Seize the fire

Tl;dr: Imperfect characters who made awful and heroic choices and a second half that was mostly about war PTSD

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

June's TBRChallenge theme was Road Trip, so I headed to my tbr feeling historical and glancing at reviews to see which ones had people talking about traveling. When I saw this Laura Kinsale's fit the bill, I happily jumped in. I read the first 50% of this in one sitting and then my reading mojo hit a major (for me) snag and I couldn't concentrate enough to read for five days straight. I'm mentioning this because I'm going to, mostly, blame my mojo, but I do also think the second half had some major pacing problems, just tough to parse from own issues. My brain can be a sieve, so that first half I raced through, EONS ago!, I guess I'm saying this review/talking about is going to probably read disjointed and foggy, enjoy!

If you've read Kinsale before, you know you're in for an emotional ride. Sometimes it rips my guts out (The Prince of Midnight) and sometimes I get left on the dock watching the emotions drift away from me (Shadowheart). This one had my eyes filling up and at other times dry eyed wanting to skim, my scatterbrained undecided review, enjoy!

"I loved you." Her voice trembled into a squeak. "I loved you…and you…betrayed me."

I'm going to start this with the author dedication, This book is dedicated to the combat veterans of Vietnam With respect, and love, and hope for healing. While you'll see the beginning of this from our lead Captain Sheridan Drake in the first half, your enjoyment of the whole second half is going to be if you remember this dedication and read it with the understanding that the story is now all about it. Your enjoyment is also going to hinge on if you want/can handle your leads being deliciously, frustratingly not perfect, because boy howdy do both Sheridan and Olympia fuck it all the way up numerous times.

The hero she'd loved with all her being had not died. He'd simply never existed.

The first half has Olympia, our sheltered princess of a small country but has lived all her life in England, setting out to meet her new neighbor, Sheridan. She's heard all about his bravery on his ship and wants to enlist him to use his contacts(???) to help her get to Rome. Why Rome you ask? She's going to appeal to the Pope to stop her betrothal to her uncle (I'd hurry my ass there too!). Her grandfather currently leads the country but he's old and the people have been grumbling for an overthrow to set up a democracy, which Olympia is fully for and plans to help happen. She is the completely young and naive do-gooder that knows the right destination but has no idea what it takes to get there. Readers know Sheridan isn't quite what the papers make him out to be and that he is completely destitute after his father who loved to pull pranks (incredibly dangerous and mean “jokes”) had him invest all his money in a train venture that went bankrupt. There's also the added connection that Sheridan's father's ex-mistress is/was Olympia's governess and tells Sheridan that his father's will gives him nothing, unless he does what she says to do(???). This leads to Sheridan offering marriage to Olympia to save her from her uncle, at ex-mistress' behest and somehow an English ambassador is also involved in telling Sheridan what to do, but she refuses having been poisoned by ex-mistress that she's too fat and unattractive. Sheridan decides to set-up his own plan and agrees to take Olympia to Rome, he sees how jewel rich she is, and then pretend to be kidnapped/killed by a secret assassin group that is after him(???) and steal her jewels riding richly off into the sunset, leaving her behind.

He laughed bitterly. "God, they were idiots. They'd ask how many ships I'd sunk and how many men I'd killed hand to hand…as if I kept a damned running account. They always wanted to know how it felt…" His voice had begun to shake. "But I never told them. They didn't want to know the truth. Not really."

It's a bit of a convoluted set-up, especially since Olympia's country drama winds up being like 10% of the story and doesn't come in at all until again at the end. By 20% we have them going on their road (ship) trip and then it's all on with them getting captured by pirates, shipwrecked, living on a island for months, saved, captured by pirates again, sold into slavery, and surviving a blood drunk mob. Late '80s historical romances aren't to be trifled with! There are dated terms in this and Sheridan's manservant/frenemy Mustafa is a bad characterization, so content warnings abounding again. While I enjoyed the meat of how the author allowed Sheridan and Olympia to make bad and wrong choices, they betray one other more than once, I could see how they would ultimately work together but I'm not sure I'd recommend this for the romance. I liked how Kinsale had Sheridan trying to warn Olympia off of him and how even though he thinks he's not worthy, Kinsale even has him do unworthy things (I'm not talking heinous things here), he always remained redeemable to me, which I think can be a good message. The juxtaposition of broken down tattered Sheridan and the bright shiny heroic younger captain that comes in later to be a romantic wedge between him and Olympia was perfect, especially since the shiny guy turned out to be under it all not so great, which YES, give us readers these emotions to wrestle with! The second half is more of a deep dive into how soldiers can be so lost after coming home from war.

That she would not hate him. That she was glad he was on her side. That he could keep them safe without violence, without hurting anyone. He tried to believe those things. He repeated them to himself. But he was afraid.

Sheridan is a broken man after all he had to survive. As the reader, it broke me how he was a boy who wanted to make music but after a “joke” by his father gone wrong, ends up on a ship in his preteens and is thrust into trying to survive war. I couldn't help thinking of all the current kids who just want to make music and instead have these awful circumstances thrust upon them; Kinsale did a really great job showing and articulating through Sheridan the scars such a life can leave. There was also an eye watering scene where Sheridan had finally let himself love Olympia only for her to betray him and oof, the emotions he went through here:

He should have known. He should have realized. It had been so hard for him to believe it was happening. That she could come to know him for what he was, fully, and understand what he'd done by opening the circle of himself and including her. They'd fought together, survived together, shared the miseries and the laughter and the disasters, and each small morning victory of waking up alive. He'd thought that meant something. That was love, that was the only name he had to give it. Last night, when in the midst of his whining concern for his own skin she'd said she loved and trusted him, he'd been so certain of it. He would have died for her then, he would have killed every man on board to protect her—except this was civilization, not a battle, and all he'd been able to do was make some brainless joke to cover the raw surge of emotion and then retreat before he embarrassed himself beyond recovery. She loved him. It had been hard to believe that; it had gone against every instinct built up in years of solitude, but he'd convinced himself. Aye. And he was wrong.

The love, the betrayal, the pain, just, the THE of it all! Meaty characters.

"Princess." His voice had a plea in it. "Do you understand? I don't know why the world is like this; I don't know why we go out to fight something that's wrong—something so much bigger than we are, something that ought to be fought—and end up creating a thousand little horrors to stop a huge one. Slavery's wrong. Tyranny's wrong. You weren't stupid or naive or trivial to believe that. You're right. Maybe your revolution was right. You just…didn't understand how real it would be."

The end has Olympia experiencing some trauma of her own and realizing her own naivety and a reveal for Sheridan that changes some things. This does end in an HEA but I felt a bit too rung out to have that high lovey dovey feeling for them, it's more of a gritty solemn one. The first half read fast for me but some convoluted set-up while the second half seemed to get lost and repetitive stagnate paced (could have been my no mojo brain!). However, if you remember that dedication and realize this whole story was a cover to talk about war induced PTSD you'll feel Sheridan's pain and probably think of the women and men in your own life who never fully make it back from war. These leads lied to each other, fought and survived together, were mean to each other, saved each other, and loved each other, they weren't perfect characters which honestly felt deliciously meaty to me at times.

"I'm here," she said into his shoulder. "I'm here, and I love you. I love you no matter what."