Irish Winter Pt. 3
No I haven't forgotten. I will actually try to go through with this...unless either my head or my desk give in before the last chapter.
Welcome back for the third chapter. Shane O’Dea and his top men who are only boring non-hot side-characters and therefore don't need names discuss the plans for the raid on the RIC station.
/gets on soap-box for a moment/
Yes, this is a romance and not an in-depth doorstopper historical novel. The focus is clearly on the two main characters and we don't need 50 side-characters with backstories and full family history but in this novel we basically have Ian and Devlin, their mothers (both of which have not much to say), Shane and a handful of characters that are almost indistinguishable because we learn next to nothing about them. If you compare that to e.g. Josh Lanyon who also writes romances but who creates a cast of really loveable and quirky side-characters who will stay with with you after finishing...hell even Iny Lorentz has more memorable minor characters.
/off soap-box/
They talk about how best to do the raid and five paragraphs later we finally get some names
“Where are we gonna send these bastards to hell and when?” asked an older man, a family friend of the slain Casons.
Except that it's not the actual name of one of the people involved. Another paragraph later.
“Won’t they recognize our voices?” Murphy asked with a worried look at the others.
Hallelujah! And he asks this question because it has been ages (i.e. a chapter) since we had been told that they should all keep their mouths shut during the raid so that nobody would recognise them. Cause readers are goldfishes you know.
A Patrick asks another question...cause every Irish story needs a Patrick (admittedly it is very likely that they had one as it is a really popular name...and I have no idea if at that time it wouldn't have been more likely for him to be called Padraig so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt).
They also decide that Ian and Devlin will also take part in the raid. Neither of them are there. They'll learn via telepathy I assume.
More explanation how exactly they'll carry out the raid. And no hot men anywhere. I'm getting bored. Fortunately I get distracted by some more pseudo-deep babblings:
The men left deep in thought. They felt they were in the right and that justice had to be served. Even so, they were uneasy about committing such violence as they had planned. There would be no turning back once they did this thing and each knew it, yet none wavered in the slightest.
Awwww...
The next morning Ian is working again and Devlin visits him to tell him about the raid. How he learned about it? Who cares? Wouldn't it have been better if they both had attended the meeting instead of being told 2nd- and 3rd- hand? Well, again I admit that I personally have no experience in leading guerilla-freedom fighter organizations so what do I know?
This chapter is so dull. Devlin basically says that he can't tell Ian much because he doesn't know much and uses lots of paragraphs for this, then leaves and leaves Ian alone with his thoughts. Then it finally starts to get fun again.
When he recalled the handsome face and deep blue eyes of his new friend, he felt unwelcome stirrings in his loins. He had felt this way before about other boys, but never as strongly as with Devlin. Ian tried to remember if he had ever felt this way about a girl and couldn’t recall a single time. His uneasiness growing, he pushed it aside, hoping the thoughts and feelings would go away.
I feel like a parrot here but:
You're an Irish Catholic.
The year is ca. 1920.
Feeling that way about boys and not girls shouldn't make you feel uneasy it should make you feel BLOODY TERRIFIED.
Ian continues nicking medical supplies and is always worried that his boss might catch him. When McCann goes for lunch Ian places the money for the items in the till (where did he get it from? I thought he spent his last money yesterday to pay for supplies and then for inviting Devlin for a pint) and when McCann returns he tells him that a customer came and bought the stuff.
Then he has a stroke of genius!
“Mr. McCann, sir, the customer that bought the bandages and other stuff needed pain pills as well, but couldn’t afford to go to the doctor. You see, the husband fell off his roof while trying to repair a hole that was letting rainwater in. The wife bought what they could afford, but I feel badly. Could you see your way to making an exception? I could take some pills around to them and give the money to you on Monday.”
How cunning! He continues to cunningly ask more about how the pain pills work and McCann tells him more about opium and laudanum. Ian has no idea how these highly exotic and rarely used drugs work. After all it's not like he is an apprentice at a chemist's...oh wait.
Eventually Ian has persuaded McCann to let him have the pills and does more subtle sleuthing
“That sounds strong enough to help with even a gunshot wound.”
That is so inconspicuously! He would never suspect anything I'm sure.
Also:
He didn’t know what he would do if the group could not come up with the money to pay for the laudanum. He supposed he might end up paying for it himself, but he’d manage.
I really really hate this chapter. It's terribly dull and inbetween I just keep shouting the same things over and over again. He's a bloody part-time working apprentice who has to feed two people. Only last chapter he whined about having not enough money...but apparently he has enough to spend it on medication.
They all meet up and discuss the raid again *yawn*. They are of course decent people and only intend to kill those men who shot the boy and his mother a few days earlier. Nobody complains and wants to kill more just for the fun of because that would bring to much grey in our shiny and polished black and white morality but then nobody wants Shades of Gray nowadays.
Ian even has enough money to buy so much food that there is some leftovers he can bring poor, starving Devlin. Devlin uses that as excuse to start some flirting, which reads awkward but is meant to be funny...because being gay was such a lot of fun back then.
“That’s very kind of you, but why do this for me?”
“’Cause you’re practically living on twigs and berries and if you don’t start eating properly you’re gonna have the sunlight shining right through you.”
“So, you’ve noticed my body, and does it shine through now?”
“No, but it won’t take much more and you’ll begin to lose muscle and you don’t want that.”
“Would you care if I lost muscle, Ian?”
“I would care if anyone lost muscle because they didn’t have enough to eat. Our entire city isn’t getting enough to eat and it gets worse every day.”
“But you said you cared about me, isn’t that right?”
He said yesterday that you are like a brother to him...so you could assume that yes he cares about you. But we need to establish that again because readers are goldfishes.
Ian wasn’t sure where the questions were leading and he had that feeling in his lower belly once again. Did Devlin not realize how handsome he looked and how his looks would change if he was malnourished? He needed a girlfriend or wife to look after him.
Wait...so Ian thinks Devlin should eat because he wouldn't look as hot if he was half-staved? Gosh...and here was me thinking that he cared about the health-issues connected to malnutrition...but looking hot is clearly the most important thing in the world.
Blah blah...you must keep healthy for the greater good and yes I do care about you, as I care about everybody else in our group. Then the chapter is finally over. That is good because I was at a point where one half of my was just about to fall asleep because most of the chapter was so boring and the other half wanted to throw my laptop out of the window because the parts that weren't boring were so annoying, especially Ian's “poverty”
Reading with a Vengeance once said something along the lines of many authors being unable to imagine characters that aren't spoiled middle-class brats and that is clearly the case here. Simpson either has no clue or is incapable of conveying that being poor at that time and place meant not knowing how to afford food...now we have seen that Devlin is quite thin (despite SPOILER in his house there are actually two people earning money, although on an irregular basis) but Ian has his apprentice- salary that feeds him, his mother, leave enough food to give some to Devlin, buys him several sets of clothes, allows him to invite his mate to the pub and pay for medicine and bandages for a whole IRA-convoy. Because obviously readers buying this book would be totally unable to imagine actual poverty as for them being short of money means not being able to buy that new game/album/whatever immediately on it's release-date but having to wait till the next month...
(This reminds me of The Painted Man which is set in your typical pseudo-medieval fantasy-world but which has a main-character with very 21st century-views on arranged marriage and re-marring soon after the last spouse has died...did I mention how much I hate novels that cry 'buhuhuuu arranged marriage is sooooo evil' but are set in a world where arranged marriages are the norm? Fortunately I won't go into that now as that's not the case in Irish Winter so I'll stop with my insane rantings here...if you're still reading: have a cookie.)
Welcome back for the third chapter. Shane O’Dea and his top men who are only boring non-hot side-characters and therefore don't need names discuss the plans for the raid on the RIC station.
/gets on soap-box for a moment/
Yes, this is a romance and not an in-depth doorstopper historical novel. The focus is clearly on the two main characters and we don't need 50 side-characters with backstories and full family history but in this novel we basically have Ian and Devlin, their mothers (both of which have not much to say), Shane and a handful of characters that are almost indistinguishable because we learn next to nothing about them. If you compare that to e.g. Josh Lanyon who also writes romances but who creates a cast of really loveable and quirky side-characters who will stay with with you after finishing...hell even Iny Lorentz has more memorable minor characters.
/off soap-box/
They talk about how best to do the raid and five paragraphs later we finally get some names
“Where are we gonna send these bastards to hell and when?” asked an older man, a family friend of the slain Casons.
Except that it's not the actual name of one of the people involved. Another paragraph later.
“Won’t they recognize our voices?” Murphy asked with a worried look at the others.
Hallelujah! And he asks this question because it has been ages (i.e. a chapter) since we had been told that they should all keep their mouths shut during the raid so that nobody would recognise them. Cause readers are goldfishes you know.
A Patrick asks another question...cause every Irish story needs a Patrick (admittedly it is very likely that they had one as it is a really popular name...and I have no idea if at that time it wouldn't have been more likely for him to be called Padraig so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt).
They also decide that Ian and Devlin will also take part in the raid. Neither of them are there. They'll learn via telepathy I assume.
More explanation how exactly they'll carry out the raid. And no hot men anywhere. I'm getting bored. Fortunately I get distracted by some more pseudo-deep babblings:
The men left deep in thought. They felt they were in the right and that justice had to be served. Even so, they were uneasy about committing such violence as they had planned. There would be no turning back once they did this thing and each knew it, yet none wavered in the slightest.
Awwww...
The next morning Ian is working again and Devlin visits him to tell him about the raid. How he learned about it? Who cares? Wouldn't it have been better if they both had attended the meeting instead of being told 2nd- and 3rd- hand? Well, again I admit that I personally have no experience in leading guerilla-freedom fighter organizations so what do I know?
This chapter is so dull. Devlin basically says that he can't tell Ian much because he doesn't know much and uses lots of paragraphs for this, then leaves and leaves Ian alone with his thoughts. Then it finally starts to get fun again.
When he recalled the handsome face and deep blue eyes of his new friend, he felt unwelcome stirrings in his loins. He had felt this way before about other boys, but never as strongly as with Devlin. Ian tried to remember if he had ever felt this way about a girl and couldn’t recall a single time. His uneasiness growing, he pushed it aside, hoping the thoughts and feelings would go away.
I feel like a parrot here but:
You're an Irish Catholic.
The year is ca. 1920.
Feeling that way about boys and not girls shouldn't make you feel uneasy it should make you feel BLOODY TERRIFIED.
Ian continues nicking medical supplies and is always worried that his boss might catch him. When McCann goes for lunch Ian places the money for the items in the till (where did he get it from? I thought he spent his last money yesterday to pay for supplies and then for inviting Devlin for a pint) and when McCann returns he tells him that a customer came and bought the stuff.
Then he has a stroke of genius!
“Mr. McCann, sir, the customer that bought the bandages and other stuff needed pain pills as well, but couldn’t afford to go to the doctor. You see, the husband fell off his roof while trying to repair a hole that was letting rainwater in. The wife bought what they could afford, but I feel badly. Could you see your way to making an exception? I could take some pills around to them and give the money to you on Monday.”
How cunning! He continues to cunningly ask more about how the pain pills work and McCann tells him more about opium and laudanum. Ian has no idea how these highly exotic and rarely used drugs work. After all it's not like he is an apprentice at a chemist's...oh wait.
Eventually Ian has persuaded McCann to let him have the pills and does more subtle sleuthing
“That sounds strong enough to help with even a gunshot wound.”
That is so inconspicuously! He would never suspect anything I'm sure.
Also:
He didn’t know what he would do if the group could not come up with the money to pay for the laudanum. He supposed he might end up paying for it himself, but he’d manage.
I really really hate this chapter. It's terribly dull and inbetween I just keep shouting the same things over and over again. He's a bloody part-time working apprentice who has to feed two people. Only last chapter he whined about having not enough money...but apparently he has enough to spend it on medication.
They all meet up and discuss the raid again *yawn*. They are of course decent people and only intend to kill those men who shot the boy and his mother a few days earlier. Nobody complains and wants to kill more just for the fun of because that would bring to much grey in our shiny and polished black and white morality but then nobody wants Shades of Gray nowadays.
Ian even has enough money to buy so much food that there is some leftovers he can bring poor, starving Devlin. Devlin uses that as excuse to start some flirting, which reads awkward but is meant to be funny...because being gay was such a lot of fun back then.
“That’s very kind of you, but why do this for me?”
“’Cause you’re practically living on twigs and berries and if you don’t start eating properly you’re gonna have the sunlight shining right through you.”
“So, you’ve noticed my body, and does it shine through now?”
“No, but it won’t take much more and you’ll begin to lose muscle and you don’t want that.”
“Would you care if I lost muscle, Ian?”
“I would care if anyone lost muscle because they didn’t have enough to eat. Our entire city isn’t getting enough to eat and it gets worse every day.”
“But you said you cared about me, isn’t that right?”
He said yesterday that you are like a brother to him...so you could assume that yes he cares about you. But we need to establish that again because readers are goldfishes.
Ian wasn’t sure where the questions were leading and he had that feeling in his lower belly once again. Did Devlin not realize how handsome he looked and how his looks would change if he was malnourished? He needed a girlfriend or wife to look after him.
Wait...so Ian thinks Devlin should eat because he wouldn't look as hot if he was half-staved? Gosh...and here was me thinking that he cared about the health-issues connected to malnutrition...but looking hot is clearly the most important thing in the world.
Blah blah...you must keep healthy for the greater good and yes I do care about you, as I care about everybody else in our group. Then the chapter is finally over. That is good because I was at a point where one half of my was just about to fall asleep because most of the chapter was so boring and the other half wanted to throw my laptop out of the window because the parts that weren't boring were so annoying, especially Ian's “poverty”
Reading with a Vengeance once said something along the lines of many authors being unable to imagine characters that aren't spoiled middle-class brats and that is clearly the case here. Simpson either has no clue or is incapable of conveying that being poor at that time and place meant not knowing how to afford food...now we have seen that Devlin is quite thin (despite SPOILER in his house there are actually two people earning money, although on an irregular basis) but Ian has his apprentice- salary that feeds him, his mother, leave enough food to give some to Devlin, buys him several sets of clothes, allows him to invite his mate to the pub and pay for medicine and bandages for a whole IRA-convoy. Because obviously readers buying this book would be totally unable to imagine actual poverty as for them being short of money means not being able to buy that new game/album/whatever immediately on it's release-date but having to wait till the next month...
(This reminds me of The Painted Man which is set in your typical pseudo-medieval fantasy-world but which has a main-character with very 21st century-views on arranged marriage and re-marring soon after the last spouse has died...did I mention how much I hate novels that cry 'buhuhuuu arranged marriage is sooooo evil' but are set in a world where arranged marriages are the norm? Fortunately I won't go into that now as that's not the case in Irish Winter so I'll stop with my insane rantings here...if you're still reading: have a cookie.)