Romantic Parvenu

Book Reviews

Book Review: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

At its core, Wild Seed seems to be a novel about a patriarchal society’s eugenics program. It is also a story about a woman and her conflict with an amoral mass-murderer. It’s a wearisome, and often hopeless, text. It’s hard to discuss and even ...
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Book Review: A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory

A Respectable Trade takes place in the port city of Bristol in 1787. The city—indeed much of the kingdom—thrives on the slave trade, while elsewhere William Wilberforce is just beginning his decades’ long campaign for the abolition of the trade. ...
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Book Review: These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner

These Is My Words, published in 1998, is a welcome addition to my collection of covered wagon novels. Presented as the diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, an uneducated but fierce woman, this book captures much of what makes pioneer fiction so ...
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Book Review: Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith

Marrow Island isn’t bad or poor in quality or anything like that; I don’t have any major points of contention. It’s a short, readable novel about a woman whose home way destroyed in a tragedy and who gets mixed up in the cult that’s trying to ...
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Book Review: Isabella by Kirstin Downey

Isabel the Catholic is a difficult figure. She stands out for being a truly powerful female monarch in a time when women had little agency or freedom; she also stands out for being the figurehead of some truly horrific actions—the religious ...
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