Castle of the Winds: The Secrets of Ormdale, Book 3 by Christina BaehrMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I found this by turns amusing and moving, and also very soundly crafted. Most books by 21st-century authors set in England in an earlier era feel like the characters are 21st-century people in costumes, standing in front of scenery flats. These books give me the feeling of actual inhabitants of a real England in 1899, probably helped by listening to the audiobook, which is beautifully read by an English woman.
I was thoroughly amused by the anti-romance (a genre perfected by P.G. Wodehouse), where narrator Edith is trying not to be attractive to the Welsh prince, especially since, by basically being Edith, she is significantly failing to be unattractive and uninteresting. Her rival Meredith is a waspish, conventional, pretty young woman, and Edith's distant cousin/escort/possible love interest Simon sees through Meredith immediately and is not attracted, any more than Edith is to the beautiful Welsh prince. I do love a romance plot where people behave sensibly, and Edith is (nearly) always sensible. And I particularly like the subversion of the toxic romance trope of falling in love with one's captor.
It's interesting how Edith is simultaneously put off by the prince's tendency to order people around and assume that she'll fall in with his wishes without consulting her, and frustrated by Simon not being more self-assertive. But when he does assert himself, she disastrously refuses to follow his plan. She wants something in the middle: a man who is complete in himself and doesn't need to be managed, but doesn't try to manage her either, and who will consult her as an equal - yet she doesn't treat Simon as an equal in that circumstance either, but patronizes him, rationalizing that she has more experience of the world than he does. She has room to grow, in other words, which is a good thing for a character - and she realizes it, too.
In contrast to the previous book in particular, this one has more intrepid action, though a lot of it is Edith (mostly) sensibly figuring out her next move in a situation of threat - something that I still found just as engaging as the action parts, to be clear.
Edith's moral and philosophical position is always strong and clear, without any preaching happening, and she backs it up with principled action. Nor does she think she has all the answers, or that her milieu is perfect, or that her opponents' setup is without merit, all of which is refreshing in itself.
In short, it has everything I miss in all too many fantasy works coming out today: good craft, authentic historical feel, attention to detail, a character who has the humility to acknowledge her imperfections and weaknesses and the strength to work on them, sensible decisions made out of clearly articulated principle that's believable for the time period without being jarring for today, and a depth of knowledge and understanding of how humans are, conveyed without soapboxing. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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