First, the criticisms: I thought the London section was much more effective and engaging than the India section. Even apart from my own problem of bringing too much background to the India section, I just didn’t think it was well executed. There were myriad little errors and odd word usages that would pull me out of the story (e.g., Sir Metcalfe and Lady Metcalfe). The pacing was uneven and the landscape seemed weirdly underpopulated for India (although the physical descriptions were excellent). The characters (especially the Indian ones) seemed more Bollywood historical than authentically historical, which would be fine if the book were lighthearted, but given the topic and the hero and heroine, I found the occasional ditsiness of characters jarring. I also thought that the British were too uniformly over-the-top racist, and there was none of the well-meaning cultural obliviousness that characterized a lot of the more admirable Brits of the time.

That said, there were a lot of things to like about the book. I thought the romance, as opposed to the context, was wonderful. Their attraction to each other really shone through, and even when I wasn’t sure *why* Julian was attracted to Emmaline, the prose made me buy it at the time it was happening. I actually *read* the sex scenes rather than skimming them because they were so well integrated and so revealing of the characters. I could have done without the villain/treason subplot; the hero and heroine had enough going against them without that, and the villain was awfully cartoonish.

For a first book, this is a great effort and the strength of the romance makes me think that the author has a lot of talent that will continue to develop. My sense was that her ability to understand and portray the historical context was not as good as her talent for evoking physical attributes of a place, e.g., these people didn’t behave like those I’ve read about from the period, or like those featured in novels of the time. But the sights and sounds of India and London were beautifully rendered.

Note to Maya: I thought Duran did a really good job of avoiding the pitfalls you discussed in your blog post. My problem was not that her characters seemed un-Indian, but that they seemed too 20th century Indian. Even some the Hindi phrases (which were very accurate) seemed a bit modern in their slang. Those people would not have talked like that, even informally, in the 19th century, IMO. The character of Kavita in particular seemed like a filmi princess rather than a real one.

and, to state the obvious –
1.post titles are self-explanatoey, if someone doesn’t want to read they are free to skip
2. this is the j-readers site. they can do whatever they want with it. the beauty of the blogosphere is that people who have a different approach can easily start their own. and i bet the j-ladies would even go visit such sites.

sunita: i just posted about this kind (sorta) of issues on my blog!

This reminds me of the essay on style that Janine wrote several months ago, in which she wrote of the joy of reading authors whose prose sings. I found that in this book.

I’m not saying that the author feels like she must write a pretty turn of phrase. I hate writers like that. But instead, the prose felt like it flowed naturally from her pen in startling and exciting ways, and she wielded it to create some wonderfully tight characters and scenes.

As I mentioned in the review, this attention to detail wasn’t paid to characters like the villain. There is room for improvement. But I see her as quite capable of reaching the heights of the pantheon.

If someone I really respect had not recommended this book I would never have read it – something about judging a book by its cover. I think you said it best “the paragraph melted me.” This book melted me. So very well done.

By the by, I don’t mind the multiple reviews, even if they agree, because there are times when you get a perspective that you had not thought of. Truthfully, they may agree, but they all have something different and interesting to say. Also when a new author comes out with a book that is way beyond “this good” you cannot help but have everyone looking at it – sometimes that needs to be taken into consideration too.

When reading it I thought it was appropriate because the book is told from a close third person point of view, mainly from the heroine’s. She’s interested in the new culture, of course, but the hero is what’s front and center in her mind. She is simply drawn to him that much. The book’s focus then is the heroine’s, and it’s one that makes sense in light of who she is.

I would bet though that people reading the book with raised expectations might not like it as much as I did, who had none.

On to the book itself, I haven’t read it yet because I’ve been afraid my take will be more like Jane and Janet’s than Jan’s. I will definitely read it (the three reviews here have convinced me), and I was always planning to buy it because you have to support the effort. Where is the ebook, though? Anyway, I’m Indian, I’ve done a lot of research and writing on colonial India, and I tend to find romances set in India don’t ring quite true. And they’re never about romance between Indians, always about Europeans or Americans and Anglo-Indians (except for that recent book, Sunburst something, which failed the authenticity test).

BUT (yes, I have a point), one thing the many many reviews of this book have made me realize is that I’m probably using the wrong yardstick to think about it. The author said in her SB interview that she had always been fascinated by British India, and she went on to talk about how interesting she found 19th century Britain. That suggests to me that her focus is on the British in India, not on Indians under the British, and therefore the tropes Jane and Janet found problematic are more understandable. She’s following Forster and Paul Scott, not Tagore and Rushdie. In fact, the triangle in Duke of Shadows recalls the triangles in Forster’s and Scott’s novels of India (Indian Muslim/Anglo-Indian, newly arrived and idealistic Englishwoman, obtuse or downright villainous English public servant). And I’m not going to knock a debut novel for not being as good as those two!

Sorry to ramble, I’ve been thinking about this for the last week and haven’t known exactly which review to append it to.

I do like getting multiple perspectives of a book, although I think it works better when reviewers discuss it as opposed to writing several letters. Or a podcast….