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sophia_sol) wrote2017-12-06 06:57 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2017-12-06 06:57 pm
Hamilton's Battalion, by Alyssa Cole, Rose Lerner, and Courtney Milan
YES HELLO what a good book. This is a romance novella collection, consisting of three novellas set during the American revolutionary war and with Alexander Hamilton as a minor character in some way in all of them. But I don't care about Hamilton here. What I care about is that this is a collection of romance stories that are about people who have complicated relationships with the ideals of the American revolution because the kind of people they are aren't fully supported by those ideals: Jewish people, women, people of colour, queer people. But who find happiness and their own freedom nonetheless! IT'S GREAT.
Of the three stories I only personally found myself emotionally engaged with two of them, but all three are definitely well done and a worthwhile read.
The first story (by Rose Lerner) is about a Jewish woman who fakes her own death to escape her husband (and her mother-in-law), dresses up a man, and enlists in the war, with the intention of after the war revealing her sex and going on the lecture-and-writing circuit to use infamy to promote the cause of Jewish people in the new country. Then her husband shows up and she arrests him as a spy.
This story was SO GOOD for its explorations of a) what religious/cultural identity means to a person, b) gender roles for women, and c) the complexities of figuring out how to love and understand someone who is fundamentally very different from you, especially when you have a difficult history together. And all of it tied in with each other so beautifully, and I cared about everyone in this story so much. AMAZING. This story 100% convinced me I need to read everything else by Rose Lerner.
The second story (by Courtney Milan) is about a black man who's utterly unimpressed with the American Revolution on account of its lack of interest in giving freedom to black people but is fighting for the revolution anyway for his own reasons, and a treasonous white british officer who believes religiously in the ideals of the American Revolution. They go on a road trip together. With cheese.
I knew I could count on Courtney Milan to deliver a story I'd enjoy, and she didn't disappoint. Funny, with a great deal of heart, characters I loved, thoughtful explorations of racial dynamics, etc. And finally Courtney Milan has published a story where she features a same-sex couple as the leading romance!! For a while as the story approached its end I was convinced despite the genre that the story was going to end with the two characters parting forever and I was gearing up to feel SUPER BETRAYED AND HEARTBROKEN because I wanted them to have their happy ending together so much, but then of course that didn't happen, this is why I read romance, happy endings are GUARANTEED. Whew.
The third story (by Alyssa Cole) is about a black lesbian who's a servant to Eliza Hamilton, who has had her heart broken one too many times and keeps herself all locked up and controlled (both in her emotions and in everything else in her life) as a result. And then she meets another black lesbian, who lives her life according to her desires and abilities, and she begins to be drawn out of her shell.
I appreciated what this story was doing, and it was competently written, but I never quite felt like either of the two main characters were real people and so they and the things they cared about never really felt alive to me. I also felt like I was never really shown half of the main romance. Mercy's interest in Andromeda was shown clearly, but the reasons why Mercy was of interest to Andromeda wasn't, and so it was hard for me to believe in their romance as a result. Also this is one of those stories where a major conflict is driven by Misunderstandings that could be solved by Just Talking To Each Other, sigh. Ah well. You can't win every time. And I'm sure other people will still love this story, since different people can have very different reactions to the same thing.
Of the three stories I only personally found myself emotionally engaged with two of them, but all three are definitely well done and a worthwhile read.
The first story (by Rose Lerner) is about a Jewish woman who fakes her own death to escape her husband (and her mother-in-law), dresses up a man, and enlists in the war, with the intention of after the war revealing her sex and going on the lecture-and-writing circuit to use infamy to promote the cause of Jewish people in the new country. Then her husband shows up and she arrests him as a spy.
This story was SO GOOD for its explorations of a) what religious/cultural identity means to a person, b) gender roles for women, and c) the complexities of figuring out how to love and understand someone who is fundamentally very different from you, especially when you have a difficult history together. And all of it tied in with each other so beautifully, and I cared about everyone in this story so much. AMAZING. This story 100% convinced me I need to read everything else by Rose Lerner.
The second story (by Courtney Milan) is about a black man who's utterly unimpressed with the American Revolution on account of its lack of interest in giving freedom to black people but is fighting for the revolution anyway for his own reasons, and a treasonous white british officer who believes religiously in the ideals of the American Revolution. They go on a road trip together. With cheese.
I knew I could count on Courtney Milan to deliver a story I'd enjoy, and she didn't disappoint. Funny, with a great deal of heart, characters I loved, thoughtful explorations of racial dynamics, etc. And finally Courtney Milan has published a story where she features a same-sex couple as the leading romance!! For a while as the story approached its end I was convinced despite the genre that the story was going to end with the two characters parting forever and I was gearing up to feel SUPER BETRAYED AND HEARTBROKEN because I wanted them to have their happy ending together so much, but then of course that didn't happen, this is why I read romance, happy endings are GUARANTEED. Whew.
The third story (by Alyssa Cole) is about a black lesbian who's a servant to Eliza Hamilton, who has had her heart broken one too many times and keeps herself all locked up and controlled (both in her emotions and in everything else in her life) as a result. And then she meets another black lesbian, who lives her life according to her desires and abilities, and she begins to be drawn out of her shell.
I appreciated what this story was doing, and it was competently written, but I never quite felt like either of the two main characters were real people and so they and the things they cared about never really felt alive to me. I also felt like I was never really shown half of the main romance. Mercy's interest in Andromeda was shown clearly, but the reasons why Mercy was of interest to Andromeda wasn't, and so it was hard for me to believe in their romance as a result. Also this is one of those stories where a major conflict is driven by Misunderstandings that could be solved by Just Talking To Each Other, sigh. Ah well. You can't win every time. And I'm sure other people will still love this story, since different people can have very different reactions to the same thing.
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