To Rescue a Rogue by Jo Beverley
Sep. 10th, 2006 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksI finished To Rescue a Rogue yesterday, while lounging in the hammock, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I liked it, but wasn’t wowed by it like a couple of Beverley’s earlier Rogues books.
Mara is bored. Bored, bored, bored. As Dare points out, Mr. Johnson famously said that anyone bored of London must be bored of life. But Mara isn’t bored by London per se, but by the hemmed-in life she is leading, living with her pregnant sister – suffering from morning sickness, her sister is not a lively companion and is not up to late nights and parties.
Darius is living in seclusion in the family townhouse. Wounded at Waterloo, he was “nursed” back to health by an enemy of the Rogues*, kept imprisoned by an addiction to the opium administered when he was wounded and then administered still long after he needed it. Now free of the enemy, Dare has weaned himself of larger doses of opium, but still needs the crutch. His attempts to quit entirely have been dismal failures. He has determined that he has to give up the beast (his name for the addiction) or die trying, literally, because he refuses to live addicted forever, despite the advice of some physicians and chemists. Living with him are the two children he has more or less adopted, who were also prisoners of nurse.
Mara gets into trouble and enlists Dare’s assistance, and then determines to rescue him in return. He isn’t circulating in Society, but she inveigles him into trips to various exhibits and sights. They have an ongoing jest about gothic novels, and even sketch a novel of their own in which the heroine rescues the hero. Both characters acknowledge their attraction to each other fairly early in the book; that isn’t the conflict. The problems to be faced are Dare’s addiction; the fear of the other Rogues that he’ll never truly recover; and the scurrilous rumors suddenly circulating about Dare’s performance at Waterloo and the children in his household.
I liked the idea of the heroine rescuing the hero, and since Dare is a Rogue, the title seems pretty apt. But it becomes even more so when you realize that it does double duty: Mara, with the black-red hair of her ancestor Black Ademar, is a bit of a rogue herself.
Beverley does a fantastic job describing the struggles of an opium addict, I think. Not being one myself, I can only imagine the struggle, but Dare’s seems real. And her secondary characters are excellent: Salter the bodyman; Feng Ruyuan the healer and trainer; Ruth the disapproving maid.
What is it that keeps this book from being a favorite? I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, then I realized it was two things. First, the relationship development is too abbreviated, IMO. They are friendly acquaintances linked by Simon St. Bride, Mara’s brother, then suddenly in love after a few afternoons in each others’ company. Er, okay. Why? How? Is it just that Mara has the St. Bride urge to help? And Dare needs someone to hold onto? Second, everyone seems to feel impelled to get the old Dare back, including Mara. Dare even reflects on this and worries, because, as he says, that man is dead. But the idea that he’ll kick the opium and return to the lighthearted, teasing Dare of pre-Waterloo days seems pretty unrealistic to me. I felt like no one every acknowledged (other than Dare, when being pessimistic) that the old Dare couldn't come back -- even if he recovered, war and suffering changed him.
In short, I liked the wrap up of the series; the humor; the dialogue; the adventure of the book. The romance? ~Meh.~ B- from me.
*This enemy is Therese Bellaire, whose enmity for the Rogues began in the first of the books. She reappears throughout the series’ story arc. Not a nice woman.
Lady Mara St. Bride has never backed down from a good adventure, which was how she would up roaming the streets of London in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but a shift and corset beneath an old blanket. Luckily, her brother’s oldest friend, the devilishly sexy Lord Darius Debenham, answered her plea for help. Now she intends to repay the favor….
Before Dare was wounded at Waterloo, he had embraced everything life had to offer. Forever changed by the war, he believes nothing – not even the interference of a lovely young minx like Mara – can rescue him from his demons. But Mara is determined to reignite his warm smile, and enlists the help of the Rogues to offer Dare a temptation he cannot resist….
Mara is bored. Bored, bored, bored. As Dare points out, Mr. Johnson famously said that anyone bored of London must be bored of life. But Mara isn’t bored by London per se, but by the hemmed-in life she is leading, living with her pregnant sister – suffering from morning sickness, her sister is not a lively companion and is not up to late nights and parties.
Darius is living in seclusion in the family townhouse. Wounded at Waterloo, he was “nursed” back to health by an enemy of the Rogues*, kept imprisoned by an addiction to the opium administered when he was wounded and then administered still long after he needed it. Now free of the enemy, Dare has weaned himself of larger doses of opium, but still needs the crutch. His attempts to quit entirely have been dismal failures. He has determined that he has to give up the beast (his name for the addiction) or die trying, literally, because he refuses to live addicted forever, despite the advice of some physicians and chemists. Living with him are the two children he has more or less adopted, who were also prisoners of nurse.
Mara gets into trouble and enlists Dare’s assistance, and then determines to rescue him in return. He isn’t circulating in Society, but she inveigles him into trips to various exhibits and sights. They have an ongoing jest about gothic novels, and even sketch a novel of their own in which the heroine rescues the hero. Both characters acknowledge their attraction to each other fairly early in the book; that isn’t the conflict. The problems to be faced are Dare’s addiction; the fear of the other Rogues that he’ll never truly recover; and the scurrilous rumors suddenly circulating about Dare’s performance at Waterloo and the children in his household.
I liked the idea of the heroine rescuing the hero, and since Dare is a Rogue, the title seems pretty apt. But it becomes even more so when you realize that it does double duty: Mara, with the black-red hair of her ancestor Black Ademar, is a bit of a rogue herself.
Beverley does a fantastic job describing the struggles of an opium addict, I think. Not being one myself, I can only imagine the struggle, but Dare’s seems real. And her secondary characters are excellent: Salter the bodyman; Feng Ruyuan the healer and trainer; Ruth the disapproving maid.
What is it that keeps this book from being a favorite? I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, then I realized it was two things. First, the relationship development is too abbreviated, IMO. They are friendly acquaintances linked by Simon St. Bride, Mara’s brother, then suddenly in love after a few afternoons in each others’ company. Er, okay. Why? How? Is it just that Mara has the St. Bride urge to help? And Dare needs someone to hold onto? Second, everyone seems to feel impelled to get the old Dare back, including Mara. Dare even reflects on this and worries, because, as he says, that man is dead. But the idea that he’ll kick the opium and return to the lighthearted, teasing Dare of pre-Waterloo days seems pretty unrealistic to me. I felt like no one every acknowledged (other than Dare, when being pessimistic) that the old Dare couldn't come back -- even if he recovered, war and suffering changed him.
In short, I liked the wrap up of the series; the humor; the dialogue; the adventure of the book. The romance? ~Meh.~ B- from me.
*This enemy is Therese Bellaire, whose enmity for the Rogues began in the first of the books. She reappears throughout the series’ story arc. Not a nice woman.
