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Subject Topic: Katherine Ayres, good historical fiction? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Tina P.
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Posted: May 18 2007 at 2:35pm | IP Logged Quote Tina P.

We bought North by Night, a story about the underground railroad, from a library sale. I read it. What is it with today's historical fiction? There seems to have to be some shocking element ~ do authors think they need this like movie producers do? ~ a totally out of place or time character or element to make the story stand out. It's OK, despite it's being slightly fluffy and this bit about her Presbyterian minister being boring and her being glad not to have to attend services (although, I have to admit that I enjoyed the fact that it was not *our* religion that was beset upon for just this once) but this one character just gives implausibility a whole new meaning. She's a liberated married woman whose husband went off to do fur trading. And this is OK with her?!?! Are her other books better? I was particularly looking at Family Tree.

And speaking of implausibility, don't bother buying or even borrowing Boston Jane. It made me ill that this tomboy girl could just go loopy over this 19 yob and decide, on his advice, to become a lady. Then he goes off to the frontier to find his fortune in timber. After a few letters back and forth, he asks her to come out to Oregon and marry him. On the way, her friend dies (and haunts her the rest of the story ), she makes fun of a priest and here I'm going to have to paraphrase, "I'm glad I'm not Catholic." She has, by now, become so obsessed with her future intended and being a lady (in the wilderness, to boot!) that this is a parody, not historical fiction. Oh! I forgot. The *adventures* she has are goofy, often self-imposed.

Am I too critical? Maybe being an adult reading children's fiction I'm too jaded by experience and by my knowledge of history??

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