{"id":4334,"date":"2022-02-08T05:02:30","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T13:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4334"},"modified":"2022-02-08T05:02:30","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T13:02:30","slug":"deanna-raybourn-an-impossible-imposter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/deanna-raybourn-an-impossible-imposter\/","title":{"rendered":"Deanna Raybourn: An Impossible Imposter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m a huge fan of Deanna Raybourn\u2019s Veronica Speedwell series, but in every series, there are always one or two books that have a bit more sparkle than the rest.\u00a0 For me, it\u2019s this book, which combines all of Raybourn\u2019s many gifts into one completely delicious package.\u00a0 In book seven of this series, lepidopterist Veronica has settled in with her beloved Stoker, in an extremely unconventional arrangement for the time (Victorian Britain): they live in sin, and Veronica is very much a working woman.<\/p>\n

Because Veronica is the illegitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales, she has no family to disappoint, and Stoker doesn\u2019t really fit into his own family.\u00a0 The two ae the perfect outside-insider detecting couple.\u00a0 They know how to navigate in society, but they aren\u2019t exactly \u201cof\u201d it.\u00a0 In this case they are asked to travel out to the countryside to see if Veronica can identify someone who has turned up claiming to be a man who died in a volcanic eruption several years ago.\u00a0 He was a friend of Veronica\u2019s and hopefully she\u2019ll be able to recognize him.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s appeared as the head of the family after the family had assumed his death, and his younger brother, along with his wealthy wife, have taken over the family seat and are very busily underway with their desired renovations.\u00a0 The godfather of the oldest sister, Effie, has asked them to have a particular care for her.\u00a0 She\u2019s a budding astronomist whose dreams are being quashed by her conventional sister-in-law.<\/p>\n

Their cover is that they will be taking a look at the collection left behind by the grandfather of the family, specimens he acquired in his travels around the globe.\u00a0 Stoker, a gifted taxidermist and devoted student of the natural world, is excited by the prospect of discovering a rare Tasmanian Tiger<\/a>, a species now extinct that was rare even in the 1880\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The family is accepting the man\u2019s identity as he appeared on their doorstep in great distress, and they took him in to nurse him.\u00a0 When he woke up he appeared to recognize his grandmother, and as he was the unpleasant, imperious old lady\u2019s favorite, she\u2019s all in.\u00a0 Veronica and Stoker are very much stepping in to a fraught family situation.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a delightful twist early on, and the cleverness of the plot continues to unfold.\u00a0 Raybourn is a wonderful combination of an adventure writer, a romance novelist, and a straight up mystery writer as the plot is very much the thing.\u00a0 To say much more about the story would be to give away things that readers should be lucky enough to discover for themselves.<\/p>\n

I will say that one of the strong gifts of a long series is the way writers can develop characters over a period of time, giving them depth and humanity that I\u2019m not sure can always be achieved in a single novel.\u00a0 In this one, Raybourn gives the reader even more of an insight into Veronica and Stoker\u2019s relationship, what holds it together, and what has the potential to tear it apart.\u00a0 There\u2019s some lovely writing here, writing I won\u2019t soon forget.\u00a0 This book is a standout in a strong series.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m a huge fan of Deanna Raybourn\u2019s Veronica Speedwell series, but in every series, there are always one or two books that have a bit more sparkle than the rest.\u00a0 For me, it\u2019s this book, which combines all of Raybourn\u2019s many gifts into one completely delicious package.\u00a0 In book seven of this series, lepidopterist Veronica … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[759,550,189,757,760,761,762,758],"class_list":["post-4334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-an-impossible-imposter","tag-astronomy","tag-berkley","tag-deanna-raybourn","tag-lepidopterist","tag-tasmanian-tiger","tag-taxidermy","tag-veronica-speedwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4350,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions\/4350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}