Discussions that are both very valuable, I think, and very frustrating. I find myself wanting to just think about this book in isolation, as a recent reading experience. I wrote a bit about this panel, and the dearth of historical romance hoopla at the convention overall, shortly after returning from New Orleans. I can think of a lot of other adjectives that better describe the mood this cover evokes. The opportunity to discover a new-to-me author with a nice backlist is always appealing, and now I wonder how I missed Lofty prior to the RT panel.
This book certainly delivers on the grainy history, and a believably smoldering attraction and romance. The setting Glasgow, Scotland in the days of the Industrial Revolution — the book is permeated with Victorian-era urban squalor, class conflict, union-busting, corruption and capitalism. No dukes, no debutantes.
Tenements, row houses, back alleys, pubs, and mills — no ballrooms, not even a lowly assembly room. The master Alex Christie, widowed astronomy professor and reluctant mill owner.
The organizer Polly Gowan, mill worker, skilled orator, union leader, and vigorous advocate for justice. She is politically savvy enough to be OK with being elected to lead the union while letting the mill owners and outside world think she is merely a stand-in for her ailing father, the longtime union boss.
The Weight of History? I found myself rooting for Starlight as an effort to reframe historical romance in terms of ordinary people, ordinary lives, and ordinary jobs. Both Alex and Polly come across as likable and deserving of each other, and I found their romance emotionally satisfying. Do I really believe in the upward mobility and fluid identity this character embodies? He sat up. So much of this is as much about the male characters as it is about the female ones.
