Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little
I talked about this one a little in my post about the dearth of ancient historical fiction titles not set in Egypt, Greece, or Rome. This book is unique because it’s set in ancient Mesopotamia, both the wide open desert and the many cities located within the region. It’s the story of Jayden, a member of a nomadic tribe that travels in the desert from oasis to oasis. She’s been engaged to a cousin (by friendship, not blood) since she was a little girl, and her engagement ceremony nears. The cousin, Horeb, will be king of their tribe once his father dies, making Jayden their queen. Jayden’s older sister was engaged to Horeb’s older brother, who died during a raid. Jayden loves the desert life, but her sister has become disenchanted with it and wants to live in one of the cities, becoming a priestess of one of the local goddesses.

The story takes a few familiar turns. Horeb is awful, as can be expected. A stranger from the southern lands – where the valuable frankincense is plentiful – shows up, gravely injured, and is healed by Jayden’s tribe. The two fall in love, again not a surprise. This is the main conflict of the story – and it is a dangerous once, since Jayden is at the mercy of her father until she is married, after which she will be at the mercy of her husband.

There are interesting details about life during this time in this region – the importance of camels, the many uses of belly dance, the tribe’s religion, raids on other tribes, the way women gave birth in a squatting position – but it never feels completely engrossing. Jayden’s voice seems a bit naive for a girl who lives the very hard desert life. Some events also don’t make sense: The men ostensibly keep a close eye on the women, but Jayden and her sister seem to go to the local city and its temple as they wish. The tribe also doesn’t notice or care when one of the city girls shows up at a tribal dance, despite the tribe’s mistrust of the city people. The story feels a bit meandering, particularly during the first half, which is taken up with a lot of travel and not much else. This won’t win over readers looking for a terrific story, but it should be engaging enough for people interested in lesser-known times and places.

(The author states in her historical note that she deliberately did not describe her characters’ skin tone, as scholars are divided on what color such people’s skin tone actually was. But the cover shows a pretty light-skinned girl, which I’m sure surprises nobody.)

A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper
I’ve continued my historical fiction binge with this (somewhat) older title from 2008. This is a book I’ve heard subdued chatter about consistently since its publication, chatter that pops up again each time a sequel is released. It’s set in a fictional island country called Montmaray, located in the Atlantic Ocean near Britain and France, in 1936. The book is Sophie’s diary, and it tells of her life on Montmaray with her little sister Henrietta (Henry), her crazy uncle (the king), her cousin Victoria (the king’s daughter), a surly housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s son Simon, whom Sophie has quite a crush on. Sophie’s parents are both dead, and her older brother – the heir, since women cannot inherit the monarchy – is away at school in England. Occasionally they’re visited by their friends Anthony and Julia via airplane, but for the most part, their lives are completely isolated. The other inhabitants of the island mostly died during World War I, or moved away afterward.

People tell me this has a very I Capture the Castle feel, but since I’ve never read that book, I can’t say. It does feel a little old-fashioned, in a sweet way. It’s not particularly exciting and not much happens until the end, but the journey is still interesting. The first part of the novel is very much a slice-of-life sort of story. The setting is intriguing and the relationships between the characters feel authentic (Sophie and her siblings share a secret language, and the whole family is close-knit but can also be quite prickly with each other). It’s kind of incredible to think about these teenagers running around unsupervised on this tiny island that they literally rule – if that means anything when there’s no one to rule over. Of course, the harder reality of their situation is also made clear: no doctors, no luxuries, and nothing to protect them against the onslaught of World War II. Then two Nazis show up on the island with unknown purpose, and the teens’ somewhat sedate lives take a big turn.

Sophie’s voice is great, and she’s brought to life quite well by Emma Bering (I listened to it on audio). While I do think this takes a while to get going, I did immediately begin listening to the second one upon the first’s end. It’s a different perspective on World War II than anything I’ve read before.

The Mirk and Midnight Hour by Jane Nickerson
I listened to Nickerson’s first novel, Strands of Bronze and Gold (a re-telling of Bluebeard set in the antebellum South), and liked it well enough. Her second novel is in the South during the Civil War and re-tells a different legend: Tam Lin. Nickerson’s writing is slow with an emphasis on developing setting and building atmosphere. It worked pretty well in her first, but it’s less successful here. A full third of the book is purely expository. The protagonist, Violet, lives on a small plantation in the South. Her twin brother was recently killed in the war and her father remarried, then went off to fight himself, leaving Violet with a new stepmother and stepsister along with two male cousins who have come to stay. Nickerson spends a lot of time getting us acquainted with the farm, called Scuppernong, and its inhabitants, including several slaves.

About halfway through the book, Violet meets a wounded Union soldier named Thomas Lind. She dare not take him to a hospital, since he’d simply be taken captive. Thomas is being kept alive by a group of free Black people who practice hoodoo and are obviously preparing Thomas for some sort of ritual, which comes to a head at the end of the novel. This storyline is juggled awkwardly with that of the cousins at Scuppernong, one of them a young man whose intentions toward Violet and his younger cousin are anything but charitable. This would have been a stronger novel had Nickerson focused on one of these plotlines; as they exist now, they seem to be fighting each other for prominence. They don’t come together in any way by the end.

Violet’s voice is heavily accented and seems a little forced. I don’t think the narrator – Dorothy Dillingham Blue – has such a strong Southern accent naturally and it just comes across as fake. I also find books featuring hoodoo awkward when written from a white perspective, and I’m perhaps a bit tired of white Southern Civil War stories, where the white protagonist comes to the realization that people should not be owned and is lauded for it. It’s a hazard of Civil War historical fiction and it’s become cliche. A more nuanced and interesting take on slavery in a Southern plantation is Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze.

I don’t think this will appeal much to readers interested in Tam Lin; the retelling isn’t hugely obvious and it doesn’t even come into play until halfway through the book. Readers looking for setting and atmosphere may enjoy it, as well as readers who can’t get enough of this time period – and there are certainly those readers out there. Violet herself is an incredibly naive narrator, which may be accurate for this era when girls were meant to be quite sheltered, but it also slows the novel down some and keeps certain conclusions (mostly the cousin being a bad egg) from coming to light for much too long. I wouldn’t call this a first pick.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
This novel is set in 1909 London and focuses on a teenage girl who is determined to become an artist. Vicky comes from a wealthy family and they are determined that she give up her foolish dreams and get married. She’s taking an illicit art class in Paris while she’s supposed to be at finishing school and she decides to pose nude – it’s a life drawing class, the model failed to show, and all the other male students had already posed. Of course, her act is found out by her parents and she’s sent back home to London in scandal.

Her parents arrange for an engagement to a young man, a gambler who seems nice and whom Vicky believes may just be progressive enough to pay for tuition at the Royal College of Art. Vicky doesn’t mind marrying him if it means she can pursue her dream. The problem is, she starts to fall in love with a young police officer she met while sketching the suffragettes at a rally. Her life becomes a series of deceptions – sneaking away to meet the police officer (who has become her muse), sketching the suffragettes and eventually using her artistic talent to help them (a cause with which her parents heartily disagree), and applying for a scholarship to the art college.

Waller does a good job of showing Vicky as being progressive for her time but also caught up in its prevailing ideals. She can’t see a way to achieve her dreams beyond a man agreeing to give it to her. At the same time, she keeps pushing for a way to make it happen, and some of her actions would be considered progressive even for our own time (posing nude, for example). The suffragette storyline is a great subplot and helps give Vicky an arc – she realizes she has to fight for this cause if she ever wants to make her own dreams come true, that she can’t rely on others to do it for her. She’s a strong-willed protagonist who also seems like she belongs to her time, a fine line to walk in feminist historical fiction.

This is a great example of what historical fiction can be: a snapshot of a certain place at a certain time featuring an interesting protagonist in interesting circumstances. Readers wanting to know more about the suffragette movement in England would do well to pick this up – it features a number of real prominent figures in the movement and focuses on the force-feeding of the imprisoned women, a real-life occurrence which I know will be new to many readers. Katharine McEwan narrates Vicky’s story well, injecting personality into Vicky’s voice and slightly voicing the other characters.

Both audiobooks borrowed from my local library.