Romance: The Captive, Grace Burrowes

The Captive
Grace Burrowes
ISBN: 9781402278785
PTSD and other scars of captivity and abuse are lightly, but coherently, glossed over as wounded warriors find comfort and family with each other.

This isn't going to be a review, more of a ramble, so if you don't like being thoroughly spoiled, feel free to enjoy the short version: it was enjoyable, written with proper language/relationships, and has an interesting emotional through-line connecting all of the major characters.

Now for the longer, rambly, spoilery bits.  You've been warned!

First-off, the author really ought to be careful including symptoms of PTSD in her stories without understanding how pervasive and debilitating it can be.  On the one hand, I don't like reading about tortured psyches and broken bodies, so I appreciated the light touch.  On the other hand, by glossing over the very real debilitating symptoms so lightly, the author runs a real risk of angering readers who are familiar with these real-world traumas.

Second, how delighted I am that the author actually uses proper (mostly) forms of address and names and usages.  So many "regency" or "historical" novels (romance and otherwise) use their setting and time-period about as well as a grade-school production of Shakespeare - a bit of window-dressing on the set, a few "quaint" mannerisms (that don't make sense in context and are actually from a totally different place and time), and a few misplaced attempts at formal speech ("thou" and "thee" misinterpreted as formal, or stilted phrasing substituting for actual dialogue).  While authors like Mary Robinette Kobal perhaps go a bit far in the opposite direction (she has an actual research dictionary and refuses to let her characters speak a single word that can't be sourced from the proper time and place) it is at least refreshing to read something in an admittedly fluffy genre that has enough pride to actually present the time-period's language and mores somewhat accurately.

Thirdly (it's a Monday, lists are necessary) I get into the strangely sophisticated emotional resonances between the characters.  The "Captive" of the title is most properly the hero: Christian Severn, Duke of Mercia.  He was captured and tortured by the French (we're set here during the time of Napoleon) and upon the war's completion, was released and made his way back home.  He is also the one suffering most obviously from what we see now as PTSD.  However, the other two main characters are also captives who are suffering from their wounds.  The heroine of the story is Gillian, Countess of Greendale (Christian's cousin-by-marriage), who has finally outlived her merciless abuser of a husband, and is suffering from her own wounds, which polite society and the requirements of politics mandates she keep secret.  It would be enough for the story to have these two characters bond and recover based on their similar fragile states and slow recovery (in story terms, this is nearly a perfect relationship - in real-life, such emotional wounds nearly require an undamaged and preternaturally patient and empathetic loved-one to act as a support).  However, these two aren't the only people involved.  Christian has a daughter, the only other surviving member of his family, and she is silent through the entire book, supposedly due to the trauma of her father's absence and the deaths of her mother and brother.  The real reason for her silence is revealed late in the story, showing that she too has been held captive.

I don't expect my fluffy reads to have much to them.  Somewhat coherent plots are nice, somewhat established characterizations are even better.  Emotional resonance is so far down that list that I don't even think about it - I just don't expect these books to have any real philosophical or emotional depth.  Perhaps that is prejudiced of me, but I don't feel that it's a lack, just something the genre doesn't tend to select for.  This book tho, it was interesting.  I wouldn't say that it impacted me emotionally. but the writer-mind that lives in the back of my head was clapping with delight at each discovery that reveals the characters have more in common with each other and the main theme.

Now, all that said, don't expect the villain or the plot to be any great mystery - it is quite clear, and rather straightforwardly laid out along the traditional pattern,  Likewise, the romance develops absurdly quickly, and several plot threads (or perhaps red herrings) are carefully laid out and then carelessly cast aside.  Despite this, I enjoyed the reading immensely, and it's nearly all because of the intricate interior relationships and understandings that the main cast had for each other.

For those interested, this is apparently related to three other titles:
The Soldier
The Heir
The Virtuoso