I prefer Penric flailing and in-over-his-head, not this suave gentlemen with enigmatic smiles. Bujold also rehashes the worldbuilding and systems entirely from scratch all over again, which would be fine for a novel, but bloats this novella, whose plot was already thin to begin with.

She’s still Bujold though, with the same effortless prose and dexterous handling of non-human characters—animals, demons, gods—that sets her utterly above the rest of the medieval fantasy writing milieu.

I’m not an emotional person but gabaldon really knows how to squeeze it out of me. The last paragraph …oh god

First half had me riveted--the writing is pretty good relative to the new genre standard, and instead of falling into classical historical romance territory (sad abused fmc etc) we have a confident woman who is mostly content with her life. I mean look at this:

For nigh on ten years, it had been the custom of Mrs. Farah L. Mackenzie to walk the mile to work. She’d leave her small but fashionable flat above one of the many coffeehouses on Fetter Lane, and stroll down Fleet Street until it turned into the Strand, London’s infamous avant-garde theater and arts thoroughfare. With Temple Bar, and The Adelphi Theatre on her left, and Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square to her right...She’d often take morning coffee with her landlord and owner of the Bookend Coffeehouse, Mr. Pierre de Gaule, who would regale her with stories of famous poets, novelists, artists, performers, and philosophers who would frequent his establishment during the evening hours.

This genre, while utterly in thrall to 19th century London, often fails to take into account how /lively/ the city was in favor of aristocrats and their townhouses/country residences. I haven't read anything of this author, so I got tentatively pretty excited. She was going in an interesting direction!

The first third of this book continues the fun. While we quickly fall into some classic beauty-and-the-beast tropes, Byrne is committed to the THEATRICS, creating some really beautiful images. In one of the first meetings of our main characters, a highland storm brings the drama while the FMC thinks she's alone in her dark castle bedroom, and we get this wonderfully thrilling description:

A silver streak of lightning arced through the diamond-paned windows and flashed several times. The impression of a tall, sprawling bed and a fireplace that would fit a rather large man in it barely registered as she locked eyes with the shadowed figure sitting motionless in the high-backed chair close to her bed. Dorian Blackwell. He’d been watching her sleep. He’d been close enough to reach out and touch her. The lightning passed, plunging them both back into darkness, and Farah froze for the few seconds it took for the thunder to shake the stones of the keep.

GIRL THAT SCARED ME TF. And then again:

Another streak of lightning forked through the storm, illuminating his bulky shadow, turning the ebony of his hair a blue-black and his scarred eye an unnatural silver. Farah only caught his expression for a moment, but it was an unguarded moment, and what she saw stunned her into silence. He was leaning closer, his head dipped down, but his deep-set eyes burned at her through dark lashes. His hand hovered in the space between them, his expression a mixture of exquisite pain and longing.

OKAY GOTHIC ROMANCE LETS GO!!!!!!!!

The next day brings some insane dramatic revelations and a Bathroom Scene that ...will haunt me forever. It's all going great! But then the drama keeps ramping. And ramping. And ramping. And as the novel progresses, we go from thrilling and fun and kind of camp to...screechy melodrama :/ Byrne doesn't know when to close, letting the antics spool out for an uncomfortably long time, turning our tortured anti-hero into a self-flagellating clown and this gothic-y romance into a cheesefest.