A Lord to Love
When I asked to review this short story I hadn’t heard of the author and knew nothing about this work, except that it was a m/m Historical Romance.
I was quite pleased when I learned it was set in an alternate universe, as that’s one of my favourite sub-genres and can be quite wonderful when done properly and with precision. Sadly, Lord to Love was not.
This ‘alternate universe’ just allowed the author to be lazy. In order to avoid the messiness of bigotry and hardship those in same-sex relationships suffered in the past – and continue to struggle with today – Sara Dobie Bauer just adds a sentence or two to indicate we’re not in England’s actual past any more, but does no more than that. We’re told a king at some point had a gay brother, so it’s perfectly okay for people to marry whoever they want, no problem. There’s no bigotry. Simple!
The only other ‘alternate’ in this universe is that the author has removed the legal ruling of primogeniture, (the system whereby titles pass to the eldest male heir) thus enabling a father to leave his title to his handsome, nineteen-year-old second son instead of his eldest who, apart from his chagrin and the odd grumble, doesn’t really fight the decision. Dispensing with this fundamental rule of the aristocracy allows one of the book’s protagonists, Lord John Morgan, to deal directly with the new Lord Harrison Price over a piece of land which has long been a matter of dispute between their two families. Because the elder Lord Price has just died, Morgan can deal with the object of his desire to seek a deal over it.
First of all, this author can write and I’m sure her novels are equally well written, but that only made my disappointment with A Lord to Love that much greater. Alternate Universes are not meant to make it easy for an author to get round real world problems and belittle them.
The death of the father, grief and vulnerability of the nineteen-year-old Harrison, makes things easier for Lord Morgan, who though only nearing forty, is still using an unequal power dynamic to negotiate his ‘special deal’ over the disputed land. It isn’t a spoiler to reveal the deal is to involve Harrison – whom Morgan has been obsessing over since he (Harrison) was sixteen.
The narrative is written in the first person from the older Lord Morgan’s PoV and to be honest I found it downright creepy. The whole piece is a non-story used to set up two graphic sex scenes with a first person narrator. I will just leave two quotes, which I felt inappropriate in context –
“Please, don’t go. I had no idea my body could feel like this, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react…”
And
He spurs me on with shouts of “more, John” until I’ve thoroughly dismantled any trace of his virginity.
In this piece of 11,000 words, the LGBTQ+ community’s fight for rights and equality is belittled, and the trope-laden seduction of a young, female virgin changed to the seduction of a grief stricken, young, male virgin. This is not progress for any genre of romance.
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Book Details
| Reviewer: | BJ Jansen |
|---|---|
| Review Date: | March 24, 2019 |
| Publication Date: | 03/2019 |
| Grade: | D+ |
| Sensuality | Warm |
| Book Type: | Historical Romance |
| Review Tags: | Alternate reality romance | Male/Male romance | Queer romance | short story |
Aww, how disappointing! This could have been a lot of fun
I admit, I steer clear of queer stories that proclaim they’re set in an “alternate Victorian era where homosexuality is accepted” because it always sounds like a complete cop-out that, as BJ says, completely belittles the sorts of prejudices faced by queer people at the time.
If you want to create a victorian-ish society without prejudice and primogeniture, then fine, but either set it way in the future or on a different planet or something…
The future or a different planet would require worldbuilding – i.e. work.
Exactly, my point! Marian.
This is a really chewy question. I would love to see a properly alternate Regency/Victorian society with accepted queerness and I think it *could* be doable without being offensive if, as Marian says, you put the work in. Off the top of my head, one could retcon the whole of British history from Richard the Lionheart, or maybe James VI/I, and incorporate same sex relationships into the existing power structures as another route for families and institutions to mutually gain power–eg would you end up with Athenian-style older men taking young lovers as an explicit part of grooming them for power? You’d need quite a different state religion too. And you’d also have to ask about attitudes to sex outside marriage and what restrictions would emerge, because of course there are always restrictions. And the question of how this would intersect with primogeniture and inheritance-based power structures would be huge. All of which is to say, I think it could be fascinating if someone did it properly and thoughtfully!
Yes! Fancy the idea KJ?
This is why I get so disappointed because with proper thought, research and writing skill, the power dynamics, political and historical paradoxes and altered attitudes could make a fantastic novel. Instead we got 11,000 words framing two fairly explicit sex scenes.
You’re perfectly right about that – it could be fascinating… but clearly this author wasn’t interested in properly or thoughtfully 🙁
Weird, it seems to have eaten my comment, apologies if this ends up being a duplicate.
I think it ought to be possible to write good, respectful alt-Regency/Victorian where queerness is accepted, *if* you put the work in. Like, off the top of my head, via a more successful Stuart dynasty which knocks back the power of the church and leads to new creations of power structures for the wealthy via socially enshrined same-sex relationships. You’d need to consider how this would interact with inheritance and primogeniture but there are absolutely societies where unmarried sons, in particular, were a very useful family asset for gaining power, and plenty where sexual relationships between older powerful men and ambitious young ones were part of the established structure. (Which isn’t necessarily nice, but nor is dynastic marriage and het romance works with that.) I think it would be absolutely possible to create a convincing non-homophobic alt-Regency that doesn’t just handwave the past, if you thought it through sufficiently. But as Marian says, it’s work.
I didn’t realize you were reviewing this for us BJ! I randomly read it this past week & was so glad I didn’t have to review it for us. Sorry you had to do it.
I had the same problems you did – what a mess of a book this was! I also was hoping to be surprised by it. The alternate reality premise seemed promising…but when she totally ignores the laws of primogeniture ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE I was tempted to simply DNF it. Since it was a novella I decided to power through & honestly, what a waste of time. I think it’s a D+ – IF you don’t care about historical detail or character development and…well, if you don’t care – and you just want an interesting premise plus sexual intimacy and very little else. So, maybe this will work for some readers, but it didn’t work for me.
Totally agree Em, the reviews on Amazon seem…unusually positive in this case.