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Reviews

Review: Mrs Martin’s Incomparable Adventure By Courtney Milan

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The author Courtney Milan came to my attention recently as the result of some fairly unpleasant decisions (and their consequences) made by the Romance Writers of America in response to some of Milan’s robustly framed but justifiable critique on racism/racist tropes in romance (and on one book in particular). The Guardian has a summary.

Not having read anything by Milan, but seeing the comments threads full of praise for her work, I decided to give her books a try, and the what’s the first thing I found listed but a wonderful tale of 70ish ladies teaming up for delicious revenge and late blooming lesbian love!

Mrs Martin’s Incomparable Adventure is a romp, with a dastardly villain and dashing heroines – the wealthy Mrs Bertrice Martin and the impoverished but proper Miss Violetta Beauchamps. What begins as a gentle kind of lie to get Violetta out of some desperate straits turns into a Regency buddy tale of two fed-up women burning down the patriarchy!

It’s not anything like a nuanced tale set in the gritty realism of London’s seedy streets. As Courtney Milan states in her Author’s Note:

Sometimes I write villains who are subtle and nuanced. This is not one of those times. The Terrible Nephew is terrible, and terrible things happen to him because he deserves them. Sometime villains really are bad and wrong, and sometimes, we want them to suffer a lot of consequences.

The Nephew is indeed Terrible – a liar, a fraud, a sex pest, a bully, and arrogant and insufferably lazy lout – which makes his come-uppance a particular joy. Each woman has her troubles and secrets; each needs to grow and to listen to each other. Even as the plot as a whole is an unvarnished escapade, these two central characters are portrayed vividly. You can’t help wanting them to get away with all their zany plots.

And oh, it’s a glorious and often hilarious ride. Violetta may be a bit diffident, and Bertrice a bit oblivious to her privilege of wealth, but they both know what it’s like to be a woman at the mercy of unscrupulous men, and their schemes of retribution are also the framework that brings them close, helps them to learn their own worth and to accept the love they want and deserve.

It’s always a delight to read some queer historical romance, and the delight is doubled when we get some older women as the romantic leads.

Milan has an excerpt on her website. I for one am an instant fan, and will be looking up more of “The Worth Saga” (of which this is book 2 ¾).

Buy Mrs Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

Cool Projects, Jewellery

New: Dangerous Charm Jewellery

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Some of you may already have noticed an exciting new addition to the Narrelle M Harris Mortal Words website! I’m here to tell you how it happened.

When you’re a writer for both the corporate sphere and the world of fiction, your world is mostly made up of words. When reading is a primary past-time, that’s every so many more words to the glorious language cloud that inhabits my brain. Mostly I love it and have few complaints.

But sometimes I long for some creative hobby that isn’t so wordy and that gives me chance to exercise other parts of my febrile brain.

Last year, I decided to make some cross-stitch bookmarks as rewards for supporters of my Patreon. It was huge fun even if time consuming (it takes a lot longer to make a hand stitched bookmark than you might think). I had bought a lot of charms to hang off the end of some bookmarks as little weights, and at the end of the Patreon exercise, I still had a lot of these in my new craft stash box.

I wasn’t sure what to do with them until I remembered my good friend KRin of Pink K Designs makes jewellery. She’d already been fabulous, helping this craft novice learn how to cross-stitch, and was just as wonderful in taking me under her wing and teaching me how to make earrings.

Well, gentlefolk, I took those lessons into my body and soul and promptly went absolutely nuts with delight! I began to make all kinds of earrings inspired by books – my own and others’.

I’ve made Holmes and Watson earrings, often matching different charms to reflect two characters or aspects of a story. I’ve got guns, violins, bees, caduceuses and magnifying glasses in pairs or sets. For Kitty and Cadaver I’ve matched musical themes (treble clefs, guitars, drums and violins) with paranormal themes (vampires and skeletons). Ravenfall matches vampire, doctor and artist charms.

The Secret Agents series is reflected in cupcakes and guns (and coming soon, motorbikes and guns) while Duo Ex Machina continues the music theme, though I’m looking for coffee charms to reflect the Melbourne side of that equation! I have feathers for Grounded and even Richard III and wolf and bat earrings for Scar Tissue and Other Stories.

I’m branching out too, with Ineffable Husbands designs, things inspired by Shakespeare. There’ll be more of those classical inspirations coming soon.

In due course, I’ll be offering earrings as part of the rewards in my Patreon. In the meantime, I’m having a blast exercising my creative impulses in colours and, effectively, pictograms. In a world that’s become very stressful, it’s so soothing to sit with a tray of charms and beads and listen to a podcast (words again!) while I assemble sets of earrings that reflect the books I love to read and write.

(While I’m here, I can very highly recommend the gentle, delightful ABC Radio National podcast The Fitzroy Diaries, created by Lorin Clarke, daughter of the much-missed John Clarke. His spirit may continue in her, but her voice and talent are all her own!)

Rather than being a drain on all my creative impulses, making jewellery turns out to spur them and to feed a need I didn’t know I had. There is such joy in the act of making things.

If you want to see my creations (and maybe buy one or two – I’ve got to fund the purchase of new charms and beads somehow) you can visit Dangerous Charm now!

Reviews

Review: Euphoria Kids by Alison Evans

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Alison Evans’ Highway Bodies was a superb new zombie apocalypse with its focus on gentle queer kids surviving in a savage world by leaning on love and friendship as well as their own resources.

Their next novel is another sweet tale of young queer people finding their place in the world and with each other, in an environment of fairies, strange green realms and a witch’s curse. It’s as much contemporary fairytale as modern YA novel, which is a good part of why it’s so delightful.

The chapters vary between non-binary Iris, who grew from a seed in the ground, and their new friend Babs, who was cursed by a witch and is sometimes invisible. The two befriend a new trans kid who hasn’t found his name yet, so they call him the boy until he chooses.

Babs, Iris and the boy negotiate school, home lives, art class, the woods and the realm beyond, and learning magic. Babs’ attempts to find and confront the witch that cursed her are complicated by Iris’s promise to the fairies to not help her, and by the attentions of otherworldly threats when they cross into the realm.

Euphoria Kids is charming, filled with lush growing things, wonderful descriptive language and effortlessly inclusive concepts and language. With home life difficulties and wild magic all around, the book’s inherent gentleness isn’t without tension or drama. Instead, Evans guides us through a world that is shifting and often uncertain, but filled with courage, kindness and friendship.

Euphoria Kids isn’t due out until 4 February, but you can pre-order this lovely fairytale at:

Reviews

Review: Wild in the City – A Guide to Urban Animals Around the World by Kate Baker, Illustrated by Gianluca Foli

Most of us have heard about the foxes that frequent London suburbia – I’ve seen a few myself, and a penfriend used to write about the vixen that had kits in a den under her allotment shed. In Melbourne, too, followers avidly check online for the state of the Collins Street falcons (with their chicks so entertainingly called by locals the ‘Murder Pom-Poms’).

It’s hardly a surprise that wild animals with shrinking habitats have found niches for themselves in cities around the world, and Lonely Planet Kids has created another fascinating book for the 9-12 age range on how wild creatures are adapting to the need to live in cities – and at times how humans are adapting too.

Wild in the City‘s critter citizens are presented in nice little sections about habits, habitats, human interactions, conservation status, examples of unusual sightings as well as where/when to usually see them.

For some critters, the book also offers some lovely tips on providing safe environments for bees, birds and other animals – including building bug hotels and the hedgehog highway.

While I’m aware of suburban foxes, squirrels, monkeys, falcons and bats in different parts of the world (and am much too aware of city dwelling spiders), I never knew about the hyenas of Harar in Ethiopia, or of the sloths who literally hang around Panama City.

Gianluca Foli’s illustrations are a charming accompaniment to Kate Baker’s accessible text. Wild in the City is a lovely coffee table book for any budding city-based naturalist in the family.

Buy Wild in the City