I just read Captured by Beverly Jenkins. It was a mix of a few things I didn't like and a bunch of things I really liked, so overall it was pretty enjoyable.

It's a romance novel about a 19th century African American slave who gets captured by a pirate and finds love and happiness. I'd recommend it to anyone unsure about how to handle writing fluffy escapism dealing with dark subjects or the experiences of marginalised people, but also just as good fluffy escapism.

I feel a bit weird reviewing a book written by, for and about African Americans, I hope I haven't horribly misstepped anywhere.

It's the sort of story where the good guys find sugary perfect happiness while the moustache twirlingly evil villains come to nasty violent ends, but it also makes a very clear distinction between morality and convention: honour and reputation are for the privileged, what matters is what's right. And it's not like you have to stretch reality very far to make slave owners look evil (there are some nicer slave owners, but they're at best well meaningly oblivious) The reality of life for slaves is presented without too much sugar coating or melodrama, the bare facts alone are enough to create plenty of angst and motivation.

The author is for the most part obviously working from the historical record rather than other novels, unlike pretty much every other regency author ever, and for this I forgive the occasional passage that reads like it was copy and pasted from Wikipedia. There's even a positively portrayed queer character! Whose queerness is not a big deal! (In fact the main characters care so little about it that it's a little ambiguous)

My only real issue is the pacing: it feels like she came up with a decent plot then didn't have the heart to fully explore any of the parts where her main characters were unhappy, so compressed those sections, filling in the gaps with a middle third consisting almost entirely of historical exposition, fluffiness, and sex. One the plus side, I liked her characters too, so if she'd just beefed up the happy parts with more plot I'd have no real complaints.

The writing is workmanlike and often descends into cheese, especially with characterisation. But overall, definitely an enjoyable read. Oh and as always don't judge it by the cover art. I'm almost tempted to draw the main characters myself just to correct how completely wrong it is about everything.

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