Midnight Honor - Marsha Canham

[dangermousie]

Can I recommend a book? The book in question is Midnight Honor by Marsha Canham, and is about "Colonel" Anne Mackintosh, a Scottish noblewoman who raised a regiment to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1745 rebellion, undaunted by the minor inconvenience of her husband serving as an officer in the English army. Those must have been some interesting family dinners!

I wanted to read this for two reasons:

1. Anne was a minor character in Canham's awesome Blood of Roses and I was interested enough to google her and find out she was a real person. My desire to read a book about her, if one existed, was set when I read this in wikipedia:

The next month her husband...[was] captured north of Inverness. The Prince paroled Captain Mackintosh into the custody of his wife, Lady Anne, commenting “he could not be in better security, or more honourably treated.” She famously greeted him with the words, "Your servant, captain" to which he replied, "your servant, colonel" thereby giving her the nickname "Colonel Anne".

Completely irrationally, that made me think of Aral and Cordelia from the Vorkosigan books and I was set.

2. I really loved Blood of Roses. Really really really. And this was part of the same 'trilogy' about the 1745 rebellion.

So yes, I read it and was addicted and loved it (even if a very small part of me wished I could read more more more about Alexander and Catherine Cameron from BoR). Anne is pretty much an amazing heroine - brave and strong-willed but not Mary Sueish - she has a temper, she jumps to conclusions, and she is embracing what a rational person should know is a lost cause. And her relationships with both her husband Angus and with Alexander John McGillivray, the man who leads the clan into battle (she may be a symbolic leader but she is not a military commander) are very very messily complicated - she may love her husband but they are separated for large chunks of the book (and for a long time not just by distance but by ideology) and you can see her tempted with her sexay sexay war chief (that whole relationship was pretty tragic tbh).

Canham normally writes (excellent) romance novels, but she seems to have dispensed with them for these books. BoR was only a romance novel under a very loose definition of the term and this really isn't one at all - is it romantic? Sure (I shipped Anne/Angus like whoa) but it pretty much takes every romance novel rule (including the cardinal one that the bulk of the book should be spent on the relationship) and stomps on it.

So, if you like historical fiction of romantic bent, check it out!

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Like Gellis and Chadwick (and some others), I suspect very few of Canham's books would have been marketted as romances if the 'romantic historical fiction' genre had existed then like it does now, though Canham's books would have involved more rewriting than ther first two. Tracy Grant is another one who was initially classified as romance but got classified as historical fiction on rerelease.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I think Chadwick's later books get classified as historical fiction even now.

I always thought Gellis was romance only in the most strained definition of the word. Most of Canham's is romance (even if meatier than usual) but I have trouble seeing either Blood of Roses or MH as one. I really wish they'd stop with weird marketing. If I were expecting a romance novel and got MH, I'd be really disappointed. There is nothing wrong with romances (I enjoy many a fun one) but it is a distinctive genre and only books that fall into that category should be labeled as such.

Re: Tracy Grant. I only read Secrets of a Lady (which I loved) but was that ever labeled as a romance? Because it so is not. It is a historical fiction which I'd label a thriller if anything.

ETA: I am pretty sure that e.g. Jeffery Farnol would be labeled a romance novelist nowadays but he clearly wasn't one at the time he wrote.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Chadwick's recent books get classified as historical fiction, but the earlier ones were published as romance, even though they were much more in the historical fiction vein.

I read MH when it came out and don't remember being particularly phased by it not being romance centric. I did find it a bit startling when she had the hots for someone besides the designated love interest even after being in love, but that was a GOOD startled. (Mind you "romantic historical fiction" regardless of medium or age group and with or without bonus magic elements is pretty much my favorite genre.) I read half of Secrets of A Lady when it was first published and Daughter of the Game but lost my copy and didn't immediately find a new one before getting sidetracked. there may have been rewriting involved, but it was originally published as historical romance. I bought both it and the sequel when they came out, but haven't read them yet. But really, until the last few years (by which I mean a couple years into the 2000s) I think pretty much anything written by a woman with a female lead, or by a female author with a female character almost as central as the male lead, and with a strong romantic subplot got classified as a romance.

[eccequambonum.livejournal.com]

Ah, I dream of having time to read for fun again! Have added this to my goodreads shelf for when I do. If a virtual shelf could collapse under the weight of books there....

[kainee.livejournal.com]

YES for Aral and Cordelia reference! If there was ever a fictional character I would like to come to life, it'd be Cordelia. I <3 her forever for her "I'm going out shopping" to Aral and returning to show her shopping was shopping for the freaking head of their worst enemy. BEST SF COUPLE EVAR! LOL, sorry to turn fangirl-y but such good memories. Now I want to go re-read the Vorkosigan series.