My Wicked Marquess by Gaelen Foley

Narrated by Annette Chown

My Wicked Marquess is the first book in Gaelen Foley’s Inferno Club series, and having enjoyed reading some of the later books, I was pleased to see this appear in audio format. Annette Chown is a new-to-me narrator (and from reading an interview with her posted on Ms Foley’s website, it seems she’s fairly new to the world of audiobook narration, too), but I like to give new narrators a chance – everyone has to start somewhere, after all!

Unfortunately, however, My Wicked Marquess is a bit of a mess. The pacing is very uneven, the heroine is annoying to the point of being TSTL and there is a lot of info-dumping going on, whether as back-story or setting up future books; and Ms Chown’s narration, while decent, isn’t sufficiently engaging as to be able to carry the listener through those portions of the story that are, shall we say, less than interesting.

The eponymous wicked marquess is Max, Lord Rotherstone who, together with his two closest friends, is a member of a top secret organisation – the Order of St. Michael – that has been dedicated to the protection of England’s shores since medieval times. The principal threat over the centuries has come from SMERSH a group known as the Promethean Council, whose aims are supposedly to unite the world under one peaceful government, but in reality all they want is power. (Cue evil laugh.) The Prometheans were backing Napoleon, but now he has been defeated, Max wants nothing more than to settle down to a normal life, and asks his solicitor to draw up a list of potential brides. Number five on the list is Miss Daphne Starling, who catches his interest for no reason other than that she is currently under a bit of a cloud because of rumours that she rejected a marriage proposal from a boyhood rival.

Having been taken away from his family at a young age to fulfil an ages old vow, and trained to be a kind of 19^th Century James Bond, spying is something that comes naturally to Max – and so he makes it his business to stalk check up on Daphne and see how she spends her time. His first sight of her is when she is visiting an orphanage in the East End and Doing Good Deeds – because, of course, historical heroines have to be kind and charitable, and what is more kind and charitable than helping the poor orphans?

(And incidentally – spot the deliberate mistake: “But she knew how it felt to be orphaned young. At least she still had a loving father…”)

Unfortunately, Daphne’s nice clothes and carriage attract the wrong sort of attention – and I had to ask myself why it was on this particular visit that the local ruffians noticed given she’s been there lots of times – meaning that Max has to do a spot of quick thinking to rescue her. But for anyone thinking this is their first meeting – think again. That doesn’t actually happen until TWO HOURS into the audiobook, when they meet again at a ball. And then Daphne gets all in a huff because he doesn’t make a move to see or speak to her for weeks after.

What she can’t know, of course, is that, being a proper gentleman, Max has approached her father to ask for her hand, as was the done thing at the time. But when he tells her that, she gets on her high horse and complains that he should have asked her first and turns him down in a snit. Max is nothing if not persistent, however, and continues to court Daphne and break down her resistance – because of course, he’s a handsome and charming chap – and just as it looks as though he’s finally won her over, he lets slip that he’s paid all her father’s debts. Cue more ranting and refusals from Daphne, who accuses him of trying to buy her and absolutely refuses to hear Max’s explanation that he had withheld that information AT HER FATHER’S REQUEST, because he didn’t want her to think badly of him. She has also worked out that Max is Keeping Secrets and Not Telling Her All; and here, I will admit that she had the right of it. Although his work with the Order of St. Michael is ostensibly over, one of Max’s colleagues, who has been presumed dead, has been seen alive and in the company of members of the Promethean Council (which is the set up for book four, by the way) and Max and his friends have to find out what is going on. Max has such strong feelings about his work for the Order, and is still harbouring huge resentment at the fact that he was ripped from his family at such a young age, that he doesn’t want Daphne anywhere near it – but with her personality type, there was never any way he was going to get away with that!

Eventually, Max is in a position where he is able to tell Daphne the truth of his past and then – The End.

Wait – what? Yep. Having stumbled across a sooper-sekrit-spy-message from Max’s boss, Daphne gets all self-righteous and angry that Max lied to her, and runs off in yet another fit of temper. He catches up with her, takes her to his London HQ and finally tells her everything. And that’s it. The rest of the book is the set up for book two, and the entire romance basically boils down to Daphne accusing Max of wanting to control her (he didn’t), being a liar (which he was by omission, but he was trying to protect her), yelling at him and running away from him when he didn’t do what she wanted; and him being reasonable and trying to look out for her. Honestly, the man was a saint and I have no idea what he saw in her, which never bodes well for a romance.

When the storyline of a book is so poorly paced and the heroine so unsympathetic, it would be a difficult job for the most experienced narrator to turn it into a decent listen. Ms Chown does a fair enough job in terms of her performance, but unfortunately, her voice, while generally pleasant, lacks colour and nuance, so that the longer narrative passages of exposition and back story – which are quite long, even in print – seem to drag on interminably, and I have to admit that I lost the thread on several occasions. She differentiates well between all the different characters, and employs a number of regional British accents to good effect; and the bright tone she uses in her portrayal of Daphne works well. She does a reasonable job with Max and manages to make him sound vaguely masculine, but there were a few times in scenes between them when I couldn’t always work out who was speaking. This comes down to personal preference, but when listening to a female narrator, I like one whose natural pitch is in the mezzo/contralto range (like Rosalyn Landor, Kate Reading or Heather Wilds) all of whom are able to perform male characters easily and without sounding strained. Ms Chown is more of a soprano, and thus her male voices are disappointing, and I will never understand why, in a genre that is full to the brim with powerful alpha males, narrators with very obviously feminine voices are so often used. Ms Chown differentiates well between Max and his friends, but sometimes, they sound like they’re all on the hockey team at the local girls’ school. The biggest problem with the male voices comes with the villains, none of whom sounds at all menacing, and whom I envisaged twirling their moustaches and swishing their cloaks before mincing off into the distance with an evil MUAHAHAHAH!!

I also noticed a number of mispronunciations, usually of words of French origin – for instance, debacle is pronounced “deborkle”, hauteur comes out as “haut-ewer” and the grand armée is called the “grahnd army” – to name but a few.

As is obvious, I can’t recommend My Wicked Marquess. Annette Chown has potential, but would perhaps be better suited to women’s fiction or young adult books, and the story, as I’ve said before, is a mess.

Caz

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Narration: C-

Book Content: D

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Minimal

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Gaelen Foley

My Wicked Marquess was provided to AudioGals for a review.

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