Booklog 15/2019 - Lucinda Brant: Midnight Marriage – Roxton family Saga #1

Historical fiction - Georgian period.

This is a preposterous premise, but it works because the characters are good and the story fairly rattles along. It starts in 1761 when twelve year old Deborah, woozy on a double shot of laudanum, is woken one night on her brother's instructions, and legally married to an outraged and emotional (drunk) sixteen year old boy. The following morning, she believes it to be nothing but a dream. Skip forward eight years and Deb is settled in Bath, enjoying society, bringing up Jack, her dead brother's child, and evading casual proposals of marriage. While in the woods with her charge, Deb comes across a young man, Julian, seriously injured in a duel. She patches him up, gets help, and saves his life.

It turns out that he's her husband. He remembers but she doesn't, so he's come back to claim her but intends to court her from scratch without telling her the truth. It goes on to get much more complex than that but much of the misunderstanding could have been avoided if Deb hadn't been left in the dark.

If you can swallow the chain of coincidences, the witty dialogue carries this book along.

Movie of the Week: Captain Marvel

What can i say? I loved this movie. I'm going to try and review it without major spoilers because it's barely been out a week yet.

Vers (Brie Larson) is an extraterrestrial Kree warrior who has dedicated herself to fighting the Skrull, evil shapechangers, on a team led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), but images of a past life keep coming back to her and when she ends up on Earth she feels she might have had a life there, if only she could remember.

She teams up with a young Nick Fury, a cleverly de-aged Samuel L Jackson to fight what seems to be an alen infiltrarion, only gradually remembering her past as Carol Danvers. There's a wonderful reunion between Carol and her one-time best friend Maria (Lashana Lynch) who manages to be a brilliant pilot and a single mother with a brilliant kid.

This is Captain Marvel's origin story, setting up her upcoming appearance in Avengers Endgame. Also it's the first Marvel movie to have a female main character. (About time, Marvel, please don't forget Black Widow!)

Stay to the end of the credits for two extra scenes. Oh, and watch out for the cat.

Booklog 16/2019 - Sebastien de Castell: Traitor's Blade – The Greatcoats #1

I really enjoyed this. I've read one Sebastien de Castell book before and liked it, but this was even better. The Greatcoats are, or were, until the king was killed five years before the book opens, travelling magistrates dispensing the king's justice. They are trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia. Their signature greatcoats, made by the Tailor, a mysterious old woman, are a combination of armour and resource. I suspect they have pockets that not even their wearers have discovered yet. Tristia itself is plunging into chaos, thanks to the Dukes, who care for nothing but themselves.

Falcio, once the chief Greatcoat, is travelling with his two closest friends, Kest, a magnificent swordsman, and Brasti, not so bright but an astonishingly good archer. Not that Falcio can't hold his own in a fight, but he's supposed to be the clever one. He's still clinging to his Greatcoat identity and the law. The three of them have a plan to get the Greatcoats recognised as a force again, but that's destroyed early on and they  find themselves on the run and joining a merchant caravan as guards.

As the story progresses and the body count rises we get not only the plot as it unfolds, but also the backstory from Falcio's childhood through to how the king died while his Greatcoats lived. This is smart and sassy. Falcio is a great character, full of flaws (which he is not slow to admit) but also with a great heart and full of innate honour. De Castell goes to town on the blow-by-blow fights, choreographing them in great detail. Normally I find that a little wearing, but he makes it work very well. We meet Aline, remarkably self-posessed thirteen year old, and a murderous fey horse.

It's not grimdark… okay, maybe it is, but it's lightened by quirky humour (Falcio's internal monologue is quirky) and good dialogue. Falcio is very easy to like. He doesn't always get it right, but oh how he tries. I loved this enough to go straight on to the second Greatcoats book, Knight's Shadow.