James Nicoll Reviews

Heather Rose Jones’ 2022 The Language of Roses is a stand-alone fantasy novella retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Anton takes refuge from a storm at the manor of Bettencourt. It’s clearly an enchanted place with invisible overlords, so Anton is on his guard … but not sufficiently so. Anton foolishly plucks a rose as he tries to slip off the estate. This egregious sin enrages the Fée (Fae).

The overlords will let Anton leave only if he sends one of his three daughters to serve in the manor. 

Once home, he sends his most responsible daughter, Alys, to the manor. She will serve Lady Ice, a woman slowly turning to stone, and Lord Beast.

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2015’s The Mystic Marriage is the second volume in Heather Rose Jones’ Alpennia series.

Antuniet Chazillen has lost everything: her foolish brother has been executed for treason and her mother is dead by her own hand. Antuniet has been stripped of her aristocratic rank. Determined to restore the family honour, Antuniet flees Alpennia for Austria, there to use her alchemical skills to win back for her family the respect and position her brother cost it. 

In Austria she finds a treasure of rare value, a treasure others are determined to wrest from her. She escapes from Vienna to Heidelberg, but her enemies are still close on her heels. She sees no choice but to trade her virtue for transportation to safety.

Which means returning to Alpennia…

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I have known Heather Rose Jones on Livejournal for some years, but only now have I read one of her novels: the 2014 Daughter of Mystery: a Novel of Alpennia. Review tout court: I enjoyed it. 

Dutiful relatives took the orphaned Margerit Sovitre into their household, offering her the very best bourgeois upbringing. Despite this, her prospects are not especially golden, save for one thing: the wealthy Baron Saveze is her godfather. Her bourgeois kin have great hopes that he will do something for her; she herself is not inclined to place too much dependence on the Baron’s future largesse. He is in delicate health and may not have much of a future in which to bestow largesse. 

It comes as a tremendous surprise when the Baron dies and leaves his vast fortune to Margerit. It is even more of a surprise to discover that the Baron has also willed Margerit his armin. An armin is not a what but a who, a personal bodyguard. In the Baron’s case, his armin was a young woman named Barbara. 

These revelations are not greeted with universal joy by all involved.

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