Rasmussen, Alis A. - The Labyrinth Gate

Newlyweds Chryse and Sanjay Mukerji are on their way to their honeymoon suite when a mysterious tarot deck included in their wedding gifts transports them to an alternate Regency England. In order to get back home, they have to help a host of characters excavate a legendary city.

I got this as a rec when I asked for fun, banter-y romance, and it fits the bill quite well. The dialogue isn't quite as snappy as I would have liked, and all the romances are not particularly in depth, but this book is good, fluffy fun. The alternate Regency is particularly interesting, as many of the important male personages are now female (the Regent is female, as is the heiress Princess Georgiana, and many other random mentions).

Much of the book is spent deciphering an ancient religion in Anglia prior to the coming of the Christianity-analogue. As noted, there are several romances in the book, but none of the characters are fully fleshed out. Instead, there's just enough of them to carry the plot. On the other hand, I really liked that Chryse and Sanjay were happily married and did things like talk to each other fondly. Also, POC! In fantasy of manners! I like that he's just casually Indian and there's nothing made of how misogynistic POC culture has to be (I hate that!). On the other hand, I felt some of his off-the-cuff comments referring back to being Indian didn't quite ring right to me, but then again, the book was published in 1988. Still, I did want just a bit more about the Indian-ness, especially given the setting and the fact that Anglia and an analogue of the East India company are already in Indhya.

I am also not fully bought into the resolution of one of the romances, given when one of the characters attempts to do in the book. And yet, even then there's some interesting genderbending going on. ( Spoilers )

I did like Rasmussen's inclusion of various labor movements instead of completely ignoring class issues.

Overall, not deep, but this is a fun, light read that has more going on under the surface than it initially seems like.

Hoyt, Elizabeth - Wicked Intentions

This is the first of a new series from Elizabeth Hoyt, and let me tell you, I am so glad it is not Tortured by Indians!

Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire, is looking for the man who killed his mistress in the slums of St. Giles. In order to get more information out of its untrusting denizens, he asks widow Temperance Dews for help in return for helping her find a new sponsor for the foundling home she and her brother run.

As expected, the serial killer plot is a boring one—if you can't tell, I'm not much for thriller plots in romance novels—but it serves to get the hero and heroine together.

Temperance is a woman afraid of her own sexuality for reasons that some romance readers may not like. I'm not a complete fan of the reason because I think I wanted over-the-top darkness and angst, but despite the whole serial killer and slums thing, there's a surprisingly small amount of angsty reasons in the book. Don't get me wrong... Caire is plagued by pain any time someone touches him and cannot love, but to my surprise, there's no horrifying background involving rotting corpses in India (Anna Campbell, I am looking at you!), and overall, he hovers and menaces and waves his cape around more than he actually is tortured.

I am of two minds for the setting. I like that Temperance is not one of the nobility and isn't all about the Season, that she thinks about things like the cost of sugar and feeding and clothing orphaned children, but I wish a titled lord didn't have to swoop in to the rescue. On the other hand, I feel there's still that class divide that's so common in romance novels, where the heroine may be common, but god forbid she speak with a "lower class" accent or be uneducated or the like. There's still a fairly large divide between Temperance and her family and the other denizens of St. Giles.

As for the romance, I'm not a huge fan of Caire, and I wasn't enamored of Temperance either, but I did like that despite Temperance's fears about her own sexuality, Hoyt lets her take control during sex more than once. The sex, as in most of Hoyt's books, is fairly explicit for romances, though definitely not up to erotic romance standards. Still, heroine on top! Tied down hero! I approve (and note that Hoyt's had several other books with the heroine in charge in at least one sex scene, which is more than most authors!).

The part that actually interested me most was the side story regarding Temperance's sister Silence, who I am sure will get her own book. That said, I'm not sure it was smart putting so much of Silence's story in this book, because it may not leave enough for Silence's own book. I am thinking mostly of Eloisa James' Desperate Duchesses series and how the penultimate book suffered from basically having the conflict resolved in previous books.

Also, I feel Hoyt tends to resolve her conflicts too easily, although it's not nearly as bad as some other authors. And while the fairy tale bits worked in her Princes trilogy, they weren't nearly as good in the Tortured by Indians quartet, and in this book, it feels entirely extraneous.

Anyway, not great, but not bad, will be interested to see how the rest of the series pans out.