Quote:
Originally Posted by Carmelreader
ATDrake what did you finally select for authors?
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Well, I'm definitely picking up the Jeannie Lin because I like historical stuff in less-usual settings with swordfights.
For the Harlequin Vintages, I've settled on getting
I'll Bury My Dead by James Hadley Chase as he has the best reputation of all the pulp writers (Wikipedia entry and some movies based on his works). I'll read that first and I figure if I don't like the style overall, I probably wouldn't like the rest.
The two other Vintages I've tentatively got slated are Alan Handley's
Kiss Your Elbow, which had comparatively good reviews and which someone elsewhere randomly commented they found entertaining, and
No Nice Girl by Perry Lindsay, which Fantastic Fiction told me was a pseudonym of a female author who also wrote more standard Harlequin romances (or maybe was a guy who wrote the romances pseudonymously and the pulps using the "real" name). I figure it'll be interesting to read to see how the pulp conventions compare to the romance conventions.
I'm skipping over the other Vintages because one's apparently got noticeably irritating sexist and racist period stereotypes in addition to bad plot and dialogue, which I'm not willing to pay to read, and another's that author self-insert where he's the hero of his badly researched story, which is the sort of thing I can read off Fanfiction.net for free.
If I like the 1st James Hadley Chase, I might pick up the other one, even though the reviews say it's not as good.
I may also browse and look at some more historicals if I can get some recommendations for good ones that put as much emphasis on the history as the romance (like Roberta Gellis' works) and have very plotty stories, and they've got settings which appeal.
But I've kind of got a list of criteria for the couples-type stuff I'd rather not see in those (e.g. nothing where the hero/heroine are made to look better by having their rivals in competition for the other person's hand-in-marriage be total despicable sociopaths who would never understand what it is to
love and are only in it for baser lust/money/psychotic obsession reasons, because that's really irritating to read).
So I'll keep watching the currently ongoing recommends and sampling to get a better picture of what's out there.