Backstory Boycott

In the past week, I read two romances that really frustrated me: About That Night by Julie James and The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne. Both of the these books have received very good reviews from others, and if you want to read positive things about them, I suggest you go to those sites. I, on the other hand, had some major issues with the storytelling in both of these novels, which failed because of issues with the characters' backstory.



Kyle Rhodes shut down twitter after his girlfriend broke up with him via a photo tweet of her making out with another guy (harsh), and as a result spent several months in prison. Once he gets out, he runs into US prosecuting attorney Rylann, whom he asked out on a date in college. They're attracted to one another, blah blah blahhhhhhggg.

Julie James always has problems with the beginnings of her novels, even in Just the Sexiest Man Alive (review here), which I adored. But About That Night is probably the worst of all her beginnings so far. There is a TON and TON and TON of backstory that is delivered in the most unimaginative way possible (i.e., exposition and infodump). Even if I wasn't already familiar with most of it from reading A Lot Like Love (review here), I would still want to skim the 80+ pages where we get to see the episodic and brief moment when Rylann and Kyle meet in college; Rylann breaking up with her boyfriend and moving to Chicago, reflecting on life, etc.; Kyle under house arrest, reflecting on how he got into prison, getting out of prison, thinking about life, etc.; AND THEN FINALLY the story starts with Kyle reluctantly testifying about something he witnessed in prison. Except that lasts for about fifty pages and there's still more than half of the book left to goooooooo.

Basically About That Night has no plot whatsoever. The book was so caught up in telling me a backstory that it forgot to deliver an ACTUAL STORY. By the time Rylann and Kyle had gotten together, I'd lost total interest in this not-a-story. Not mention Kyle is the most unbelievable hero I have run across in a loooooong time.



Joanna Bourne is another writer whom I'm generally a big fan of. She has a great, unique style of writing, backs up her novels with solid historical research, sets many of her books in France, and wrote one of my very rare 5-star reads, My Lord and Spymaster (review here).

The Black Hawk started off with a bang. In my head I was thinking, "At last, a story I can finally sink my teeth into!" In the opening scenes a French spy named Justine is stabbed on the streets of London and seeks help from Adrian Hawkhurst, an English spy we met in The Forbidden Rose (review here). Hawker was the best part of The Forbidden Rose for me, so I was thrilled to see he was getting his own book. It turns out he and Justine have been in love for years, but are always spying on opposite sides of a conflict. Now Hawker has to find out who tried to kill Justine and convince her that they can finally be together.

Hey look, it's a plot! Yay for plots! And it's a different plot from the one Bourne used her last two novels, so double yay! I was settling in for an awesome read... and then the flashbacks started. Not my personal flashbacks, mind (that would be bad enough), but flashbacks of everything Adrian and Justine had ever done in their entire lives.

Perhaps it wasn't everything they'd ever done, but it certainly felt like it. In a 304 page book, 184 pages consist of flashbacks. And in case you're under the delusion I needed to know any of the stuff in these gratuitous flashbacks, let me assure you that I did not. The first flashback, which is sixty effing pages long, basically recounts info I'm already familiar with from The Forbidden Rose. Getting people up to speed is fine; boring people to death with endless backstory that has no purpose and zip to do with the plot is NOT.

And because there was so much time spent on the backstory, just as in About That Night there was no development of the characters and their relationship in THE ACTUAL STORY. Who stabbed Justine becomes obvious as soon as the person shows up on the page, and after that the story becomes très boring. I'm very happy these characters have a long history, but JK Rowling had a lot of backstory she needed to fill her readers in on, too, and she didn't do it by taking her readers out of the story with flashbacks every twenty pages. For which we thank her.

It's common knowledge that I have major issues with prologues, and now I have major issues with flashback scenes, too, thanks to these two books. Aren't flashbacks really just a prologue put into the middle of the book instead of the beginning, anyway?



After reading The Black Hawk and About That Night, I came to a depressing conclusion: as much as Fifty Shades of Grey (review here) made me roll eyes and want to throw myself out a window, it was actually better than either of these two novels (from the perspective of storytelling; neither Black Hawk nor About That Night left a terrible taste in my mouth like I'd just licked garbage, so that's a point in their favor). At least in Fifty Shades there was a plot--one blatantly stolen from Stephenie Meyer, but still, a plot--the characters, for what they were, were believable, and there was some chemistry between them; and EL James didn't bore me to death with backstory delivered in lame-o infodumps and flashbacks. She just told the freaking story and let the characters' history emerge as she made it up it went on. So yes, if I was going to compare these three books (and clearly I am) I would say if this is an example of what James is going up against, I am no longer surprised she's selling so many books. There's a lot to be said for not having one's patience tried.

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne

Setting:  Post-Revolutionary France

Stereotypes:  Spies can do anything.

Major likes:  The setting; Adrian Hawker

Major dislikes:  Marguerite; the sex scenes

Musical Notes:  "The Dog Days Are Over," Florence + The Machine



Movie Notes:  Scenes from The Count of Monte Cristo, especially in the baths, helped create the look of the book for me in my head.


Review

The first review I ever posted on this blog was for Bourne's second novel, My Lord and Spymaster, which I loved.  The Forbidden Rose didn't live up to the excellence of ML&S, but it was still very good. 

Marguerite is a former aristocrat in Robespierre-run France, whose chateau has just been looted and burned to the ground.  At first she seems typically delicate and survival-challenged, unable to even kill a rabbit for her dinner.  Then William Doyle arrives with his sidekick, Adrian Hawker, and takes charge.  William claims to be a French bookseller, and he convinces Marguerite it would be a good idea for him to escort her to Paris.  They both know the other is misrepresenting themselves, but that doesn't stop them from being attracted to each other.

I absolutely loved the setting of this book.  I have a weakness for Revolutionary France and Bourne's research is spot-on.  She really has a gift of making her readers feel as if they're witnessing a historical time period first-hand.  All the paranoia, uncertainty, and blood thirsty excitement of the era is palpable.  If you've ever read The Scarlet Pimpernel, this book has the same sense of tense adventure.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have the same sense of mystery and surprise, and I think that's one of the reasons why I just enjoyed it and didn't love it the same way I did ML&S.  It doesn't take more than a few dozen pages for us to know exactly what all the characters are up to.  Also--and I hate to say this--but the plot is starting to get formulaic.  In My Lord & Spymaster, we had a woman whose father was suspected of crimes while her love interest was determined to see him pay for said crimes; in The Forbidden Rose, we have a woman whose father is suspected of creating a list of men to be assassinated, and her love interest who is determined to kill him for doing it.  Bourne is a good enough writer that I'm sure she could have come up with something at least a little different than that to keep the plot going; one gets the sense that even she's bored with it, as the plot is mainly just glossed over in favor of more interesting adventures, such as exploring Paris' catacombs and chasing down street thugs.

Another stumbling block for me in enjoying this book was Marguerite.  Just as in ML&S, the story in Forbidden Rose hinges on the main character; but unlike ML&S, where I ADORED the main character, Marguerite drove me absolutely batty.  I honestly wanted to strangle her.  Any woman of good sense would have realized she was poisoned.  And she can send her friends into mortal danger but can't let her murderous cousin to be killed?  This does not make sense, just as her constant refusal to believe she and "Guillaume" can be together doesn't make sense.  I started to get the feeling Marguerite would walk into walls if someone wasn't keeping an eye on her.

Anyway, this is really a good book, but I think for me Bourne works best with characters from the London underworld--like Adrian Hawker, a pubescent pickpocket whom Doyle won in a card game.  He's a great character, with an inexplicable attachment to Doyle, and I can't wait until he gets his own book!

Overall I would recommend The Forbidden Rose, even though I still like My Lord & Spymaster and The Spymaster's Lady better.  Joanna Bourne is always worth your time, though.

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My Lord and Spymaster

I totally loved this book! It wasn't so much a romance as an adventure story set in 19^th-century London, with just the right amount of romance thrown in to the mix.

The main character is Jessamyn Whitby, a young woman who had led an interesting life, including spying, pick pocketing, and running her father's borderline-respectable business. But now her father has been accused of being Cinq, an English traitor selling secrets to Revolutionary France. Determined to prove her father is innocent, Jess has compiled a list of all the people Cinq could possibly be, and intends to investigate them by breaking into their offices and picking their pockets.


Jess' plans go awry, however, when she's set upon by Irish brigands while picking her first victim's pocket—Sebastien Kennet. Kennet is the head of his own large shipping firm and the bastard son of a peer. He's also the only member of his family with any money, which means his entire family, aunt, uncle, and cousins, all live with him in his huge mansion in Mayfair. What they and Jess don't know is that Sebastien is also an agent for the British Service and the man who put Jess' father in jail and intends to see him hang for the crimes of Cinq.


Almost as soon as Sebastien sees Jess, he falls in love with her. But when he discovers Jess was picking his pocket in order to prove he's Cinq, he's kinda pissed.


Meanwhile, Jess has bigger things to worry about. In order to get the information she needs to free her father, she has to descend into the criminal underworld that was once her old haunt, risking her life in the process.


Sebastien is a great character, but Jess is really the heart of the book, and she's awesome. She's very much like Lyra Belacqua from The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. They're both blonde (superficial, I know, but the similarities get stronger), they both have companion ferrets that help them on their adventure, they're both obsessed with the north, and they both have exactly the type of brazen and precocious-bordering-on-obnoxious personality that would make you believe they have wherewithal to do extraordinarily brave and stupid things. Jess' pet ferret, just like Lyra's, symbolizes her cunning personality, something that's allowed her to survive on her own on the streets of London and rise to the top of its largest crime syndicate; then turn around and run one of England's largest shipping firms.

Aside from the characters—all of whom were well-drawn and pitch-perfect—the historical research was in-depth and spot-on. I love the feeling of reading a book and being transported into another world, whether that world is historical, fantastical, or contemporary, and My Lord and Spymaster definitely delivered in that respect. Once again, I learned something from a historical romance, this time about tea. Jessamyn and her father lived for quite a while in Russia, and she loves Russian tea because, unlike other teas, it's roasted like coffee. Coincidentally, I just happened to have some Russian tea on hand to try. I personally didn't detect any obvious difference in flavor, but then I don't drink a lot of Assam (which was why that tea was still in the cabinet). Anyway, I learned something. Yay!

This is really a great book. Again, it's not so much a romance as it is an adventure story, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys that kind of book. Especially if you like The Golden Compass, I think you should pick this book up.