#twould kill the vibe

[daisywords]

procrastinated eating dinner and now my roommate has a mysterious guy over, so I'll just starve I guess

[joannerenaud]

Enchant the Heavens review

I've been revisiting a lot of my favorite old historicals since my beloved kitty Peggy died about a month ago, and one of them is Enchant the Heavens by Kathleen Morgan.

When I was a college student I loved romance novels, particularly historical romance, even though most of my friends at the time thought it was ridiculous and made fun of me for reading them. It made me even more stubborn, and I clung to the genre like a barnacle onto the hull of a ship. However, there was one book at the time that was too cheesy even for me, and that was Enchant the Heavens.

I found the cover embarrassing. Look, my teenage self thought, the hero’s hands look like he’s about to crack the heroine’s skull! And the hero, Marcus, was so earnest. The book was so earnest. The culture at the time was saturated with snark and irony, and sadly, I was not immune. I set the book down.

Years later, in 2011, I revisited Enchant the Heavens, and I found myself… well, enchanted. I was swept away by the epic nature of the story and the endearing characterizations. And I reread it just a week ago. I admit, I was afraid the suck fairy might’ve visited it over the intervening years. But I found myself devouring it happily just as I did all those years ago. And it’s good.

Enchant the Heavens was the first novel Kathleen Morgan ever wrote, and it was a labor of love. It’s a big, passionate, visceral, breathtakingly earnest romance.The story involves a British chieftain’s daughter, Rhianna, and the Roman governor’s nephew, Marcus, during Boudicca’s revolt, and their love is an anguished, star-crossed love that takes a great deal of blood and tears and hard work to resolve. Unlike most romances set during this period, the Celts aren’t romanticized into nature-loving New Agers, and the Romans aren’t evil. And neither the heroine or hero give up their cultures or identities in the end; in fact they work on uniting their communities in the aftermath of war. It’s mature and refreshing.

The language does have a lot of archaicisms that kind of annoying. ‘Twould! ’Twas! Naught! Okay… You just have to run with it. But if you’re willing to dive in, there is a lot to love about it. Rhianna is not afraid of revenge, or using her sword, which is really delightful (to avoid spoilers, I won’t tell you who she kills). Marcus is a reasonable guy too, but there’s just the right amount of deeply felt angst that is perfect for a story about forbidden love. Sometimes I feel that Marcus and Rhianna verge on being idealized archetypes then actual people, but it kind of fits with how epic and operatic the story is. (It really captures the vibe of ancient Irish stories like Deirdre, which was the author’s intention.) The author walks the line of having them be larger-than-life figures, but they still grow and change, from a thoughtless girl and a career-driven aristocrat to a responsible, compassionate leader and a humbled man ready to sacrifice his dreams to help his lover and her people.

The research put into this book isn’t perfect— towards the end of the book, there’s an hummingbird, native to the Americas, in Rome — but it’s thorough and thoughtful, and I liked the depiction of the historical figures. For example, the depiction of Nero, who has a brief and memorable cameo, is almost miraculous in how… sensible it is (and ahead of its time given this was written long before the current reassessment of Nero and the 2020 show at the British Museum). There’s no orgies or lions or gladiators or martyred Christians or any other cliches that I’ve seen over and over again in the few historical romances set in this period. It’s astonishing.

Anyway, this book is long. It’s also epic and sweeping in every possible way, and I have a feeling a good chunk was left on the cutting room floor. I would kill to have the original, unedited draft. Rhianna’s relationships with her friends Eilm and Cordaella are given short shrift. Also I feel the destruction of Camulodunum, and Rhianna’s role in it, was also cut a lot. I would have liked to see more of that, and Rhianna coming to terms with how her actions affected innocent civilians.

But the pacing, given how long it is, is surprisingly tight. I thought the consistent themes of freedom, symbolized by the goshawk, was really beautifully done; not heavy-handed, but subtle; and the story really embraces the pagan religions of the time in a way that’s delightful. There’s so much I can’t get into, or this review would be twice as long. There’s battles, druids, psychic visions, continent-spanning political intrigue, murder, and possibly supernatural white boars sent by the gods.

And the ending is really satisfying. I wish it were 20 to 30k longer, but it’s great as it is. It’s an absolute banger of a story. It’s not perfect but I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Of course, what really sucks about it all is that this was going to be the beginning of a series, and the hero’s best friend Quintus was going to get a sequel.

There was, in fact, one sequel (Enchant the Dream) featuring the heroine’s brother Cerdic. But then the author converted to Christianity sometime in the late 90s, and her entire pre-conversion historical and fantasy backlist are completely unavailable. (Of course, her post conversion backlist is available.)

It pisses me off so much, because Enchant the Heavens is so good! And I wanted to see Quintus’s story! But that’s never going to happen. And there’s never going to be a legal digital copy of this book either, because the author has seemingly disavowed it.

But we’ll always have Enchant the Heavens, and even if Morgan wants to forget her pagan past, I am grateful she wrote this book. I highly recommend it.

[vesselbound-blog]

‘ things aren’t going as i hoped. maybe if i die, i can start over again? better luck next time. ’

“O, little one, do I have news for thee…” A large, scaly hand is coming up, patting her head with amazing restraint so as not to squash her with his ridiculous strength. “If life is hopeless, Hell shall be worse, you’ll see.” The hand pulls up & transitions slowly to accommodate his shrugging shoulders and tilting head. 

“No ‘next time’ is there in store for you. Out of time are you once you’ve seen it through. Enjoy your hopeless struggles here on Earth – they will feel like nothing when you experience Hell’s lack of mirth.” His red eyes regard her seemingly emotionlessly, the indifference in his gaze betraying the smirk that pulled at his lips. “– I advise thee thus because I somewhat like you, pet; ‘twould be a shame if we again in my kingdom met.”

A.k.a. she’s too dang optimistic and happy go lucky for her own good, she’d probably kill the vibe down there. This is Etrigan the Demon telling you to get it together, Harls.