I’ve been doing a lot of posts recently that boil down to, ‘I hated this book and here’s why; don’t write like this.’ Which can be useful, but it gets a bit grumpy and overly negative after a while. So here’s a book that I liked, and why.

Fair warning- there will be spoilers.

Venetia is one of Georgette Heyer’s later regency romances, and a good example of a well-plotted book with well-drawn characters. It’s the story of a lot of different people, but the principal pair are Venetia Lanyon, a beautiful and intelligent young woman who’s lived a restricted life in the country; and Jasper, Lord Damerel, who owns the estate next door and is quite a rake. They become friends, then fall in love, but there are obstacles to the match.

Because it’s a regency romance, we know from the beginning that there’ll be a happy ending, but wow, do these characters have to work for it. Pretty much every other character in the story thinks Venetia and Damerel would be a disaster together, but we don’t find out exactly why they’re so vehemently opposed until very late in the story. Then there’s Venetia’s other two suitors to contend with, nosy neighbors and relatives, and Venetia’s brother Conway making her life miserable by foisting his wife and mother in law on her.

And it’s all presented neatly, clearly, and with excellent pacing. Events happen pretty regularly but there are stretches of narrative that give backstory and allow the reader to relax a bit. Almost anything that could be a deus ex machina is foreshadowed, though Conway’s marriage comes as a surprise to the reader and characters alike, and Conway’s personality is sufficiently explored beforehand that the reader can follow Venetia’s feelings when she rapidly goes from disbelief to acceptance. The situation and character of Venetia’s mother is likewise unexpected, and supposed to be; Damerel mentions Lady Steeple, but in such a way that the reader assumes he met her before her death, and can gloss over the exact timeline. The well-meaning interference of Lady Denny, and Mr. and Mrs. Hendred is also mentioned before it’s brought into prominence at the correct moment. The reclusivity of Venetia’s father is initially shown as a personality quirk but gradually causes bigger problems for Venetia and almost ruins her life- and she’s appropriately ticked off at him for it.

Basically, all the threads of the plot are truly threads, running through the entire story from beginning to end, and coming into focus or fading into the background evenly and in turn.

The characters are the likewise well done; they’re consistent; they react appropriately to events according to the knowledge they have- which isn’t always the same as the reader’s knowledge- and they come in and out of the story as the plot requires them to, but without sacrificing any of their essential qualities- or doing anything that would be world-breakingly absurd for characters in England in the early 1800s.

The only thing that throws me out of the world of Venetia is the same problem I encounter with any historical fiction that features a rake as the male main character- in a time before antibiotics and germ theory, the chances that a real-life Damerel wouldn’t have syphilis or something equally nasty are pretty slim, which takes some of the shine off the romance and happy ending. Similarly, I was also sad to realize that the physically weak Jane Fairfax, of Austen’s Emma, probably died of TB at a fairly young age. Perils of knowing too much about the real world that’s being fictionalized, I guess, and to be fair, it’s not the author’s fault that I think about this kind of thing.

In essentials, Venetia is both an enjoyable book and a well-written one, and is worth taking the time to read for entertainment, and study for the writer who wants to up his storytelling game. Unlike a lot of my other recent reading experiences.