is discussed in the author's note at the end, Violet's discoveries and Violet's being public about her gender both set the world of these books going in a slightly alternate direction than our real history did.
The book is also about other stuff too, like the long-standing friendship between Violet and her eventual love interest Sebastian (it's so great! I love that they were such close and intimate friends and coworkers for years before becoming lovers/spouses!), and the way Sebastian and Violet have both always been made to feel lesser/unworthy by their families and have to figure out how to recognize that they are in fact capable and admirable people.
Also there's a bunch about Violet's sex-related trauma, resulting from her 19 miscarriages over the years from her dead husband's relentless desire for an heir despite Violet's body clearly not being capable of cooperating.
I was disappointed that this book involved penis-in-vagina sex despite the explicit and understandable concerns for Violet's health if she ever gets pregnant again. Yes, they're taking what precautions they can with condoms of the era and so forth, but that's definitely not risk free and there's plenty of kinds of sex one can have that don't involve any risk of pregnancy at all. Probably this is an artifact of it being a romance novel though - I'm guessing PIV sex is expected. Sigh. Romance novels.
china_shop for recommending Courtney Milan's historicals to me last year and giving me spoilers for Duchess War and Heiress Effect - it was helpful to have a sense of what to expect from these books before I'd read enough to get a handle on Courtney Milan's trustworthiness as an author!So this is the first half or so of the Brothers Sinister series, read slightly out of order because my hold on the Heiress Effect took too long to come in. (The Heiress Effect will be in my next post about the Brothers Sinister, which will be after the Turner trilogy and also some more Tamora Pierce.)
The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan
Time for more romance by Courtney Milan! This is the first in a historical series set in the Victorian era. I really like how Milan does romance novels. There's always a bunch more going on than just romance (in this one there's a bunch of plot about workers' rights), and the characters are real and rounded and often have complicated lives.
And as always Milan is great at secondary characters. I really appreciate the friendship between Minnie and her bff Lydia. And Robert's devotion to his half-brother Oliver. And, to my complete surprise given the way she's first talked about by Robert, my favourite character in this book is Robert's mother, the dowager Duchess Clermont. She's so interesting!
A Kiss For Midwinter, by Courtney Milan
A novella sequel to The Duchess War, this one about Minnie's bff Lydia! Featuring as hero a doctor with a propensity for telling more truth than polite society would generally warrant, and a habit of making jokes about death. I like the idea of him, but the plot of the book (the wager he makes with Lydia) rather makes him come off as a dick. Which is too bad because otherwise I could see myself really loving him! Especially with his talk about how the truth is a precious gift. I definitely loved Lydia though, who very determinedly finds things in life to be optimistic about no matter what.
The Governess Affair, by Courtney Milan
A prequel novella, set a generation before the others in this series. I liked the premise and the characters, but I felt like it needed to be a bit longer to make more sense of the transition between the two leads being enemies and being totally accepting of their being in love. Hugo's pretty terrible to Serena for a while and I feel like she's able to overcome/overlook that rather too easily.
The sister relationship between Serena and Frederica is fascinating though. I love how they're both so worried about and baffled by each other, and each has no framework for appreciating the life choices the other makes.
The Countess Conspiracy, by Courtney Milan
The thing about reading too many romance novels in a row is that I start to get really bored of heterosexuality. I liked this book a lot! But there's straight people EVERYWHERE in these books and I'm just getting really bored of it, I think. (...note that this doesn't mean I stopped my breakneck readthrough of Courtney Milan's books......)
At any rate: this book is a book about women scientists in the Victorian era and how the only way to be a female scientist whose work is actually talked about is to have a man take credit for your work. And the book ends with our main character being accepted in public for the excellent scientist she is! And as is discussed in the author's note at the end, Violet's discoveries and Violet's being public about her gender both set the world of these books going in a slightly alternate direction than our real history did.
The book is also about other stuff too, like the long-standing friendship between Violet and her eventual love interest Sebastian (it's so great! I love that they were such close and intimate friends and coworkers for years before becoming lovers/spouses!), and the way Sebastian and Violet have both always been made to feel lesser/unworthy by their families and have to figure out how to recognize that they are in fact capable and admirable people.
Also there's a bunch about Violet's sex-related trauma, resulting from her 19 miscarriages over the years from her dead husband's relentless desire for an heir despite Violet's body clearly not being capable of cooperating.
I was disappointed that this book involved penis-in-vagina sex despite the explicit and understandable concerns for Violet's health if she ever gets pregnant again. Yes, they're taking what precautions they can with condoms of the era and so forth, but that's definitely not risk free and there's plenty of kinds of sex one can have that don't involve any risk of pregnancy at all. Probably this is an artifact of it being a romance novel though - I'm guessing PIV sex is expected. Sigh. Romance novels.
no subject
Yes, het genre romance has certain obligatory tropes (romance is between a man and a woman, ending must be happy, etc) and one is that PIV sex must occur at least once if there are explicit sex scenes at all. Though Milan's books are odd/subversive enough that it wouldn't surprise me if she eventually wrote one without any. It's sort of like how almost all MM genre romance will include at least one anal scene if there's explicit sex at all.
no subject
And I've read and posted about the book with the trans woman already!
Yeah, that was what surprised me most about the PIV sex in this book, it's that it's Milan writing it and she's generally a lot more open to bucking romance novel trends. It surprised me in Hold Me, too. For some reason I was not expecting Maria to have had the full genital reassignment surgery so the PIV sex REALLY came out of left field for me in that book! (I'm pretty cool with the happy ending being a requirement for the genre though. It's one of the reasons I read romance novels.)