Review: Agnes Moor's Wild Knight by Alyssa Cole

3.5 stars

EDIT: I originally rated this 3 stars, but I've thought on it and it's being upped to 3.5 stars.

I've come to the conclusion that novellas are an intricate balancing act. Within a very short space, the author must achieve characters and plot comparable to much longer pieces of work.  Even if they succeed at this, the reader will often complain that a novella was 'rushed' or 'ended too soon'.  Though it irks me when other reviewers judge a novella as though it were a full-length novel, I'm going to do the same for Agnes Moor's Wild Knight by Alyssa Cole.  

The premise of Agnes Moor's Wild Knight is a fascinating one with so much damn potential, and therein is the reason I'm judging it pretty harshly.  Agnes is an African woman who is one of the 'Exotics' at the court of Scottish monarch James IV and his queen, Margaret Tudor (sister to the infamous Henry VIII). She is a novelty for the hedonistic courtiers, and James stages a tournament where a kiss from 'the Black Lady' is the prize. A mysterious knight who has hidden his identity dominates the jousting, and seems to want more from Agnes than a simple kiss.  

Cole does an excellent job of bringing a footnote in history to life, embellishing the real Tournaments of the Black Lady that happened at James' court in 1507 and 1508. For those interested in learning more about this historical basis, an interesting perspective on historical whitewashing and POC in James IV's Scotland can be found at the Secret Histories Project, while the British National Archives lists many different references to 'Moors' in the Treasurer's accounts from James' reign.

Unfortunately, the wonderful historical set-up comes at the expense of the story itself. With most of the first half devoted to Agnes position as an exotic outsider and the way she feels about this, the second half is rushed. There was little to no development of the characters as people after the knight's identity was revealed and he began to court Agnes. Without this I found myself uninvested in the relationship between the two.

So, as much as I hate to be one of those reviewers, my essential problem with Agnes Moor's Wild Knight was that it was a novella.  I would have loved to see it be a bit longer, allowing for more forward movement in the character's relationship, and more development of the male lead in general. Nonetheless, I'm eternally grateful to Cole that she wrote about such an interesting historical event that has been sidelined our larger historical metanarratives, even if I found the result less than superb.

Review: Indigo by Beverly Jenkins

4 stars 

Not being American, I've never known much about the Underground Railroad, which smuggled slaves from the South into the free states of the North and onto Canada in the 19th century.  As a child, I had a book entitled Life Stories of 100 Famous Women that had a chapter on Harriet Tubman, and I can sing that earworm of a song about Dinah blowing her horn as well as the next gal, but I've never had any grasp of the finer details.  But I didn't realise quite how much I didn't know until I read Indigo by Beverly Jenkins as the first diverse read of my #WNDBResolution.

Smuggled out of slavery as a child, Hester Wyatt now runs a 'station' in Whittaker, Michigan, where conductors and runaways using the Railroad can rest, eat and receive care before moving on.  When an infamous conductor, The Black Daniel, is brought badly beaten to her doorstep, she takes him in and nurses him back to health.  He's surly and forward, and she's half inclined to give up on him.  Meanwhile, Galen Vachon - as the Black Daniel is really called - is becoming increasingly fascinated by his earnest hostess as his wounds heal and his mood picks up.  But there's a price on his head, unscrupulous slave-catchers in the area, a traitor leaking details about the Road and, like a thundercloud hovering over everything, a war brewing over the South's use of slavery.

The plot was really well-developed, but I'll admit that it took me quite a while to embrace Jenkins' writing style.  In the first few chapters I found the writing abrupt and didactic, but somewhere along the way I ceased to notice it as much, probably around the same time that I became engaged in the story and its level of historical detail.

I found it darkly fascinating that, in the North where all African-Americans were free and slaves from the South were declared free on arrival, a law was passed whereby a judge was paid 10 dollars if the found in a slave-owner's favour, but only 5 dollars if he backed the African-American accused of being a runaway.  Though I knew that societal racism must have continued after the fall of slavery, I naively assumed that kind of institutionalised discrimination would have been largely confined to the South.  But I suppose - and this is a really stupid white girl realisation - that's the whole thing about being discriminated against; the system is stacked against you everywhere, not simply where it is most apparent.  Just because you don't live in Ferguson, where almost 90% of police violence is used against African-Americans, despite the fact they make up only 67% of the local population, doesn't mean you are not facing racial disadvantage and discrimination on a daily basis.

I did really enjoy Hester as a character.  She has the courage of her convictions, only consuming products made by free workers, helping others to freedom as she herself was helped and being a loyal friend and neighbour.  She doesn't pay any mind to those who say that, as a single woman, she should not be involved in the Road and refuses to give into some pretty malicious slut-shaming.  Galen, raised by his mother's prominent Louisianan Creole family, is also charming and - with one notable exception - respects Hester's equality and ability to make her own decisions.  As often occurs in romance novels set during adverse times, it was the minor characters who brought home the horror and difficulty of Black life in the mid-1800s, giving the story a realistic poignancy it would have lacked if it had had a comprehensive happily-ever-after.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I'm very glad to have had the chance to discover it.  Hopefully, the other 19 diverse novels I read this year will be just as enlightening.  Because, as Jenkins wrote in the Author's Note of Indigo, "knowledge is power, but shared knowledge empowers us all".