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Read The Masqueraders (2004)

The Masqueraders (2004)

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Rating
4 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0373836066 (ISBN13: 9780373836062)
Language
English
Publisher
harlequin

The Masqueraders (2004) - Plot & Excerpts

This is one of Heyer’s earlier novels and it reflects the author’s limited experience and still developing skills. The writing is a bit stilted, the dialogs formal, without the verbal panache that defined her more mature works, but all the distinctive marks of Heyer’s later stories are already there. The plot is inventive, the heroes charming and original, and the humor of the situations inescapable.The action takes place before Regency, before the Napoleonic wars, soon after Culloden. I didn’t plan to read this novel (a re-read, actually) in the footsteps of the Scottish referendum. I didn’t remember the book’s timing, it just happened, but the echoes between that tragic battle, Heyer’s opinions, and the current events were strange. There are three leading characters in this novel: a father and his two adult children, the daughter Prudence and the son Robin, all three adventurers of the first order. Their ethnic origins are murky, and the story mentions them living all over Europe before they set their first steps into the pages of this novel. The father and the son participated in the battle of Culloden, not because they cared for Scottish independence but for some other, rather unclear but definitely unromantic, reasons. Money probably – why else would reckless adventurers put their necks into such a dangerous bind. Afterwards, they fled. A few months later, as the novel starts, the brother and sister reappear in London, masquerading as someone else and waiting for their father and his next con. They don’t care about Scotland anymore: not about the plight of their former comrades, nor about the king’s brutal politics there. The heroes’ only concern is to keep safe and escape recognition. And most of the British aristocracy doesn’t care either, at least according to Heyer. Culloden for her characters seems as far as the moon. Only occasional mentioning of the executions reminds the readers of the era and its vagaries.At first, the protagonists rejoice in their masquerade. Their dashing escapades in London are imaginative and funny, but soon their disguises start interfering with their love affairs. Both Prue and Robin chafe under their masks. They long to take them off but they’re afraid that if they do, someone might recognize Robin and haul him off to jail or worse. Of course, along the way, Robin saves a young and naïve but pretty heiress, while Prue falls for a big gentleman with sleepy eyes and keen mind. There is also their father to consider, the master masquerader with delusions of grandeur. His scam is so outrageous it brings to mind Napoleon himself. The father is as convinced of his own genius and invincibility as the French emperor was later on, but unlike Napoleon, the father seems to deceive everyone among the London ton and triumph over all his adversaries. The pace is fast, the villains sufficiently evil if not very clever, and love wins the day in the end. A satisfying conclusion for any romance lover. I enjoyed this novel despite its flaws and tried not to think about Culloden and all its victims.

I've given this a B+ for both narration and content at AudioGals, so that's a very solid 4.5 stars.The Masqueraders is one of Georgette Heyer’s early works, originally published in 1928 and now available in audio format for the first time. It’s a thoroughly engaging Georgian romp, set shortly after the unsuccessful Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. It rattles along at a good pace and is full of fun, sparkling dialogue and Ms Heyer’s trademark wit and carefully studied social observation.At the beginning of the story we meet the two principal protagonists – a brother and sister called Kate and Peter Merriot who, within minutes, are coming to the aid of a damsel in distress and disposing of her unwanted suitor. At the end of that scene, we also meet Sir Anthony Fanshawe, who is destined to be the heroine’s love-interest, a very large man with a seemingly indolent manner, who is actually one of Ms Heyer’s typically nonchalant but very shrewd heroes; a man who sees a lot more than he lets on, whom the siblings affectionately nickname “The Mountain”.So far, so straightforward, until the third chapter when we learn that Kate is not, in fact, Kate, but Robin, and Peter is not, in fact, Peter, but Prudence, and the pair (who really ARE brother and sister) are travelling in disguise because of Robin’s participation on the wrong side in the failed rebellion.Thus the narrator is presented with rather a difficult task. Not only does she have to find suitable voices for and be able to differentiate between a fairly large cast of characters, but she has to find a way to portray Robin/Kate and Prudence/Peter as both themselves and their respective alter-egos while enabling the listener to keep track of who is who and who’s wearing the trousers! It’s a quirk of the story which is probably that bit harder to convey successfully in audio, but on the whole Ms Sillers manages well. She pitches ‘Kate’ higher than either Robin or Prue, and gives ‘her’ a rather exaggerated feminine drawl; and keeps Prue’s ‘Peter’ voice fairly close to Prue’s in pitch, just adding a lighter edge which works well to help the listener keep track. Even though I knew what to expect in the story, I had to rewind a few times at the beginning of that chapter in order to keep things straight in my head, but once I’d done that, it was easy to work out who was speaking and in which persona.The pair are adventurers who have lived most of their lives pretending to be other people, alongside their father, to whom they refer as “The Old Gentleman”. Following Robin’s escape from the authorities, they have donned these disguises in order to keep him safely hidden while they await their father’s arrival in town, but had not expected to have to wait as long as they do.You can read the rest of this review at AudioGals.

What do You think about The Masqueraders (2004)?

I love this book so much. I loved it when it started with a pair of siblings chatting about whether they should rescue the young, eloping heiress in the next room from a drunken suitor. I loved it more when it turned out there was crossdressing. I loved it MORE when Prudence got to be awesome while dressed as a man and her suitor loved her not "despite" her pretending to be a guy but because she did so with aplomb and sheer awesomeness.Plus, once Dad shows up, every scene can be summarized like this.Lord Tresomethingorother: I'm the long lost Lord of Tresomethingorother!Pru: Oh, my god. You're going to get us all hanged.LT: No, for real this time, I really am.Robin: Yeah, remember when you made us be JACOBITES? Or when you had us crossdress in polite London Society?LT: I'm SO AWESOME, why are you questioning my AWESOME.Pru and Robin: *eyeroll*Tony: I want to take your daughter away and marry her and keep her safe.LT: PSHAW. You don't need to keep her safe! I'll keep her safe.Robin: Actually, Pru will keep HERSELF safe. Or I'll take her away to France.Pru: Tony, I can't marry you! I'm an ADVENTURESS! I'll drag your name into the dirt!Tony: I don't care!LT: Why are you DOUBTING MY BRILLIANCE. BECAUSE I"M BRILLIANT. STOP HATING.Peter: Yeah, I mean, after you having so many scares, why would we question?LT: HATERS GONNA HATE.Pru and Peter: *duitifully follow father*Tony: !!!Pru: Listen, he always gets us into messes and then gets us out.Me: *cracking up*There's a scene where someone tries to blackmail their father and he literally talks him out of it by OUT NICE-ING him.Blackmailer: I have something very dangerous for you right HERE. *pats chest*LT: In your heart?Blackmailer: No! In my pocket!LT: Oh, an inside pocket! I have to get one of those, how forward thinking of you!Blackmailer: ...I am in ecstasy over this book.
—Katie

Set a little earlier than most of Heyer's stories, this is a concoction of duels and hidden identities, and the two children of a long-time confidence trickster (very similar to the rogue in The Foundling, except this time not an antagonist).Pru and Robin (each dressed as the opposite gender) start out with a display of their skill - neatly rescuing a reluctant elopee, before settling in to wait on their father, and meantimes embroil themselves in romantic entanglements.There's a lot of fun to be had with this book, though I must admit that neither of the romances quite work for me. Robin and Letitia's is interesting only for Robin's impostiture and his romantic rescues. Letitia herself seems to have won Robin's heart simply by being pretty and innocent and, well, there.Pru and Tony have more foundation as a couple, but their relationship also falls into the trap that so many 'competent women' romances do. Pru, in her mid-twenties, has been dissembling all her life, and is very competent at many things (yet her brother is more competent at everything, even being a woman), and her romantic match is better than Pru at everything except the cross-dressing. Tony quickly sees through her disguise, repeatedly gets to rescue her, and shows a tendency to try to prevent her from making her own decisions, or live the life she has long been living.Pru definitely wants to live a more normal life, and is even pleased about the prospect of being an obedient wife. But...it felt like she became less competent whenever Tony was in the picture. He read to me as very controlling, even when he thought Pru was male.[It's interesting to read the first half of this book as a m/m and f/f romance. It totally reads that way, particularly the bit where Sir Tony briefly 'withdraws his protection' from his young protegee.]
—Andrea

There are very few writers who can say that they weren't influenced by Heyer in some way. Each of her dozens of historical romances laid the foundations of typical romance plotlines today.THE MASQUERADERS, my favorite of all her titles, is an absolute gem to hold in my hands. The trade paperback sized volume, with new cover artwork, is gorgeous and suits the story well. This is a classic tale of genderbent comedy and misdirection along the same vein as Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT. Prudence and Robin, fearing for their lives after the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion, decide that the best plan lay in disguising themselves. Taking it one step further, they disguise their genders as well, pretending to be the opposite sex, to doubly fool anybody searching out for them. The two of them see this as a lark—they've spent the better part of their lives hiding who they are, thanks to their scapegrace adventurer father, and it's nothing more than a fun game for them.This novel is filled with historical data pertaining to the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745—the sort of topical information you'd hear in society being discussed because it's still such a new occurrence. I found the exchange between Prudence and Anthony to be the funniest moments, though any time that Prudence is in her male disguise is full of hilarity. She'll often use subtle little quips or witticisms about the fact that she isn't the man they think her to be. Her brother Robin also made quite a spectacular female. It's unusual to see a guy parading about in petticoats and dresses in historicals—almost all the genderbent romances I've read have involved just the girl becoming a boy—so that's a lovely surprise. At the end, when they're both being confronted by their respective love interests, I found it hilarious that Robin was at pains to reassure his love interest that he was just as charming as a male as he was female! Then also, Anthony's private ruminations over Prudence were also rather amusing.The only downside to reading a Heyer is that often she'll use speech idioms that aren't used any more, even in modern historical romances. Heyer was very big on keeping things as accurate as she could, and with the speech of Prudence and Robin's time being nearly 260 years out of date, it can be quite confusing at times. Still, if you are new to Georgette Heyer, I recommend reading THE MASQUERADERS first. I still find it to be one of the most amusing, romantic, and entertaining reads yet!
—Lexie

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