Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts

I wanted one ending, I wanted it a lot, even though it would make me sad to have to read it. And I found the author's mastery of those two opposing forces had infected me, the reader. Somewhere a page or so before the end (iPads, they have their downsides) I realised there was *no good way out* of this story, that both possible endings were tragic, that no other endings were at all possible. This is the story of a woman who becomes a familiar for the world's last vampire hold.

'Lamia Victoriana' may be my favourite of the four, though I vacillate. But as the story progresses we realise we're witnessing the tragic downfall of Julia's supernatural family. We start off lightly, with a delicate humour. er, was the author's ability to *hold two opposing forces within the one story*.įor example, in the first story, 'Julia Agrippina's Secret Family Bestiary', we read the story of Julia via the alphabetical encyclopaedia-style compendium of beasties she has fought. What impressed me most of all - what had me curling into a foetal position of pure delight while rocking my iPad out of the sunlight so I could keep reading in the glare of a crappy winter's afternoon - was Roberts. (I'm usually bored witless by the subject of love - I like to think this is because love is so hard to write about & get right, but it might be because I'm a stone cold kinda gal with little evident emotional life, *bwahaha*.) Anyhow. To my mind - and I could be wrong - the 4 stories fall into either more of the 'love' field or more of the 'romanpunk' field & I realised to my surprise I probably loved the love field more. This is a brilliant read, a fantastic, engaging, fun-packed, occasionally melancholic read that kept me cackling like a madwoman on a three-hour bus ride (I got a whole seat to myself that day, it was awesome). Yes, you do have to wear the damned toga. Immortal heroes really don’t fancy teenage girls. Don’t let your little brother make out with silver-eyed blondes. Women named Julia are stronger than they appear. The world is in greater danger than you ever suspected. (He didn’t even know she had a thing for pointy teeth.) It’s a sight to behold.įurther in the future, the last man who guards the secret history of the world will discover that the past has a way of coming around to bite you. Sometime in the near future, a community will live in a replica Roman city built in the Australian bush. (If it was the poet you are thinking of, the story would have ended far more happily, and with fewer people having their throats bitten out.) Hundreds of years ago, Fanny and Mary ran away from London with a debauched poet and his sister. (It included more monsters than you might think.)

The document was lost, or destroyed, almost immediately. Thousands of years ago, Julia Agrippina wrote the true history of her family, the Caesars.

Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts