Customer Reviews

The Wily Wastrel

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I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters were great - real and very original. I particularly liked the way in which you could see the relationship between James and Juliet developing and deepening. The book contained lots of humourous touches that made me smile. It was different and great fun.

The situation was there: a young couple of the upper class, he an inventor (gasp), she interested in mechanics (oh my), with a harridan mother on one side, a stern brother and a pompous sister-in-law on the other, all of whom were veddy much concerned with maintaining status quo. The author should have stopped here and given us a strong character-driven story dealing with the Industrial Age as it impacted Old Blood and its stifling society mores. But she didn't.

Instead she contrives a military plot, leaving the interesting antagonists behind and forcing her hero to change his personality to fill in the gaps for needed conflict. Whenever inventions or the war are mentioned, a great fog of vagueness enters the text. We don't know what the hero invents; I doubt if the author knows either. But oh, it saves lives, so it must be good. His great war experiments involve lights to be viewed on the other side of the English Channel. The author invokes the term "lenses," but that's all we know about it and it sounds highly unlikely. And the war? "Wellington," one character says, which is supposed to explain all. And I was totally mystified by several passages in the final chapter -- passages that were a set-up for another book involving the youngest brother of the family, something that had nothing to do with this volume.

I didn't buy this to read a hard military adventure or sci fi novel, but there is a need for an author to research things and drop a learned line or two so that the readers' suspension of disbelief sticks around. Mine took off quite early, leaving me to read very shallow characterization about silly people who did even sillier things (thank goodness the villains were extremely stupid) as the plot moved them through its paces. The characters should have been leading this plot, not the other way around. The regency language is there, but nothing else of substance is. After two failed tries with April Kihlstrom, I think for regency I'll stick with Sabrina Jeffries.

This is the second in a series of books about four brothers. The first, THE RECKLESS BARRISTER tells the story or Philip. The current novel, THE WILY WASTREL, tells the story of James. As a regency novel this compares poorly with the writing of Georgette Heyer, but, as the second in a series, the book is quite entertaining. I liked the hero, the heroine, and especially the consistency in descriptions of characters the reader has met before. If you like TRB pick this book up during a quiet winter evening and enjoy.