Heartless

Heartless by Mary Balogh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars, but I'll round up.

The moral of this story? For the love of Mike, just tell the GD TRUTH already!!! Most of the story and nearly all of the pain and heartache would have been prevented had the main characters, Anna most especially, just told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. GAH!! Perhaps that's typical for victims of abuse, to trust no one and believe the abuser, but it's maddening to read.

My propensity to yell at Anna via my car stereo aside, much of the book was pretty good, if mostly predictable. The character development for Luc was welcome, since I did not like him at all at the beginning and appreciated his sleuthing and defense of his family by the end.

I do think the expression, "La!" was very overused. It's historically accurate, I'm sure, but to modern ears, a little goes a long way. Every time someone said it was like nails on a blackboard for my ears--even reducing the utterances to just the odious Henrietta would have been an improvement.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting is secondary (late 1700s England at a time when hair was powdered and women wore stomachers & wide hoops). A few mild swear words I think, and multiple sex scenes. The deaf character saves the day!

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Prudence

Prudence by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alexia and Conall Maccon's daughter Prudence is (mostly) grown up now. So what better way to demonstrate her independence than to be tasked by her adoptive father to travel by dirigible to India to set up a new tea business that circumvents the East India Company? The need for secrecy regarding the tea causes no little confusion when the trip takes a decidedly more political...and supernatural...turn. Suddenly Rue and her friends are in the middle of a pitched battle, trying to prevent a war.

Although I enjoyed this first book in the Custard Protocol series, it didn't quite grab me the way the Parasol Protectorate did. I connected more with Alexia than I did with Rue, perhaps in part due to Rue's tendency toward heedlessness. The other characters never fully gelled for me either. Still, I liked the book well enough to read the next one in the series and thought the story picked up at the end. (The plot prior to that was pretty thin.)

Other reviewers have mentioned issues with cultural insensitivity, and I have to agree with them, for the most part. I do think that authors get a great deal of creative license when it comes to creating alternate universes, such as a Victorian England & India with vampires, werewolves, Rakshasas, weremonkeys, and even a werecat. However, I wish Ms. Carriger had written larger roles for Indian characters and not included the part where a dirty, nearly-naked Rue was mistaken for a goddess, for example.

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