2018/43: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade -- Diana Gabaldon

'Kindness and honor? That’s all well – but what of love?’
Grey valued love – and feared it – too greatly to make idle protestations. ‘You cannot compel love,’ he said finally, ‘nor summon it at will. Still less,’ he added ruefully, ‘can you dismiss it.’ [p. 260]

Seventeen years before the opening of this novel, the Duke of Pardloe (Lord John's father) died: apparently suicide, possibly to avoid being tried as a Jacobite traitor. Lord John has never really believed this, and it turns out that his elder brother Hal hasn't either. Now their mother is remarrying, and the old stories are resurfacing -- along with tantalising clues that there was more to the death of the duke than his sons suspected.

Lord John is not solely occupied with investigating the circumstances of his father's death. His new stepbrother Percy is a delight; his regiment is off to Prussia; his cousin is expecting her first child; and Jamie Fraser seems to be involved in some mystery, up in Helwater.

I think this is my favourite of the Lord John Grey novels. Lord John is a more rounded, and considerably more complex, person in this novel than in Lord John and the Private Matter. The keystone of his character is his strong sense of honour: it's more important to him than anything, though his tamped-down emotions do occasionally become impossible for him to ignore.

I liked several of the supporting cast, too, especially Lord John's mother Benedicta -- who could be the subject of a whole novel herself -- and his fond, exasperated and thoroughly competent brother Hal.

And kudos to Gabaldon for writing battlefield scenes that are brutally realistic and devoid of the dashing, bloodless heroism that can pass as shorthand for 'war' in popular novels. Lord John's bravery has a headlong, reckless feel to it: he, and his soldiers, are frail flesh and blood, driven by duty and fear.

Gabaldon's prose is eminently readable, often witty, and doesn't attempt to emulate the style of the eighteenth century. I am currently reading a novel bogged down in pseudo-archaism, and appreciate its lack even more in hindsight.