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#BookReview Scandalous Alchemy by Katy Moran @HoZ_Books

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Scandalous Alchemy by Katy Moran. My thanks to Vicky Joss at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

Scandalous AlchemyAbout the Book

Fontainebleau in 1825 is a glittering international court, rich with intrigue, passion and simmering violence. Lieutenant Colonel Kit Helford must navigate these treacherous waters to deliver the beautiful, self-destructive Princess Royal to her prospective husband. Kit’s childhood friend, Clemency Arwenack, is tasked with safeguarding her royal mistress’s reputation as the princess awaits a marriage she is dreading.

But both have secrets they will hide at all costs. Kit is on the run – from a man shot and left for dead back in London and a lifetime of scandal that includes a liaison with the princess herself. He will do anything to salvage his family’s reputation. Clemency, meanwhile, conducts a perilous trade in lies and blackmail as she seeks to destroy the princess, not protect her.

With the Princess’s life under threat, Kit and Clemency are pitted against each other, even as a dangerous attraction grows between them. The past hunts them both, remorselessly, relentlessly, and neither can escape it for long.

Format: Hardcover (416 pages)    Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 10th June 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Scandalous Alchemy on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I loved both Katy Moran’s previous books – False Lights (published in digital format as Hester and Crow) and its follow-up Wicked by Design. Scandalous Alchemy is set in the same re-imagined history as its predecessors, a world in which Britain and her allies were defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

The main focus this time moves from Lord Lamorna (known to his intimates as Crow) and his wife Hester, to Crow’s younger brother, Kit Helford. If you’ve read either of the previous books you’ll know that Kit has a habit of getting himself into scrapes. He also has a way with the ladies that definitely runs in the family. Okay, so there are no scenes of a bare-chested Crow like those that got me so hot under the collar in previous books, but he does make the odd well-timed appearance. I hope the following description gives you an idea of his appeal. ‘Sailor, soldier, spy, tattooed ployglot, expert liar… tall and dark, with that streak of grey behind one ear, and his very own air of unruly éclat.’

Kit, now a Lieutenant Colonel, finds himself in France appointed to the role of Captain of the Personal Guard of Her Royal Highness Princess Nadezhda. There he runs into Clemency Arwenack, who has been appointed Mistress of the Robes in the Princess’s household. Clemency is considered by some as a ‘safe’ appointment but others know there’s much more to her than outward appearances would suggest. Not only is she a demon at the card table but she’s a practiced intelligencer. Unfortunately, trading in information can be a dangerous game when you have secrets of your own that you’d rather not be revealed. Clemency was once Kit’s childhood playmate back in Cornwall but that’s not how he thinks of her now.

The opulence of Fontainebleau is vividly evoked such as in this description of the preparations for a post-hunt picnic. ‘Hot-house peaches and necatarines were piled in shining pewter, and preserved Seville oranges arranged in honeyed slices on platters of chinaware. There were great heaps of glistening pastries too, sugar-dusted and dotted with caramelised nuts, covered for now with muslin cloths. Not far away, a quartet of violins and a harpist practised unfashionable Beethoven with bored competence.’  Yes, better rethink your plans for next weekend’s BBQ.

Moving from Cornwall to Fontainebleau with a brief stop along the way at an infamous London club, Scandalous Alchemy is a delicious mix of romance, espionage and political intrigue – Georgette Heyer meets John le Carré, if you will. And there’s a generous helping of aristocratic excess and bad behaviour thrown in for good measure. The concluding chapters gallop along at a frantic pace with plenty of twists and turns as danger seems to lurk around every corner.

The publishers describe Scandalous Alchemy as a ‘thrilling and sexy romp through 19th-century France, England and Russia’ and I’m definitely not going to disagree with that! The book ends with what I can only describe as teaser suggesting more adventures may lie ahead for the Lamorna family. I do hope so.

In three words: Pacy, action-packed, spicy,

Try something similar: The Cornish Lady by Nicola Pryce

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Katy Moran
Photo credit: Sam Walmsley

About the Author

Katy Moran is the author of Wicked by Design and False Lights, published by Head of Zeus. (False Lights was originally published under the pseudonym K J Whittaker.) Katy has taught creative writing
in schools, at the Arvon Foundation, and for the charity Waterloo Uncovered, an archaeology project with a support program for veterans which aims to understand war and its impact on people. She visited the battlefield of Waterloo at their invitation, which led to her exploration of combat stress in False Lights. Katy’s research melds the testimony of present-day soldiers with the
records of their historical counter-parts, to examine common ground and shared experiences across the centuries. She is co-project manager for Waterloo Uncovered’s forthcoming educational project looking at the lives of camp followers, women who accompanied soldiers to the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo. The project offers a
rare insight into the lives of military spouses in a conflict on the cusp of modern history, seeking to broaden our understanding of history by removing the filter of prejudice.

Katy lives with her husband and three children in a ramshackle Georgian house in the Welsh borders. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association.

Connect with Katy
Website | Twitter

#BookReview The Fort (City of Victory Book 1) by Adrian Goldsworthy @HoZ_Books

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The Fort Blog Tour

The Fort Press ReleaseWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Fort by Adrian Goldsworthy, the first book in a brand new trilogy set in the Roman empire. My thanks to Vicky Joss and Lauren Tavella at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

And I think they deserve extra points for cleverly including a particular quote in the accompanying press release information!

The FortAbout the Book

Dacia, AD 105. The Dacian kingdom and Rome are at peace, but no one thinks that it will last. Sent to command an isolated fort beyond the Danube, centurion Flavius Ferox can sense that war is coming, but also knows that enemies may be closer to home.

Many of the Brigantes under his command are former rebels and convicts, as likely to kill him as obey an order.

And then there is Hadrian, the emperor’s cousin, and a man with plans of his own.

Format: Hardcover (496 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 10th June 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Fort (City of Victory #1) on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

My first experience of Adrian Goldsworthy’s novels was reading Vindolanda which I enjoyed very much. But of course you already know that if you’ve perused the press release shown above.  (Unfortunately, its follow-up The Encircling Sea has been languishing in my TBR pile for quite a while.)  Vindolanda was also the book that first introduced readers to Roman centurion, Flavius Ferox.

Although The Fort is the first in a new series, it once again features Flavius Ferox as well as some of the characters from the Vindolanda series. For example, Ferox’s friend Vindex and some of Ferox’s household staff. It appears to follow on directly from events in the final book in the Vindolanda trilogy, Brigantia. However, for the benefit of readers (like me) who haven’t read Brigantia, or indeed those who haven’t read any of the Vindolanda trilogy, the author provides subtle details about key events and characters from the earlier books.

Ferox’s current posting is to a remote fort on the border with Dacia (part of what is now Romania) during a period of uneasy and, in all likelihood, short-lived peace between that nation and the Roman Empire. He’s accompanied by a force of fierce Brigantes (Celtic Britons from the north of England) some of whom have vowed to kill him in revenge for an act of that they view as murder.

Like Ferox, the reader may wonder just why ‘this ragbag of rebels, bandits, deserters and rival tribesman’ has been sent to Piroboridava. In fact, as Ferox admits himself, he’s a bit of a ragbag, ‘a good Silurian boy turned Roman centurion’. But, ever practical, he sets about getting the rather rundown garrison into shape in order to have a better chance of defending a Dacian attack should it come, as his gut tells him is likely. This also serves to provide a focus for the disparate group of six hundred soldiers he finds himself responsible for and a way of dispelling the boredom that might otherwise bubble over into violence.

The story switches briefly to Rome where the reader is introduced to the Emperor Trajan’s cousin, the senator Hadrian who has recently been appointed legatus of the Minervia legion, some of whose soldiers have been deployed to Piroboridava. I knew very little about Hadrian before reading this book apart from the fact he later became emperor himself and built a famous wall in the north of England. The author gives a little nod to this by including a scene in which Hadrian shows a keen interest in the process of building design and construction. The Hadrian the reader is presented with here is intelligent, wily and ambitious although with a private life that leaves him open to manipulation by others.

Talking of private lives, the book was enlivened for me by the arrival at the fort of the feisty Claudia Enica, Queen of the Brigantes, and two young warriors, Bran and Miruna. All three have been trained in warfare by a woman known as ‘the Mother’. She trained them well as it turns out. From time to time a third point of view takes over, that of a young warrior, Brasus, placed in command of an advance guard of the Dacian army. His narrative is infused with the rituals associated with his tribe’s religious customs, giving it a mythical quality.

I confess the multiplicity of storylines left me rather confused to begin with but gradually things became clearer especially once many of the characters find themselves gathered together. Not so much Casablanca‘s ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine’ as ‘Of all the forts in all the Empire they ride up to the gates of mine’!

The book contains the sort of authentic detail – of weaponry, Roman army procedures, social and religious customs – you would expect from a historian of the author’s reputation. There is also an extensive glossary for those of us who can’t tell our gladius from our spatha. My fabulous hardcover edition also included a map of the region and a plan of the Piroboridava fort. As the author explains in his fascinating historical note at the end of the book, the fort’s location is fictional but is based on a Roman garrison of the same name situated closer to the mouth of the Danube.

For those who like plenty of full-on action in their historical fiction, there are only skirmishes to begin with. However, stick with it because there are scenes later in the book that will definitely not disappoint. The book’s final few chapters see some story lines resolved but others carefully set up as ‘to be continued’ plot lines to whet the appetite for subsequent books in the series. Consider my appetite well and truly whetted!

In three words: Authentic, pacy, action-packed

Try something similar: Fortress of Fury by Matthew Harffy

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AdrianGoldsworthyAbout the Author

Adrian Goldsworthy studied at Oxford, where his doctoral thesis examined the Roman army. He went on to become an acclaimed historian of Ancient Rome. He is the author of numerous works of non-fiction, including Caesar, Pax Romana, Hadrian’s Wall and Philip and Alexander. He is also the author of the Vindolanda series, set in Roman Britain, which first introduced readers to Flavius Ferox.

Connect with Adrian
Website

The Fort