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A review by chirson
Hamilton's Battalion: A Trio of Romances by Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, Rose Lerner
4.0
I guess I'll need to make a few caveats here: firstly, that I read this as an ARC from NetGalley, courtesy of the authors, publisher and so on, in exchange for an honest review. Secondly, that I am both quite familiar with Hamilton-the-musical (see also road trip sing-alongs) and probably not a very representative fan (in that Hamilton is one of my least favourite parts of Hamilton and I find his appeal kind of baffling). So to me the fact that Hamilton is the marketing hook and the thread connecting the stories consists in Eliza spending her widowhood gathering stories from Yorktown veterans was quite insignificant and uninteresting in the larger scheme of things: the hook was in the names of the authors, two of whom I'm already very familiar with and the third whose writing I've heard some good things about.
So I was over the moon to get the ARC and it did not disappoint. On the contrary.
First of all, it's a really strong collection. I love that it combined m/f and two different queer romances (m/m and f/f). I enjoyed the way in which the stories worked with together to create a whole that was surprisingly coherent despite the very different tones of the separate stories. And I found the afterwords interesting and illuminating. And now, onto the three separate novellas.
The volume begins with Rose Lerner's Promised Land: a second chance romance between Rachel, who cross-dresses for the sake of taking part in the Revolution, and Nathan, a man from her past. The description suggests something lighter and more frivolous than what we actually get, which is a bittersweet, profound and heart-wrenching story full of emotion. It had amazing depth and the protagonists were even better than in the previous novel by Lerner I've read. They were extremely relatable, deeply sympathetic and yet completely human and imperfect. I loved how their conflict and relationship were depicted: I think second-chance can be a balancing act between trying to show that characters made a mistake not being together, so the hurt they'd wrought wasn't quite their fault or that deep, and yet making it believable that they didn't stay together in the first place, and often the result is that the cause of the break up may feel trivial. In this case, the past hurt is real but the affection is real as well. It was impressively filled with angst but done just right: I rooted for the characters and for the romance a lot, because of how hurt they were rather than despite it.
In addition, I can't not gush about the way in which Lerner wrote the physicality of the characters. The desire was believable and palpable and yet utterly non-gratuitous. There was so much eroticism with no objectification. It was beautiful, and I particularly liked how Lerner managed to actually subvert cliched attractiveness tropes (rather than, say, writing about a supposedly not beautiful character who, as we are told at every turn, is actually very conventionally attractive with a single flaw that's not really a flaw) and write features like bodily hair with love and without othering.
Finally, I loved the way Lerner wrote Jewishness in the story. It was integral, rounded the characters and the world they lived in well and was given so much care and attention and affection. Overall, this was one of my favourite Rose Lerner stories and one of the best romances I've read this year.
The second novella was by Courtney Milan. In Pursuit Of was much funnier and lighter than I'd have expected from the description or premise. Its story about Henry, a privileged, neuroatypical [I think?] white British aristocrat who can't stop talking (or lying) and John, an insightful and witty former slave, utterly unimpressed but amused despite himself, was delightful, gripping and just so adorable. It also featured some of the best unresolved sexual tension I've read in ages, and I don't say that lightly. The pining, it was real. I found the structure of the story a little uneven towards the end, and the way we got to the resolution didn't quite work for me, but it's a minor quibble - it's absolutely Courtney Milan at her very, very good if not necessarily best (that, for the record, would be The Suffragette Scandal, for me).
Also there was cheese. The cheese, it was amazing. (Must have been goat cheese, right?)
The third novella, by Alyssa Cole, entitled That Could Be Enough, unfortunately didn't impress me quite as much. There was a lot to love in it, but the pacing and the way in which information was revealed didn't grip me. The story follows an excellent pair of characters, reserved Mercy and glamorous Andromeda, two free Black women in post-Civil War New York. The way their life in New York and the social advancement and their emotions - anger and hope - are written felt really interesting and believable. I enjoyed how their struggle against upbringing and past hurt in Mercy's case, and present discrimination in Andromeda's, was an integral part of the story. But - and your milage may absolutely vary here - for me the romance was strangely abrupt, the conflict fabricated, the love a little flat. In addition, it was the only novella where I felt there were some editing issues (one scene had a strange shift in POV that I suspect was simply a mistake in names in chapter 8 - unless I'm very confused by what is happening in the flashback and whose parents are doing what - and a minor typo or two - but of course I'm reading the ARC, so this may be gone by the time the final version is published).
All the same, there were some lovely similes and turns of phrases in this novella that I enjoyed a lot, particularly in Mercy's POV, when she uses her literary talents to think about her own feelings; it's just that the romance didn't tug on my heartstrings like I'd wanted it to.
My final verdict is a sincere recommendation: if you don't really care about Hamilton all that much, a historical romance reader will still find a lot to love in this collection. And if you love Hamilton the musical / Hamilton the character, like the authors clearly do, I suspect you'll enjoy this even more than I did.
And now I wish I had someone to talk to about this book some more... Waiting for it to be properly published will be a drag.
So I was over the moon to get the ARC and it did not disappoint. On the contrary.
First of all, it's a really strong collection. I love that it combined m/f and two different queer romances (m/m and f/f). I enjoyed the way in which the stories worked with together to create a whole that was surprisingly coherent despite the very different tones of the separate stories. And I found the afterwords interesting and illuminating. And now, onto the three separate novellas.
The volume begins with Rose Lerner's Promised Land: a second chance romance between Rachel, who cross-dresses for the sake of taking part in the Revolution, and Nathan, a man from her past. The description suggests something lighter and more frivolous than what we actually get, which is a bittersweet, profound and heart-wrenching story full of emotion. It had amazing depth and the protagonists were even better than in the previous novel by Lerner I've read. They were extremely relatable, deeply sympathetic and yet completely human and imperfect. I loved how their conflict and relationship were depicted: I think second-chance can be a balancing act between trying to show that characters made a mistake not being together, so the hurt they'd wrought wasn't quite their fault or that deep, and yet making it believable that they didn't stay together in the first place, and often the result is that the cause of the break up may feel trivial. In this case, the past hurt is real but the affection is real as well. It was impressively filled with angst but done just right: I rooted for the characters and for the romance a lot, because of how hurt they were rather than despite it.
In addition, I can't not gush about the way in which Lerner wrote the physicality of the characters. The desire was believable and palpable and yet utterly non-gratuitous. There was so much eroticism with no objectification. It was beautiful, and I particularly liked how Lerner managed to actually subvert cliched attractiveness tropes (rather than, say, writing about a supposedly not beautiful character who, as we are told at every turn, is actually very conventionally attractive with a single flaw that's not really a flaw) and write features like bodily hair with love and without othering.
Finally, I loved the way Lerner wrote Jewishness in the story. It was integral, rounded the characters and the world they lived in well and was given so much care and attention and affection. Overall, this was one of my favourite Rose Lerner stories and one of the best romances I've read this year.
The second novella was by Courtney Milan. In Pursuit Of was much funnier and lighter than I'd have expected from the description or premise. Its story about Henry, a privileged, neuroatypical [I think?] white British aristocrat who can't stop talking (or lying) and John, an insightful and witty former slave, utterly unimpressed but amused despite himself, was delightful, gripping and just so adorable. It also featured some of the best unresolved sexual tension I've read in ages, and I don't say that lightly. The pining, it was real. I found the structure of the story a little uneven towards the end, and the way we got to the resolution didn't quite work for me, but it's a minor quibble - it's absolutely Courtney Milan at her very, very good if not necessarily best (that, for the record, would be The Suffragette Scandal, for me).
Also there was cheese. The cheese, it was amazing. (Must have been goat cheese, right?)
The third novella, by Alyssa Cole, entitled That Could Be Enough, unfortunately didn't impress me quite as much. There was a lot to love in it, but the pacing and the way in which information was revealed didn't grip me. The story follows an excellent pair of characters, reserved Mercy and glamorous Andromeda, two free Black women in post-Civil War New York. The way their life in New York and the social advancement and their emotions - anger and hope - are written felt really interesting and believable. I enjoyed how their struggle against upbringing and past hurt in Mercy's case, and present discrimination in Andromeda's, was an integral part of the story. But - and your milage may absolutely vary here - for me the romance was strangely abrupt, the conflict fabricated, the love a little flat. In addition, it was the only novella where I felt there were some editing issues (one scene had a strange shift in POV that I suspect was simply a mistake in names in chapter 8 - unless I'm very confused by what is happening in the flashback and whose parents are doing what - and a minor typo or two - but of course I'm reading the ARC, so this may be gone by the time the final version is published).
All the same, there were some lovely similes and turns of phrases in this novella that I enjoyed a lot, particularly in Mercy's POV, when she uses her literary talents to think about her own feelings; it's just that the romance didn't tug on my heartstrings like I'd wanted it to.
My final verdict is a sincere recommendation: if you don't really care about Hamilton all that much, a historical romance reader will still find a lot to love in this collection. And if you love Hamilton the musical / Hamilton the character, like the authors clearly do, I suspect you'll enjoy this even more than I did.
And now I wish I had someone to talk to about this book some more... Waiting for it to be properly published will be a drag.