Fair Fatality

Rating:
Summary: Maybe Better Than Running Your Knuckles Over a Cheese Grater
Review: Sara Valentine, once a country beauty who did not "attract" during her Season in London during the Regency, i.e., did not attract a desirable match, is in the opening of the book a much put upon companion to a Gorgon of the Duchess. The Duchess has given her the task of trying to reign in the Duchess' neice (and Sara's old friend) the widowed Lady Easterling. Lady Easterling, the much petted younger wife of a sporting lord, is a hoyden with a vocabulary that is largely made up of Regency slang. And that is a problems with this book.

Regency slang was used by the characters of Georgette Heyer's books appropriately and in moderation. The author of this book seems to have absorbed all of the slang phases in Heyer's dozens of books and then spewed them all out at once. Even characters who normally wouldn't use the phrases use them. You could drown in Regency slang in this book.

While the book is not terrible, if you haven't read dozens of books by Georgette Heyer, I would suggest that it is a bit hard for a novice Regency reader to get through without recourse to a slang dictionary.

Besides being given to slang, Lady Easterling is also annoying as she rushes headlong from one solicism to the next. The plot is nothing extraordinary.

As an experience I think this book is a few steps above running your knuckles over a cheese grater.

Rating:
Summary: Great Vintage MacKeever
Review: Sara Valentine, once a country beauty who did not "attract" during her Season in London during the Regency, i.e., did not attract a desirable match, is in the opening of the book a much put upon companion to a Gorgon of the Duchess. The Duchess has given her the task of trying to reign in the Duchess' neice (and Sara's old friend) the widowed Lady Easterling. Lady Easterling, the much petted younger wife of a sporting lord, is a hoyden with a vocabulary that is largely made up of Regency slang. And that is a problems with this book.

Regency slang was used by the characters of Georgette Heyer's books appropriately and in moderation. The author of this book seems to have absorbed all of the slang phases in Heyer's dozens of books and then spewed them all out at once. Even characters who normally wouldn't use the phrases use them. You could drown in Regency slang in this book.

While the book is not terrible, if you haven't read dozens of books by Georgette Heyer, I would suggest that it is a bit hard for a novice Regency reader to get through without recourse to a slang dictionary.

Besides being given to slang, Lady Easterling is also annoying as she rushes headlong from one solicism to the next. The plot is nothing extraordinary.

As an experience I think this book is a few steps above running your knuckles over a cheese grater.

Rating:
Summary: Great Vintage MacKeever
Review: This is a reprint of one of Maggie MacKeever's earlier books for Fawcett Crest, and a very funny book, as well as typical of what the earlier Regencies were. Don't know what the 'cheese-grater' person expected, but I laughed out lout reading this story and would advise anyone with a sense of humor and an appreciation of Regency England to read Fair Fatality and any other MacKeever books they can find!