The Englor Affair by J L Langley

Title: The Englor Affair
Author: J L Langley
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Length: Novel/298 pages
Buy the book: eBook

Blurb:

In hiding who he was, Payton found himself-and the man he would grow to love.

After his brother is kidnapped, Prince Payton Townsend masquerades as an Admiral’s assistant in order to track the culprits through the tangled mysteries of the planet Englor. He finds way more than he bargained for in the form of Marine Colonel Simon Hollister.

Simon is no ordinary soldier. He is heir to Englor and his life is mapped out for him: throne, bride, and eventually an heir. He never expected a dalliance with Payton to blossom into love, or that the organization that taught him to lead would threaten that love-and their lives.

Danger and intrigue abound as they learn more about their shared enemy, and about each other. What they learn could help them rise above to an enduring love-or pull them apart.

Publishers Warning: Hot sweaty manlove of the interplanetary kind.

Review:

The Englor Affair is number 2 in J L Langley’s space Regency series. It’s definitely meant to be read as part of that series. A lot of the plot won’t make sense if you haven’t read Book 1, My Fair Captain, so check that out first. One drawback is that with the first book and with this one the endings feel a bit too unresolved, even for me, who doesn’t mind quite an open ending. The romance is resolved, of course, but the rest of the plot doesn’t seem to be.

I don’t think this is purely down to it being a series though. I just find the endings a little too easy. After setting up the problems nicely for the rest of the book they are too easily solved or anticipated problems don’t really appear.

I like sci-fi and I like Regency romance, so putting them together certainly appeals to me. But this second book does feel slightly less successful in exploring the results of what happens when the two are put together. In the first book Regelence society had some very odd aspects, some of which freaked me out a bit, but made me think! So it had more of a twist. This one doesn’t explore the potential strangeness as much, which is a shame.

It does repeat the “I compromised you, so I must marry you!” trope from My Fair Captain, which is a bit contrived. I hope all the Townsend brothers don’t end up having to get married that way as the series goes on! I know these stories are also playing with the common situations in more conventional Regency romance, but I’m sure people got married for other reasons besides being compromised back in the real Regency.

Speaking of being compromised, they really asked for it – having sex where they could be caught. And it wasn’t the first time they’d did so, which didn’t quite make sense to me, since a lot is made of the fact that Si can’t be found out to be gay without a scandal, and Payton has the whole “being compromised” issue. Given that, it’s a bit odd they’d keep having sex in a place someone could walk in on them any minute – and eventually does! Or rather it’s odd that they don’t appear worried about that risk.

Of the characters I found I didn’t warm much to Si through the story. He’s a classic Alpha hero type, and rather arrogant, which is understandable enough with his privileged background. But it makes him hard to like. I didn’t dislike him to the extent that I didn’t want them to get their happy ending, but I wasn’t cheering him on. Payton on the other hand I did like more. He’s more complex, more likeable, though perfectly capable of being stubborn and idiotic enough to ensure the romance doesn’t go smoothly. (Where would we be if romance characters acted sensibly, eh?)

There’s a lot of sex, as usual with this writer. I have oddly mixed feelings about J L Langley’s sex scenes. There’s no question that they are hot, very explicit. They never resort to purple or flowery prose, and they are always very sensual, even visceral, sight, sound, smell, touch all play a part. However I often find they have a kind of sameness about them, even in the emotional content. As if you could shuffle them to different places in the book and it wouldn’t make a huge difference. It’s something I’ve noticed with most of Langley’s books. So they’re good, but I just feel like I want to see more variety in them and see them used more to display the emotional arc of the relationship.

Dialogue in the sex scenes is one part of them that I don’t like! I certainly don’t mind when people who are otherwise very polite talk dirty during sex. It’s just the way they talk dirty here jars me. It sounds like dialogue from a porno movie and the main issue with that is that it feels too contemporary. It’s neither futuristic nor Regency appropriate and I find it unconvincing. I’d find it mildly unconvincing in an actual contemporary story, since I’d think “surely real people don’t talk that way?” But at least in a contemporary they could have picked it up from watching porno movies! It was an issue in My Fair Captain too, the Englorian character in that, Nate, had the same kind of pillow talk. I suspect Englor may have a special stash of vintage porn that’s passed around secretly.

The rest of the dialogue slips into a contemporary feel sometimes too. So there’s an odd mix between contemporary slang, more formal Regency-style speech and the futuristic dialogue, which is mostly some invented profanities which I’m not very keen on either.  The dialogue isn’t bad in the “nobody would ever say that!” sense, just inconsistent and occasionally jarring when it feels it doesn’t quite go with the setting.

People who have read Book 1 may be pleased to know that Nate has a decent sized supporting role in this story. They may also be pleased to know that his adopted son “Trouble” has no more than a tiny cameo.

One of the things that intrigued me most in the story and that I hope we’ll see some exploration of in the future books is the idea that the IN wants to get its hands on the Regelence cloning technology as they’ve figured out that if you skip all the training in manners and refinement and send the boys it produces to military training instead you’ve got a race of elite warriors on your hands. Sort of Space-Spartans. I like this idea a lot.

For My Fair Captain I complained about the weird position Regelence society put women in – i.e. non-existent within the ruling classes! It doesn’t work that way on Englor, and there were some women characters around. I think there could have been more exploration of how Payton would deal with women, who he just wouldn’t be used to relating to as part of the same social class as him.

Overall, it’s well written, good, easily read prose. High quality editing as I’d expect from this author and publisher. A very erotic story with a lot of sex, but with a complex and dramatic background plot integrated with the romance.  But I still feel just slightly disappointed, mostly from small issues like the ones I’ve talked about here. I never wanted to not finish it, but I was left a bit unsatisfied.