Monday Book Recs--Sizemore

Memory of Morning by Susan Sizemore is an alternate world Regency romance that I found simply delightful. In this world, women are now being allowed to study medicine and even join the Navy as surgeons. The main character Megere Cliff is one such surgeon. She has fallen in love with the ship's captain, although she knows she can never have him. She is equally smitten with the ship's surgeon, whom she can also never have. When she returns home and discovers that her family is planning to send her to "Loudon" for a season to catch a husband, she is willing enough to help with the catching. But there is more going on here than just Regency-tilted. There is some rich worldbuilding with the fever and the blood that Megere holds which makes her particularly valuable, though she is a member of the gentry and not the nobility. I enjoyed the twists and turns.

The funny thing to me was that there are a lot of romance tropes in here that might have annoyed me and didn't. The love/hate relationship, the power dfifferential, the need to write it in Regency times, although there is no particular reason for it not being a stand alone fantasy world except that Regency is fun and women like to read Regency romance. I finished the last page and immediately wanted to read the next book in the series. I hope there will be a series. I can't find a sequel at the moment. I think one of the reasons that I forgave some of the tired old cliches was that the story itself was not primarily about romance. There were a lot of other important threads going on, and the romance was intertwined with those threads inextricably, but it wasn't as if it was the most important thing. Megere Cliff has her own ambitions besides marriage. She is a strong, smart character who doesn't do stupid things. She doesn't bump around trying to find marriage.

It was just Regency enough to interest me and just not Regency enough not to annoy me. I liked Megere and her family, found the various heroes charming and believable in their own way, and most of all, liked the world that was in the background here, where it should be. No pages long descriptions of the history of the disease, no annoying names to try to pronounce. The name "Loudon" for London was a perfect introduction to how the author would play this twist. Exactly like London, but with one letter changed. And how one letter can make a difference! I often tell writers who want to try fantasy to change just one thing, but be rigorous about all the implications that one change will make. That's what's going on here, I think. I also loved how fantasy and science fiction blended a bit. No reason fantasy can't steal, eh?