float my boat. Set in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, it's well written, but the hero's character is all over the place. Peregrine is a fabulously wealthy foreigner, fixated on revenge against Weldon, a man
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float my boat. Set in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, it's well written, but the hero's character is all over the place. Peregrine is a fabulously wealthy foreigner, fixated on revenge against Weldon, a man
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I've enjoyed some of Mary Jo Putney's other books, but this one didn't float my boat. Set in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, it's well written, but the hero's character is all over the place. Peregrine is a fabulously wealthy foreigner, fixated on revenge against Weldon, a man who wronged him when he was a child in North Africa. He comes to England as a Kafir prince from Kafiristan. I had to look Kafiristan up. Wikipedia says: 'a historical region that covered present-day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan and its surroundings'. In exacting revenge Peregrine has vowed to take everything from Weldon and then kill him, but only after letting him know exactly why he's been targeted. One of the first things he takes, is the man's fiancee, Lady Sara St James, but in doing so falls in love. Sara is sensible and moral. She agreed to marry respectable-seeming Weldon without knowing his criminal activities. It seemed like a good option at the time, but her heart was never involved. She's surprised by her strength of feelings for Peregrine, but she doesn't trust him. Nor should she. He keeps his revenge mission from her 'for her own good.' So obviously he doesn't trust her either. All in all, I simply don't like Peregrine, and I have very little sympathy for him, his methods. He's a complex character, which I usually like, but he's got a bunch of traits that add up to make him a 'right bastard'. He's uncaring of how many other people get hurt for him to achieve his revenge. He's erratic, conceited, hot headed, heedless of others, and at times just plain stupid. He has enough evidence to put Weldon behind bars, or even hang him, but he's too busy playing mind-games to make a clean job of it. Weldon is two dimensional - a certified moustache-twirler with no redeeming features. He's a misogynistic, cruel paedophile who appears legitimate on the surface but keeps brothels for men with tastes that run to the unusual; specifically there's one where they kidnap underage virgins and sell them for non-consensual sex with syphilitic men who believe that sex with a virgin will cure their disease. It's as if the writer threw everything at the villain to see what would stick. And... ah, if only the hero and heroine actually TALKED to each other instead of (or as well as) having mindless wild sex every couple of pages. There's a lot of sex in this, and not always with full consent. I did keep reading, but only just. The satisfying resolution came too late (for me) to counter what I didn't like about this book. I note that it's one of her early books, originally published in 1991.
