I think Courtney Milan's career may eventually reach an integrity ceiling. Her books are absolutely beautiful for the raw honesty of emotion and history, of suffering and ignorance and strength that they portray. If you're sensitive, as I'm sometimes sensitive, it makes it hard to use them as escapism. I like historical novels because history is just as much another world as any second world fantasy can present. But I like escapism, too. I like exceptional people. I like to believe, when I'm seeking escape, that somebody will save all the sick and starving children _this_ time. But Courtney Milan is all too aware that mostly, those children didn't get saved. They lived short, brutal, unpleasant lives. She doesn't focus on it, oh no. But she knows. And that knowing shines through the seams of her stories. It makes them something other than romance. They're beautiful things, but they rarely make me comfortable.