J.A. Rock
Books: Mystery | Romance | Queer | Historical
The Lords of Bucknall Club: A Case for Christmas (2021), A Sanctuary for Soulden (2021), An Affair for Aumont (2022), A Scandal for Stratford (2022)
The Lords of Bucknall Club by J.A. Rock and Lisa Henry
A Case for Christmas (2021) #2
Set in an
alternate England during the Napoleonic Era.
The only thing that makes this a fantasy is this bit:
In 1783, the Marriage Act Amendment was introduced in England to allow marriages between same-sex couples. This was done to strengthen the law of primogeniture and to encourage childless unions in younger sons and daughters of the peerage, as an excess of lesser heirs might prove burdensome to a thinly spread inheritance.
Not only does that remote the illegality of same-sex unions in historical Europe, it does so in a way that is clever and quite logical.
Lord Christmas Gale does not like people. But now that he has started finding solutions to conundrums and mysteries, society is quite interested in him.
Lord Thurston wondered in a low voice whether making people disappear— as opposed to finding them— was a service Gale offered.
The Honorable Benjamin Chant is back in society (despite rumors of madness in his family) and is drawn to Lord Gale not for his mental prowess but because he sees something in Gale that interests him.
Gale drew another uneven breath and muttered, "I do not like people. At all."
Chant smiled, though Gale wouldn’t be able to see it. "Ah. I like nearly all people, it seems. Generally speaking."
Gale cast a glance at him, then stared out across the lawn once more. "I have no choice but to conclude there is something gravely wrong with you, sir."
When a poor drunk who had asked Gale to search for his daughter’s missing dog–and then is found murdered only hours later–Gale decides to investigate. And not being good with people, asks Chant to come along to deal with the child.
There are a lot of things this story does that I absolutely loved.
First, the child (who is taken in by Gale’s mother and sisters) is not a beautiful waif that everyone falls in love with.
Her hair was an ashy blond and hung in tangles around a face that seemed wider than it was long. Her eyes were set rather far apart, and were a mix of dark blue and brown. Her smile showed tiny, peg-like teeth that made her look a bit like some mischievous fiend from a fairy tale. She’d been cleaned up, but her skin had faint grey and yellow tones, likely from exhaustion and malnourishment.
Gale’s family still falls in love with her, but she is definitely a child of poverty–which is something a LOT of historicals gloss over or ignore completely. (Such as the man who spent his childhood on the streets but somehow managed to grow to six feet with muscles and good hair.)
I also like how although they have same sex marriage, the other elements of society at the time were left.
As he had just proposed an act of grave indecency with a fellow to whom he was not married, it seemed rather shortsighted of Chant to call him decent merely for withdrawing that proposal.
Gale’s family was wonderful. He speaks as if they are a terrible burden and he can’t stand any of them.
"It will be loud," Gale cautioned him. "I have sisters. At least four, and possibly as many as seven."
But through his actions, clearly loves his family–even if he is terrible at showing it.
The characters were amusing, the mystery was decent, and I love the world building.
Characters: Lord Christmas Gale, Howe, Lady Gale, Richard Gale, Edward Gale, Eugenie Gale, Clarissa Gale, Anne-Marie Gale, William Hartwell, Joseph Warrington, Benjamin Chant, Reid, Mrs. Faulks, George Darling, Lord Balfour, Captain de Cock, Visser, Fernside, Philip Winthrop Viscount Soulden, Loftus Rivingdon, Morgan Notley
Cover art by Mitxeran
- February 2022 | Rating: 7.5/10
- January 2025 | Rating: 8.5/10
A Sanctuary for Soulden (2021) #4
Set in an
alternate England in the early 1800s.
Philip Winthrop, Viscount Soulden is easily bored. But you wouldn’t guess that if you saw him out on the town, where he presents himself as a fop, concerned with little other than clothes and games, to cover his secret work in intelligence.
"You are a rake and a cad, sir!"
Soulden sipped his port. "You are not the first to mention it, it’s true, so there may be something in it.
Edmund Fernside is a surgeon who does his best to learn from the dead to save the living. To do that he must have dead bodies, which he tries to source as ethically as possible.
He is more than a little surprised when one of those bodies sits up and tries to leave.
Important note: the description makes the story sound light and fluffy.
Philip Winthrop, Viscount Soulden, is a fop. An idle popinjay with nothing more on his mind than how to best knot his cravat. He definitely doesn’t spy against the French. Or arrange hasty weddings. Or occasionally commandeer the navy. And he certainly doesn’t seek out mortal danger in order to combat his pervasive ennui. It’s all just a big misunderstanding when he’s shot by a French intelligence officer during a merry riverside chase.
This book is many things, but light and fluffy it is not.
Philip throws himself into danger in order to distract himself from the past, which is full of blood and loss and grief.
"My father wears a set of false teeth. Expensive things, wondrously made. Do you know what they call them? Waterloo teeth. I asked him once if he ever wondered if it was my brother’s teeth rattling around in his skull now."
Fernside may present himself as a misanthrope, but (like Lord Christmas) he does so to hide that he does care about the world and those who populate it.
Fernside drew a long breath. "After Waterloo, there were so many injured. So many men who desperately needed medical treatment. And there were not enough doctors, not enough by half. Medical students did not have enough cadavers on which to learn. I saw many things that summer, and beyond, that I shall never unsee."
So: dark, with damaged characters, and a mystery: my favorite!
As with the previous book, the only fantastical element about this story is that it’s an alternate history where same-sex marriages were legalized to help preserve the wealth of the ruling class. The mystery was interesting, the characters were both deeply damaged by their pasts, but still try to better the world, in their own ways.
- March 2022 | Rating: 8/10
- March 2025 | Rating: 8/10
An Affair for Aumont (2022) #5
Louis-Charles Aumont was in love
with Luke Winthrop, but turned down his offer of marriage, after which
Luke joined the army and was killed at Waterloo. Since then Aumont
worked as a spy for France, and avoided those who he previously, and
is now trying to drink himself to death, tired of living with grief
and guilt.
But Darling hadn’t arrested him. He had simply escorted Aumont as far as Russell Square before releasing him.
And Aumont had stood there, helplessly, with no idea how to explain to this fool that he needed to die, that he was too much of a coward to fling himself from a bridge into the Thames, and so he needed Darling to put him in front of a magistrate.
George Darling is a Bow Street Runner and a man of faith. He moved to London to try and make the world a better place, but instead his work has beaten him down, so when Lord Gale requests he assist Teddy Honeyfield, Darling does so, despite not being sure what good he can do the man.
Darling had joined the Bow Street officers because he’d believed in the law. Had realised quickly that the law was an abstract thing, simplistically noble and brutally without nuance.
Darling’s religious faith is one of his central characteristics, and why he wanted to join Bow Street, but it’s not a narrow faith.
“But if you are Catholic, sir—can you not ask forgiveness?”
He did not know precisely how Catholicism worked, and privately thought Catholics did indeed have more to answer for than where they put their pricks—but he hoped forgiveness was an option for the wayward Frenchman.
Despite the humor and romance in this series, the books I’ve read all deal with grief, which made me hesitate to read this one, despite how much I enjoyed the other books I read.
Because if there was one thing he knew, it was how to put on a mask and keep it on, even if behind it was no true face at all, only the vague shape of a man rapidly crumbling away like dry sand into nothing.
I’ve also skipped a couple books in this series, primarily because when the characters have appeared in other stories, they’ve annoyed me tremendously with their stupidity and frivolity. But Aumont and Darling are far from frivolous, and that seemed to place them at the center of the mystery, rather than observers.
But I like the characters from the books I’ve read.
Then Lord Christmas muttered, “In a world of idiots, you are something else entirely. Good evening.”
And I quite like these characters.
“Swimming is simply—you must not get in your own way.”
“I will absolutely get in my own way.”
Interestingly, because of Darling’s views on sex before marriage, there is no boinking, which I think is perfect for the characters–Darling is somewhat private and shy and it would be wrong to watch his wedding night.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t references to boinking, just that we don’t have to see it.
The big weakness of the story is I really wasn’t quite sure why Gale suggested Darling seek our Aumont for assistance in protecting Teddy. The second was that I never felt quite certain man threatening Teddy was who they said he was.
Despite that, however, I very much enjoyed the story.
Characters: Louis-Charles Aumont Marquis de Montespan, George Darling, Teddy Honeyfield, Philip Winthrop Viscount Soulden, Surgeon Edmund Fernside, Lord Christmas Gale, Benjamin Chant, William Hartwell Marquess of Danbury, Joseph Warrington, Mr. Morgan Notley, Loftus Rivingdon, Agnes Crauford, Luke Winthrop, John Darling, Mary Darling, Hector Darling, Annette, Mr. Foster, The Apostle, Mr. Anthony Lawrence, Mr. Matthew Lawrence, Mr. Stephen Lawrence, Mr. Darby, Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Johnson, Lord Stratford
Cover art by Mitxeran
- March 2025 | Rating: 7.5/10
A Scandal for Stratford (2022) #6
Set in England in 1818
James Lewis became Earl of Stratford after the unexpected death of his parents.
It stood empty now except for the servants. Had done for years, ever since Lord and Lady Stratford had died, leaving the estate to sixteen-year-old James.
He did not know how to run an estate any more than he knew how to raise his younger brother, so Frederick was sent off to an aunt and uncle and resented James for years because of that.
Frederick returning to London means a chance for James to mend things with him, except that means James has to hide both his issues, and his unorthodox relationship with his stablemaster, Harold.
Harold has been looking after James since they were both children, despite James being older, and the heir. But in each other they found things they needed, and so their relationship worked, even if Harold feared he was holding James back.
But caring for James could not merely mean insisting that he eat and sleep and write a certain number of pages each day. It had to include making sure he was whole, that he had not joined his life with Harold’s simply because Harold was familiar, because Harold was there.
This is a BDSM story, with the power imbalance between lord and master addressed by their switching of roles in their relationship.
Unsurprisingly, this story was a struggle for me. The boinking was an integral part of their relationship and so couldn’t easily be skimmed. Additionally, since the two were already in a long-established relationship, the boinking appeared right at the start.
Because of this, I stopped and restarted the book several times, finally settling down to skim and finish it. Because I wanted to know what happened, I just wanted to be able to skip the boinking bits entirely.
Additionally, there didn’t seem to be much mystery. We knew Stratford wrote the books. We could see Frederick was going to cause trouble. So much of the story was waiting to see how it was all going to fall down upon Stratford, and that just was not what I wanted to read.
Additionally, Stratford has serious anxiety, and issues being in public because of that, and as with other books that’s nothing something easy or enjoyable for me to read.
Positives: I did enjoy the relationship between James and Harold. And it was a relationship despite the difference in station.
“Another litter means God knows how many more mouths to feed.”
“You don’t need to feed them. Once they’re weaned, they’ll eat the mice.”
“Mm-hmm. That’s what you told me about the last litter. Then I came in one day to find you’d left me a great pot of mutton stew to take to the kittens because you were afraid they’d go hungry.”
“I said you could have some too. It wasn’t all for the cats.”
I also enjoyed seeing the other members of the Bucknall Club.
“It’d be like putting a monkey in a cravat. However good it looked, it would sooner or later just start flinging—”
“Gale,” Chant said, a faint note of warning in his tone.
“Aspersions,” Gale said. “Flinging aspersions.”
“I do not believe that was what you were going to say.”
“It absolutely was.”
Gale is still my favorite character of the series.
But despite the appearances of the other characters, the story was never going to work for me.
Characters: Harold Granger, James Lewis Earl of Stratford, Frederick Lewis, Philip Winthrop Viscount Soulden, Surgeon Edmund Fernside, Lord Christmas Gale, Benjamin Chant, William Hartwell Marquess of Danbury, Joseph Warrington, Mr. Morgan Notley, Loftus Rivingdon, Louis-Charles Aumont Marquis de Montespan, George Darling, Norris, Ellis, Price, Collins, Lord Finchley, Lord Clarence, Mr Lindsay, M Verreau, Lady Karina Bellborough, Lady Rebecca Warrington, Doctor Rudolf Paar
Cover art by Mitxeran
- March 2025 | Rating: NR