Review: Tides of War by Stella Tillyard

Title: Tides of War
Author: Stella Tillyard
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.
Published: 2011
Pages: 368

Rating: 3 out of 10

The description of this book on Amazon sounded stunning. First of all, there were the central themes: it involved a little-known war, was set in both 19th Century Spain and London, involved the Wellington family, a beautiful Spanish female spy, an inventor, a physician, and an eccentric young woman. Those plot elements alone would have easily compelled me to read it. And then, there is the writing of the description, which ends with the lyrical "Tides of War is drenched in an unforgettable atmosphere, from the palms, mantillas and tiles of Seville to the glow of gas lights in foggy London, shining through the spikes of winter trees... This novel returns all all to the vivid, lost world of the past."
I actually, truly want to know who wrote that book review. Honestly. And I will go and try to find out, right after I write this review. Whoever it is, they can write.
Unfortunately, the writer of the actual book, Stella Tillyard, cannot.

There is little that I enjoyed about this novel. The beginning pages, which try to squeeze in a sense of the relationship between newly married couple Harriet and James Raven, felt wrong, though I still cannot exactly say how.
After this, dozens more characters are introduced. Most of them struck me from the very first as dull, but a few stood out only because of their professions: such as David, a surgeon who studied in Edinburgh, or Nathan Rothschild, who is working toward reinventing London by introducing gas lighting. And then of course, there is the Duke of Wellington and his wife. These characters sound so fascinating I actually feel a twinge of physical pain at how the author mangled their stories into tedium.
All of the twenty or so numerous characters shuffle in and out of the story, to be re-introduced dozens of pages later, when we have stopped caring or thinking of them. As a result, we care about and think about none of the characters, and none of them stand out to provide a much-needed focal point and backbone to the story.

The more I read, the more I am becoming convinced that romantic sub-plots are some of the hardest things to write. I suppose that, being so universal, they are generally what readers will scrutinize with a greater sense of confidence than they would about the author's fact relaying concerning the 1815 Siege of Badajos.
I seem to say in many of my reviews that the romantic scenes were stiff, or silly, or outright ridiculous. Well, this review will have to be among them. Once again, here is a book that would have done better to leave out the romance. Harriet and James' relationship never came across to me at all, and I couldn't stand the scenes between Harriet and her lover. I wished constantly that things would go badly so that these scenes would stop, which is probably not the sentiment Tillyard hoped to inspire in readers. James' relationship with Camille Florens, the aforementioned seductive Spanish spy (don't be drawn in, she appears for perhaps all of a page or two, collectively) was, though brief, the only relationship that I halfway found realistic.

Besides a messy array of uninteresting characters peppered with dashes of clumsy romance scenes, the rest of the plot, which was about men leaving for war as the women stay behind, was much of the same. There were too many plot elements for me to place any significance on any particular event, and also, I did not feel that I learned anything about the Peninsular War or history in general from this book. And that is why I read historical fiction in the first place.
The settings of London and Seville, which the writer of the Amazon book's description was able to bring to life beautifully in only one sentence, never emerged into prominence.

There were a few scenes when I was able to take a hopeful, almost positive stance on the writer, which were when the characters begin musing, more or less philosophically, about things, such as the workings of the human body, French royalty, or the parallels of battle with life. I felt that there was something here that could be perhaps developed into something good. It wasn't quite there yet, but it could be.

In short, this was a disappointing, unfocused book that I was glad to finish and get rid of.

Review: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

Title: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
Author: Lauren Willig
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: NAL Trade
Published: 2005
Pages: 449

Rating: 3 out of 10

This book begins after the bloody French Revolution has recently ended. Amy Balcourte, whose parents were lost to the guillotine, dreams of joining the famous English spy The Purple Gentian (following in the tradition of the Scarlet Pimpernel). When she gets a chance to return to France and live with her brother Edouard, she jumps at the chance, and goes about secretly tracking down the Purple Gentian, who of course falls in love with her.

This unabashedly chick-lit book was certainly an entertaining read, if you are looking for some mindless fluff.
It had its funny moments, and although it most likely wasn't written this way by the author intentionally, many of the dramatic, swashbuckling scenes made me laugh at how ridiculous they were.

I wish that I could leave it at that - because The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, which has been on my lengthy To Read list for quite some time, was relatively enjoyable.

However, there is no overlooking the implausibility of the plot, the painful characters, and weak writing here.

First of all, the whole thing was not very believable. There were plenty of gaping holes in the plot that the author patches up shabbily, if at all.

For example, the Purple Gentian, who is supposedly the most elusive and dangerous spy in all of France, is an idiot. A girl travels to France dreaming of finding him (as hundreds of girls do, as he is a tabloids heartthrob), and she finds him in a mere few days. He acts like a child around his mother, and he forgets everything else the moment that he is in Amy's presence. There is more, but in short, The Purple Gentian is no dangerous man.

Also, why would Edouard even invite Amy to France if, after that, he never shows an interest in her?

How did Amy discover where the Purple Gentian would be that night - and catch him - when the entire French police force has been trying to do just that for years?

And why would Geoff encourage the Purple Gentian to reveal his identity to Amy? Neither of them even know her! Geoff has never met her, and the Gentian has known her for a few hours. Geoff's excuse is that "not all women are shallow." Which also scarcely makes any sense.

This thing of there being an unending string of spies, all of whom have names based on colors and flowers, also seemed quite forced to me.
I have not looked into the sequels yet, but apparently more spies with color/flower names emerge. How will they ever pull that off? Even three seemed like a stretch to me, in this book.

I found the characters of Richard's mother, Amy's governess, and Jane to be endearing.
However, our two main characters - Amy and Richard - were insufferable, especially Amy.

Much like Bella in Twilight, Amy is always tripping, stumbling, falling, and blundering. She is also constantly wandering, clueless, into danger, though the Purple Gentian always comes to save her, of course. What is this attraction authors suddenly have with writing heroines that can't walk across the room without tripping and experiencing near-death situations?
Amy comes across as a senseless, idiotic girl without a solid thought in her pretty little head.

I also disliked that certain chapters were set in modern times, focusing on Eloise (a student who is writing a paper on French spies). They were jarring, and really took me out of the story about 1700's France. I skimmed over them hurriedly, and really could care less about Eloise's boots getting muddy, or her drinking hot chocolate, or the hot guy she had a crush on. This wasn't her story, and if this guy isn't going to be built up as a character and is only going to feature in a few paragraphs, why is he there?

Yet another negative aspect to this book was the bodice-ripping, Harlequin leaning it had whenever it reached a romance scene. These scenes were not only written in a sickeningly flowery, over-the-top dramatic manner, but they were just plainly too much. Kisses are described in lurid detail, and the many make-out sessions between Amy and Richard go on and on for tens of pages. Amy describes having her first orgasm as Richard fingers, her while lying the back of a rowboat being rowed by a third guy. These scenes felt entirely modern, and I felt that I wasn't reading historical fiction anymore, but some horrid romance novel.

All in all, this book admittedly did have its fun moments, but there were simply too many flaws for it be anything extraordinary.