It had a lot of quite interesting strands but they never quite came together in a satisfying manner, and occasionally characters just seemed to act for no other reason than to further it – like Darlington semi-randomly deciding to stay with Kit WHILE disguised as a woman or Wet Tom waking up one morning and deciding to sell the farm. I’m not massively bothered about historical veracity: I didn’t mind that Kit behaves kind of wildly unacceptably, or that Darlington’s crowd of sodomitical dandies behave too much like modern day queers with a sense of identity as themselves a queers, or that dandyism seemed inherently connected, by the text, to homosexuality, or even that – apparently – the Corn Laws are wrong BUT the plot just came across to me as wildly incoherent. His music was lit at the edges.īut, wah, but wah, there was also a lot that didn’t work for me. His profile was to her, his fingers as clever over the keys as his tongue was over words. The dialogue is all sparky and delightful, and the prose is just plain old fashioned lovely, and often quite unique:Īnd there he was, the man in black. Oh, and I liked the focus on the family, as well, and how important they are to each other’s lives – even Wet Tom, her hopeless gay brother.Įqually, it’s incredibly engaging written. It’s a very marginalisation-conscious book – both Darlington and Kit are marginalised by … I guess … gender ambiguity, the family is marginalised by poverty, lots of the characters are marginalised by sexuality.

I also liked the fact that there seemed to be different things going on than in most of the Regency-set historicals I’ve read (heh, all two of them) – I mean, there are balls, yes, but there are also mud and farms and families and impending industrialisation. I bought the romance between them, utterly. And I loved the way the interacted together. I loved the strong, determined, active heroine.

I was so happy to have a sexually ambiguous, cross-dressing hero. I know “different” is not necessarily always a good thing (*cough* Painted Faces *cough*) but, in this case, I think it is. I mean, I follow Anna Cowan on Twitter and I read her blog, and I kind of completely *adore* her but … but … I am not … I just … argh. Argh, I feel so torn about this, I feel so deeply torn.

Untamed by Anna Cowan