Quote:
Originally Posted by Blossom
I just want to read something that's close enough to not throw me out of the the time period. For me it's like this.
Pure Regency - Austen - Heyer - Cartland
Traditional Regencies - These are like Signet, Chater, Wolf, Bough Layton...etc
Regency Lite - Hawkins, Jefferies, Chase, Micheals...etc
Mistoricals - Dare, Borrows, Galen And a whole slew of authors
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To me it is more like:
1. Really good historical fiction/adventure/gothic that is also a romance. Heyer, Patricia Veryan, Victoria Holt (and all her other pseudonyms) a few others (many in hardback).
2. Decent romance with an effort at historical setting. (most fall here, to some degree)
2a. An attempt is made to make the characters aware of at least to some extent the attitudes and social mores of the time, to the extent that violation of such mores is obviously done deliberately.
2b. Little to no attempt is made to make the characters aware of the attitudes and social mores of the time. (costume historical)
3. Did the author even TRY? (the most blatant anachronistic sloppiness, and the romance isn't that great either.)
I prefer the first; what I like about historical romance is characters having to work with external and social constraints which don't exist anymore today (particularly in the constraints women and gays had to deal with; dysfunctional family dynamics and more stratified social and economic castes certainly add to the constraints. I like to see what the h/h do when everything is dead set against them). If I'm not going to have that, I might as well have a contemporary. This is why I prefer category 1 and 2a. I'll read 2b if it's really good id writing (Burrowes!) because that has its appeal as well.
I just read the Rose Lerner book this week; I liked it significantly less than her two others (I *really* liked her first a lot). I didn't fully connect with the characters and the election stuff bordered on silly.