Gorgeous Carat caught my eye because it seemed to be a frothy costume drama set in turn-of-the-century Paris, and I’m a sucker for historical fiction. There’s something delicious about seeing another time and place through a sympathetic character’s eyes, trying to imagine what it was like to live during the Napoleonic wars or the Tokugawa era. What’s not so delicious, however, is seeing a contemporary author unconsciously absorb the prejudices of another era and incorporate them into her story.
The premise is ridiculous, but the first volume has a certain flair that carries Carat past its credulity-straining aspects. Our hero, Florian Rochefort, belongs to a French family with a noble name and and not-so-noble debt load. Rather than fence the family jewels, Florian’s mother does what all self-respecting French aristocrats do in yaoi manga: she sells Florian into slavery, delivering him to Ray Balzac Courtland, a distant relative who also happens to be, natch, young and handsome. Florian may be too dense to recognize his growing attraction to Ray, but it doesn’t take long for Florian to realize that Ray is, in fact, “Noir,” a cat burglar who’s the talk of fin-de-siecle Paris. When Florian is kidnapped by a rival gang of thieves, Ray sails for Morocco to enlist an old friend in tracking down his prized possession relative.
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