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hrj(Sometimes I like to save up a backlog of reviews to make sure I won't have to scramble for something on Fridays, but I'm getting entirely too many stacked up at the moment.)
This is a group review of three novelettes in a thematic series entitled "Songs of Sappho", from which you may correctly deduce that the theme is lesbian historic romance.
I only stumbled across this author back in February 2015 when her publisher (Musa Publishing) announced a going-out-of-business sale. The e-book prices were so ridiculously (and guilt-inducingly) low that I picked up Bassett’s entire eight-book series “Songs of Sappho” without knowing anything more than that they were lesbian historic romances. And when I wanted to put something fluffy and comforting in my reading queue this week, I figured I’d finally give the first one (Lily in Bloom) a try. As it happens these are very short works, barely into the novelette word count, so I finish both that and the second story (My Lady’s Service) by the end of a 40-minute gym workout, and read the third (A Sweet Revenge) in a single gym session as well.
Bassett writes competent prose with a pleasant and solid voice and a familiarity and comfort with the historic romance genre. The only significant stylistic issue I noted was a tendency toward a formulaic repetition of certain descriptions. These stories were easy and pleasant reads, and if the content had been more closely aligned to my own tastes, I could easily become a big fan of the author.
The historicity of the settings falls within the scope of normal expectations for historic romance, which is to say that the average reader will enjoy the descriptions even though someone with a historic background would find much to critique. Lily in Bloom explicitly gives its date as 1886. Internal evidence suggests that A Sweet Revenge is set around the 1850s. The other story may be intended for a similar era, but the internal details, particularly of clothing, are more contradictory and vague, mixing garment types that suggest anything from the later 18th century through the late 19th. (And due to the nature of the stories, we are provided with a lot of garment descriptions as the items are lovingly removed.) If you are the sort of reader who knows the difference between a bustle and a pannier, or who wonders how a fully-clothed, corset-wearing woman could feel an exquisite touch brushing her nipple, the historic details may be unsatisfactory. The women's life histories and the solutions they find to realizing their desire for each other are solidly grounded in the times and do not dodge around the enormous pressures on 19th century English women to conform to heterosexual social structures, no matter what their emotional preferences.
I’ve called the stories “historic romance” but they really are more accurately categorized as historic erotica. The three that I read adhere to very similar formulas. (I can’t say yet whether the whole series follows a similar formula.) The viewpoint character is a sexually inexperienced or unsatisfied woman of relatively higher class or established standing, either in or about to enter an unhappy marriage, who has an erotic encounter with a more experienced woman of lower class or in a more marginal social position. The two women rapidly discover and develop a stronger and more romantic connection in addition to sexual desire. After a brief time for reflection and anticipation, there follows a longer and more elaborate sexual encounter during which the viewpoint character now takes an active role in giving pleasure to her partner. The stories resolve with the two women identifying a means by which they will continue to share their lives, despite the roadblocks of the times and society that would not recognize their attachment.
The sexual scenes are solidly vanilla, clearly consensual (even within the class differences), and relatively tastefully described using period-appropriate language (though not necessarily language one might expect the naïve protagonist to be familiar with). But the reader should not go into these stories expecting much in the way of plot or character development. The two primary characters are given three-dimensional backstories, but the minor characters are much more cardboard (not surprisingly, given the short length of the works), and the male characters in particular are uniformly presented as crude and unpleasant people. This creates something of a tension between the depiction of the characters’ sexuality (all the protagonists in the stories were clearly presented as exclusively lesbian in orientation) and the strong implication that a preference for women derives from the undesirability of all the surrounding men.
I’m conflicted about how to rate these works. On the one hand, the writing is competent, if not brilliant, the historic setting is neither better nor worse than the usual for historic romance, and the stories succeed well at what they intend to be: brief bits of historic fluff that could be very good company on a lonely evening. On the other hand, I’m not personally interested in stories that have so little in the way of plot and character, and I'm not really interested in stories where sexual descriptions take up more than 50% of the page-count. So I’ll set my star rating based on my own idiosyncratic reading experience and suggest that the potential reader focus more on my description to determine if these stories are for you (assuming you can get ahold of a copy).
This is a group review of three novelettes in a thematic series entitled "Songs of Sappho", from which you may correctly deduce that the theme is lesbian historic romance.
I only stumbled across this author back in February 2015 when her publisher (Musa Publishing) announced a going-out-of-business sale. The e-book prices were so ridiculously (and guilt-inducingly) low that I picked up Bassett’s entire eight-book series “Songs of Sappho” without knowing anything more than that they were lesbian historic romances. And when I wanted to put something fluffy and comforting in my reading queue this week, I figured I’d finally give the first one (Lily in Bloom) a try. As it happens these are very short works, barely into the novelette word count, so I finish both that and the second story (My Lady’s Service) by the end of a 40-minute gym workout, and read the third (A Sweet Revenge) in a single gym session as well.
Bassett writes competent prose with a pleasant and solid voice and a familiarity and comfort with the historic romance genre. The only significant stylistic issue I noted was a tendency toward a formulaic repetition of certain descriptions. These stories were easy and pleasant reads, and if the content had been more closely aligned to my own tastes, I could easily become a big fan of the author.
The historicity of the settings falls within the scope of normal expectations for historic romance, which is to say that the average reader will enjoy the descriptions even though someone with a historic background would find much to critique. Lily in Bloom explicitly gives its date as 1886. Internal evidence suggests that A Sweet Revenge is set around the 1850s. The other story may be intended for a similar era, but the internal details, particularly of clothing, are more contradictory and vague, mixing garment types that suggest anything from the later 18th century through the late 19th. (And due to the nature of the stories, we are provided with a lot of garment descriptions as the items are lovingly removed.) If you are the sort of reader who knows the difference between a bustle and a pannier, or who wonders how a fully-clothed, corset-wearing woman could feel an exquisite touch brushing her nipple, the historic details may be unsatisfactory. The women's life histories and the solutions they find to realizing their desire for each other are solidly grounded in the times and do not dodge around the enormous pressures on 19th century English women to conform to heterosexual social structures, no matter what their emotional preferences.
I’ve called the stories “historic romance” but they really are more accurately categorized as historic erotica. The three that I read adhere to very similar formulas. (I can’t say yet whether the whole series follows a similar formula.) The viewpoint character is a sexually inexperienced or unsatisfied woman of relatively higher class or established standing, either in or about to enter an unhappy marriage, who has an erotic encounter with a more experienced woman of lower class or in a more marginal social position. The two women rapidly discover and develop a stronger and more romantic connection in addition to sexual desire. After a brief time for reflection and anticipation, there follows a longer and more elaborate sexual encounter during which the viewpoint character now takes an active role in giving pleasure to her partner. The stories resolve with the two women identifying a means by which they will continue to share their lives, despite the roadblocks of the times and society that would not recognize their attachment.
The sexual scenes are solidly vanilla, clearly consensual (even within the class differences), and relatively tastefully described using period-appropriate language (though not necessarily language one might expect the naïve protagonist to be familiar with). But the reader should not go into these stories expecting much in the way of plot or character development. The two primary characters are given three-dimensional backstories, but the minor characters are much more cardboard (not surprisingly, given the short length of the works), and the male characters in particular are uniformly presented as crude and unpleasant people. This creates something of a tension between the depiction of the characters’ sexuality (all the protagonists in the stories were clearly presented as exclusively lesbian in orientation) and the strong implication that a preference for women derives from the undesirability of all the surrounding men.
I’m conflicted about how to rate these works. On the one hand, the writing is competent, if not brilliant, the historic setting is neither better nor worse than the usual for historic romance, and the stories succeed well at what they intend to be: brief bits of historic fluff that could be very good company on a lonely evening. On the other hand, I’m not personally interested in stories that have so little in the way of plot and character, and I'm not really interested in stories where sexual descriptions take up more than 50% of the page-count. So I’ll set my star rating based on my own idiosyncratic reading experience and suggest that the potential reader focus more on my description to determine if these stories are for you (assuming you can get ahold of a copy).
