Book Review: The Price of Temptation

[erastes]

The Price of Temptation by M J Pearson (m/m Regency Romance)

I won't say I didn't enjoy this, because I did. It was possible to unhinge my research head and treat it as a "romance novel" with all that that genre implies. Brooding hero, delicate (but rather stubborn) heroine who isn't going to let said BH get into his pants unless it's true love - not if he can help it! (all whilst being swept along by his own desires)


So yes, it's an enjoyable romance read. I liked the characters in the main. The BH (Stephen) was suitably brooding and sufficiently dissolute to make me happy. His kept man (Julian) was nicely venal without being a cardboard cut out and the hero (Jamie) was all right, although far the weaker of the main characters in my opinion.

It's a formulaic plot, which didn't detract from its readability but spoiled it for me for the purely personal reasons below.

*Digressing* I know that I'm a minority in finding the romance formula unlikeable but I can't help that. I've come to it very late. e.g. Now. It's safe reading. Reading with a net. Any tension and conflict that is raised in one of these books is completely spoiled (for me) because I read knowing – knowing – that all is going to be all right. And even if the heroine/hero is naked and dangling over barracudas in the final chapter I don't have to invest my emotions because the hero will be coming along at the very last moment to Save the Day. It's James Bond. Gimme GRRM any day when you hope your favourite character makes it to the end of the chapter! (and yes... I know GRRM isn't Romance....)

This isn't a criticism about this book. I just like the thrill of the unknown. I know readers of the romance genre will take my whine as a recommendation of the book, and it is, if romance floats your boat. But I don't really get it. I want to worry that they might NOT get back together, not to be reassured that I know they will. /digressing

Characters

I liked Stephen a lot. He was a product of his time and circumstances. He'd lost his family and was drifting further and further into dissipation and was more than ripe for True Love to Redeem Him. As much as I liked him he certainly deserved The Wet Fish Clue Slap around half way through, because he wouldn't shake off the wastrel Julian he was hanging around with for the lack of anything better), he struck me as a very true man – being led around by flattery and his cock - and like a lot of rich men, he had lost the ability to tell whether affection was real or bought.

Jamie I never quite connected with, he held many of the attributes of the good romantic hero(ine), he was Good. He was self taught, (no education other than some old vicar in Yorkshire, but he could read Greek and was a published historian) He stepped into the running of great house and went from personal secretary to librarian to house steward, taking over Stephen's budget and starting him on the road to solvency with a speed (the book encompasses about 3 months) and an ease that would have impressed even A Woman of Substance. But he didn't impress me, I was a little bored with him - I never quite felt I knew him, perhaps it was his lack of flaws. He just started to get interesting towards the very end of the book, and I would have liked to have seen a bit more of that.

But overall, he was just a bit too passive for my liking, I have to admit.

There are many other secondary characters, which make for lively interaction. My favourite, I have to say, was Stephen's Aunt, (and Julian, but then I always had a penchant for bad blond boys..)

Period Feel

It owed a healthy nod more to Heyer than to Austen, which was more obvious to me, (and to be honest I wouldn't have been able to stomach), if I had not been reading my first Heyer at the same time as I was reading this, and therefore understood more clearly where the jargon came from. It is a compliment to Pearson that I read TPOT in two short sittings, whilst I'm still wading through the jargonistic morass that is The Black Sheep after a week… (more on that when I finish it!!)

The thing that jarred me is that really, the characters seemed to me to be modern day characters in a period setting. Their language vacillated from Heyerisms to Modern Day – "Jesus!" and "fuck" are used as swear words, and someone says that they've "blown it" – another says he "needs to get laid" at one point, Jamie has a cute nose, and so on.

The household is so damned liberal it's amazing – Stephen is not just casual or fraternising with his staff, he treats them as his equals, near enough, from the scullery maid upwards. (He's an EARL) They all give him advice and he sits and chats and plays cards with them. I also couldn't manage to believe that, in a society where buggery and sodomy was punishable with such regularity and fanaticism, that Stephen would get away with being a self proclaimed sodomite in 1816. Granted (like my Rafe) he might have been able to side step any conviction, but he would have been prey to blackmailers, scandal mongers and certainly ostracised from all polite society. He'd get away with it once, but not in a serial fashion in the way he does. Not without some other prop to sustain him – a great wit, a playwright, a bosom friend to Prinny, a huge and powerful family or something like that.

I did notice other small anachronisms and some sayings that are (as far as my research goes) only attributable to Heyer - but I only noticed them because of months of research into the same period so they won't spoil the book for the general reader, and it will enhance the enjoyment for the Heyer-philes as they will find it familiar There were however, some nice true details – the fact that the Elgin Marbles were in the British Museum in 1816, waiting for the Duveen Gallery to be built, good solid research into where Hanover Square is in relation to other streets in London. (I had to smile though that Jamie walks from Hanover Square to St Paul's, and the distance is noted, then he's in Westminster Abbey as if it were next door, whereas in reality it's as far away from St Paul's as is Hanover Square, he'd be more sensible to go there first! No wonder he was knackered when he got home…)

However, as I say, it's a decent enough read, although all in all I felt that it was all a little rushed and at 200 pages, it could easily have extended to 250 without harming the book at all, just to give us a deeper insight into the characters. The whole thing about the roses passed me by, somehow, I knew that Charles had done something to help Stephen out, but if it was explained, I missed it, and it was such a Big Gothic Detail that I felt it should have been more important than it turned out to be.

If you like m/m and you like Heyer, you'll probably like it. That being said, it's been out a while, and I dare say everyone's read it already!

Readability - Four
Period Feel/Historical Accuracy - Two
Sexual Hotness - Three
Overall - Three out of Five

Comments

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I agree, and with m/m I find HEA very difficult to do, in a historical setting (as you know). I left Standish up to the reader and with Transgressions there's a "Happy Now" which is as much as I can do.

But really, when I come to think of it, all romance is Happy Now, isn't it? All we see is a small scene of reconciliation, and not what happens after the camera shuts off.

I just don't want the safety net. Have you read "At Swim Two Boys"? The most beautiful romance - and no clue as to how it would end up, until the end, and you pray that you are wrong, right up to the last minute. That book will stay will me forever, even if I don't read it again.

I am looking forward to reading the werebook - even if I know the ending - blast it!

*G*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

A TARDIS. That would be the answer. For sure. The hope of all gay men everywhere...

[divinereverie.livejournal.com]

I don't really read regency romance so I can't really comment on much of what you said but HOLY COCKS, BATMAN! That is one...monster...of a cover.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? That scene isn't in the book, sadly...

But I can't work it out. Either he's got a round cock, or something very wrong with him...

[lady-isabella.livejournal.com]

And it's at kind of a weird angle, too! Yes, I'd be rather concerned if I were a man, and my trouser bulge looked like the sight on this cover.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I think he stashes his lunch down there--a sandwich made from one of those little round loaves of bread. I hate to imagine why, though

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*loses tea over keyboard*

[zehavit-lamasu.livejournal.com]

In a strange and twisted way I am quite glad to find that Heyer jargon is somewhat made up because that would at least get the zealot Heyer fans off my back when I fondly call her a trashy romance novelist (I make no secret of being a lover of trash and cliche even though I enjoy more challenging literature... sometimes... there is a time for this and a time for that!)

I love MJ Pearson although I can agree with you on almost all the points you made (Jamie might as well be a girl in my opinion) but as you pointed out - I am a Heyer fan >_<.

Looking forward to read your views of The Black Sheep even if they are negative... it wouldn't change my mind anyway - I am shamelessly hooked ... a little sad, I know ...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know for CERTAIN that it's made up. I'm basing that on the fact that I've read just about every regency novel writing at the time and I don't remember people talking like that. Granted their are occaisional people in Austen who use some slang, but not all of them - and in Heyer, everyone talks in slang all the time. Even if they come from different parts of the country, even (in Black sheep) if they've been in India for 20 years!

I'm hoping that when I review Black Sheep, someone will help me as to where the jargon came from.

I rely on sites like this, though

http://www.io.com/~dierdorf/nono.html

[willa-writes.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I bought Pearson's books because I am a shallow sheep and couldn't *not* buy something with a picture of a man who appeared to have bullock testicles stashed in his slacks. I mean, come on. There's your daily giggle, just looking at those Amazing Testes. However, after reading your review I am now more inclined to read the books themselves. Thank you!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

are you telling me that you bought them and didn't READ them?

*feels ashamed for raping every book that drops through letter box*

Yes, read!!

[willa-writes.livejournal.com]

I bought them to go in my towering TBR stack. I just kept getting distracted by other volumes. :-) I shall revise my previous statement to say that they are moving upward in the ranks of books to be consumed.

[themostepotente.livejournal.com]

Um, didn't you spork that cover art before, doll? *G*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I did yes. But I'm not sporking it again, this is a book review

[alankria.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds romance formulaic and the HEA irritating.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

But why is the HEA irritating? It's the whole POINT to a romance novel! (I mean, that's the definition in romance circles, afaik.)
If you didn't want one, you wouldn't read a romance. You'd read something classified in a different genre.

While a lot of romances are formulaic, the only real requirement is that there is a HEA.

[alankria.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't read romance novels. =D I get irritated.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's irritating because, to me, I don't want to know what happens.

I am completely naive, I suppose, or had a sheltered upbringing, or catholic tastes or SOMETHING, but I didn't realise about genres until I started writing myself and interracting on LJ. I simply didn't realise that there was a genre of books that demanded a HEA.

I guess I don't like absolutes in anything. And I can't get emotionally involved in something that I know is going to end with the MCs in each others arms at the end, no matter how bleak it seems. I compared it to James Bond, and that's just how I feel, I watch those films and the fight scenes mean nothing. "He's going to survive" I think. and yawn. Same thing for romance novels. It's hard to explain, I suppose and purely subjective but I'm pleased I'm not the only one! (even if i'm in a very small minority!!)

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful review. Alas, I have had my fill of the "Duke of Slut" in traditional romances, even though this one's only an Earl, I couldn't face another one right now. So I think I'll have to give it a pass.

I love me my Heyer, though. I fell into reading her when I was, what?, eight or nine? and I still adore her books. I have heard that she made up several expressions in her novels, but have never found a real reference of exactly what she made up.

And, oh, yes, the traditional romance HEA. I enjoy that, myself. But then I'm the iconoclast who reads the ends of books before I buy 'em, so I know there's nothing tragic coming up. (Yes, I know, shallow, but I read to escape my real life, and I prefer the characters whose heads I get into to have a good life after all the trauma.)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Like Romance, I'm only just discovering Heyer, and I realise that I'm probably the wrong age to read her for the first time.

Heh - I thought you'd like Romance, knowing your penchant for reading the end of books!

Thanks - I'm glad you liked it, though

[aperfectscar.livejournal.com]

There's a book about Heyer's work (which, irritatingly, I can't remember the name of or the author) which looks at how historically acurate her books were.

The only phrase I know for certain she made up is "enacting a Cheltenham tragedy" because she sued another author who used it. She was quite open about the fact that she made some of her slang up.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

OO Thanks! Well, that's interesting and if you find the name of the book, I'd like to know it. I have to say, I've read voraciously of books written of the time and slightly afterwards, and I really don't recall people talking like that. Occaisionally you see someone using some slang, but her characters need a code book. Even the man who's been in India for 20 years speaks the same slang as the man who lives in England.

I am sure her historical details are spot on, but I can't stand the dialogue!

[aperfectscar.livejournal.com]

It's Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester (ISBN 0-434-01329-3). There's also Georgette Heyer's Regency England by Teresa Chris which I haven't read.

I have to admit that I don't recall a lot of slang in Black Sheep, but that's probably because I've read most of the historical novels so many times.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I will seek them out.

I'll also post one conversation of TBS when I review it!

[m-j-p.livejournal.com]

Hi J,

I make it a policy not to respond to reader's opinions, to which they're absolutely entitled, but I consider comments on my research fair game. I'd like to direct your attention to a section of my web page where I address the sodomy laws of the time: http://thepriceoftemptation.com/AbouttheAuthor.htm

You might find it interesting reading.

Fair catch on "cute," "laid," and "blown," but I was right about "fuck" and "Jesus." My academic training is in historical archaeology and linguistics, so I try to be rigorous about research without descending to language that sounds stilted to our ears. Tough to balance, and out of 72,000-odd words it's hard to police every one. Believe me, I try--the OED Online cringes when it sees me logging in to check another first recorded date of usage.

But sometimes it's easier to find other author's goofs than our own--like, um, the date of the Battle of Waterloo in your book, or the guys wearing their hair tied back in bows. ;)

Best of luck with your writing!
MJ Pearson