The Savage Brood by Martha Rofheart

Oh man, I really hated this book. I could barely get through it. It turns out I am not a fan of historical romances. At least not when something isn't exploding or getting stabbed every other page.

The narrative follows the Savage family through time from Elizabethan England as touring performers to a reunion of Italian and English branches in 1752 as well as some meddling in the future American Revolution, then a jump forward to the Frisco quake of 1906 and the rise of vaudeville, a brief brush with alcoholism and McCarthyism, and finally back to the West End in 1978.

It's trying to examine actors as artists and the personal and political trials overcome through the centuries but the focus on a pair of will-they/won't-they lovers in each epoch became mind-numbingly boring after about forty pages. There's a decent attention to detail but nowhere near the level of Anne Lyle or Diana Gabaldon, there's no sex, very little blood, and the whole thing seems destined to wind up a treacly Lifetime or Oxygen original movie that airs at 11 AM on a Tuesday because it's only intended to be seen by the sick and the bored.

You can do better than this.

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