Mistress Wilding and The Trampling of the Lilies by Rafael Sabatini

[meganbmoore]

I read a bunch of Sabatinis last year (largely his earlier books, which are in the public domain) and they were fun, but kind of blended together in my head. Mistress Wilding, which uses the Monmouth Rebellion as its backdrop, and which was my first sabatini for this year, largely blends in as well, but it gets special mention for some of the

Comments

[rosehiptea]

I think I would like your summary of this book way more than the actual book. It cracked me up.

[meganbmoore]

I have (mostly) accurately portrayed actually events! Just not the wording.

I find Sabatini to be very entertaining, but also frequently aggravating, largely due to the conventions of the time and genre. My reaction to most of his leads is "I feel I should really hate you right now but instead I want to to make out with that 'uppity' lady you have been using your questionable wooing skills on. Prferably in a movie or miniseries that has filtered out most of the annoying bits."

[ulkis]

My reaction to most of his leads is "I feel I should really hate you right now

I think it helps that Sabatini points out when his heros are acting like jerks, at least he does in Scaramouche and I think he does in Mistress Wilding, although I don't remember that one as well. The only other Sabatini I've read is "The Sea Hawk", and that had an engaging story, and I didn't hate the lead exactly, but there was too much machoness and not enough undercutting of it that I found in his other novels.

[meganbmoore]

Yeah he's pretty decent to owning up to it. Usually, they're already in love by the time he pulls those stunts, which doesn't make it ok, but it's better than most authors who pull that.