(no subject)

[skygiants]

Over the past few months, I've been steadily reading my way through Joanna Bourne's romance novels every time I had to go on a trip, and now I have read them all!

The series takes place at various points in time over the Napoleonic Wars, and generally features a romance between a male English spy and a female French spy [or equivalent], with a few variations on the theme. The central organization is a British spy service that is, we are very clear to specify, nicer and wittier and wildly more competent than the other British spy service, who often show up as minor antagonists; our spy service is very Cosmpolitan and therefore of course generally willing to embrace the rogue French spies that their service members inevitably end up romancing.

There are six books overall; it takes around three books for Joanna Bourne to figure out that it's OK to make her heroines just as grizzled and murderous as her heroes, but the last three books make up for that IN SPADES.

The Spymaster's Lady: The book that sets the pattern for the series, in which French spy Annique teams up with English spy Grey to escape a dicey situation, and then gets capturedy bhim, and then has to decide whether to betray CRUCIAL INFORMATION in order to KEEP THEIR NATIONS FROM WAR. This one has some hilarious dramatic plot twists including the fact that Annique is SECRETLY BLIND, and then gets her sight back and DOESN'T RECOGNIZE THE HERO because he's SPEAKING A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE so he captures her all OVER again; I laughed straight through all of this and Annique is a delight, but Grey is one of Bourne's less interesting heroes and I'm not sure it ever counts as 'consent' when one party is literally being held captive in the other party's basement dungeon. I suspect Bourne agrees with me about Grey, because he's the only one of our spy club who barely even makes a cameo in any other book.

My Lord and Spymaster: I don't understand the title of this book at all because neither of the protagonists are actually spies? SOMEONE is a French spy, and she thinks he is, and he thinks her dad is, and also she's a genius accountant former thief with temporary ... amnesia .....? This book is not very memorable, but is also conveniently pretty divorced from the major mythology of the series, and thus quite skippable.

The Forbidden Rose: This is the first book in the series that I was pretty much completely here for: he's a big cheerful English spy, and she's the Scarlet Pimpernel. (Her name is Marguerite, it's not subtle.) Initially he's trying to capture her for reasons I forget (her dad is an inventor with some kind of MacGuffin?) but then he gives up on that and instead she ends up using her network to rescue him from the Bastille. Includes a good bit of French revolution nonsense but overall very enjoyable & also includes the first meeting of Preteen Spies Hawker and Justine who will be the protagonists of the next and probably best book.

The Black Hawk: Hawker is a show-stealer throughout the entire series, a street thief-turned-spy who spends the first three books befriending the heroines and judging the heroes for hitting on them in situations where the power dynamics are wonky. His romance spans THIRTY YEARS of star-crossed spy vs. spy shenanigans; he and Justine both end up in high positions in their respective spy networks, and don't actually get together together until they're both middle-aged and Justine has retired with full honors to run a mapmaking shop. EXTREMELY QUALITY CONTENT. At one point she shoots him!

Rogue Spy: This is ALSO some very good high-drama content -- the hero and the heroine were TRAINED TOGETHER AS CHILDREN in a SECRET EVIL ACADEMY to create DEADLY DEEP-COVER FRENCH AGENTS (a plot point set up in The Black Hawk), and have both since flipped loyalties to their fake English coworkers/fake English family, but! how are they supposed to know whether the other one has flipped loyalties! WHO TO TRUST! Bonus points for virgin hero and experienced heroine, double bonus points for codebreaker aunties who are secretly very proud of their fake niece's murder skills, triple bonus points for replacing the more standard 'orphan child is secret aristocracy' with a 10x more hilarious 'orphan child is SECRET MOB ROYALTY.' (Minus points for the heroine's relationship and reconciliation with her fake family being mostly offscreened in the second half of the book because it gets completely overwhelmed by other plot drama.)

Beauty Like the Night: the heroine of this one is the sister of the heroine in The Black Hawk and the adopted daughter of the protags of The Forbidden Rose and, after a bloody stint spying during the Peninsular Wars for the other intelligence agency that's not embarrassingly full of her dad's friends, has settled down to start a career as Sherlock Holmes. The hero is a French/Spanish wine-maker and thief who's looking for his murdered estranged wife's missing illegitimate daughter. There is QUITE A LOT of plot in this one and I'm pretty sure that the heroine's history of open military service followed by nearly-seamless reintegration into the nineteenth-century ton while simultaneously kicking off a consulting detective career doesn't make a lot of sense ... but honestly, I don't care, it's super enjoyable nonsense and we left realism behind about three 'sure, marry your French spy nemesis!' volumes back. Not as coherent as the Forbidden Rose/Black Hawk/Rogue Spy trilogy but a fun coda nonetheless.

Comments

[kore]

Oh, that embedded trilogy sounds neat.

[skygiants]

Those three are definitely the best ones! VERY GOOD spy shenaniganry.

[sovay]

but honestly, I don't care, it's super enjoyable nonsense and we left realism behind about three 'sure, marry your French spy nemesis!' volumes back.

This is reminding me of the time I read Sir Percy Hits Back (1927), which is the Scarlet Pimpernel novel about Chauvelin's secret daughter who doesn't know what her father does for a living and accidentally gets caught up in a counterrevolutionary plot and in all the guilt-by-association paranoia of the Terror her father can't move to save her without condemning them both, so he's forced to strike a deal with his hated arch-enemy, which Sir Percy finds hilarious and Chauvelin really does not, and generally I got out of that book feeling I had slightly drowned in the Baroness Orczy's id, which did not stop it from being fun.

The Black Hawk sounds delightful.

[skygiants]

One of these days I have to get around to reading the rest of the Pimpernel books. I've had #2 on my Kindle for literal years now. I am so ready to drown in Baroness Orczy's id!

The Black Hawk is great for many reasons but in particular because the heroine never has to renounce her loyalty to her country; she had a job, she did the job well, there is nothing now stopping her from settling down to bang her nemesis as often as she wants except the understandable interpersonal awkwardness when your last romantic interlude ended in a bullet to the shoulder.

[sovay]

I am so ready to drown in Baroness Orczy's id!

I look forward to your reports!

in particular because the heroine never has to renounce her loyalty to her country; she had a job, she did the job well, there is nothing now stopping her from settling down to bang her nemesis as often as she wants except the understandable interpersonal awkwardness when your last romantic interlude ended in a bullet to the shoulder.

Sold.

[musesfool]

I enjoyed The Spymaster's Lady but didn't realize it was a series! I will definitely check out those last four.

[skygiants]

They get better as they go on! (And also better about consent, and about allowing the heroines to have as much or more previous experience with sex and also murder as the heroes.) The Doyle and Hawker books in particular are EXTREMELY fun.

[sapote]

I actually just searched through your tags to see if you'd read Joanna Bourne because I LOVED the Bourne short story in Gambled Away, and then I mostly tolerated the consent stuff in My Spymaster's Lady as probably??? someone else's iddy dubcon??? but now I'm in My Lord and Spymaster and really just want someone to stab the hero and push him off a dock so that the heroine can spend the rest of the book doing forensic accounting unencumbered.

I guess I am saying: it sounds like it's worth trying again with the next book?

[whimsyful]

he's a big cheerful English spy, and she's the Scarlet Pimpernel

Sold! I actually have The Forbidden Rose on my ereader, and now I'm going to start that immediately.

[skygiants]

I've read a couple romance novels/YA novels that riff on the Scarlet Pimpernel and this is honestly my favorite of the lot!

[whimsyful]

Ooh what others have you read? Pretty much nothing will get me to check out a book faster than "gender-flipped Scarlet Pimpernel". I enjoyed Across a Star-Swept Sea a lot but felt pretty uncomfortable by how it handled the neurodivergent part of its worldbuilding, and Sharon Cameron's Rook had good parts but should have been at least 100 pgs shorter.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I had the same qualms with Across a Star-Swept Sea. And the other one I read was Sherry Thomas' His At Night, which I also did not like because NOBODY seemed to be having a good time AT ALL and what is the point of a Pimpernel AU if nobody's having any fun? (Marguerite in this series is also not having as much fun as I generally want from my Pimpernels, but she's not angsting endlessly about Her Double Life either, which is a step up and honestly I will take it.)

I've not heard of Rook, is that also a gender-flipped one?

[whimsyful]

Oh I completely forgot about His at Night. And yup, Rook is loosely a gender-flipped Scarlet Pimpernel. Err, it's not a bad book, but parts of it are too long/unnecessary and I'm pretty sure dude!Marguerite has more fun than girl!Percy does, which should be illegal in a Pimpernel retelling.

[wakuchan]

OH GOOD I'm glad to hear that the series gets better after Spymaster's Lady, I've been struggling through the audiobook on and off for the better part of a month. I'd heard good things about Black Hawk, but I like reading these things in order. Guess I'll just press on through the rest of the first book.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I ended up being glad that I ploughed through in order, but it definitely picked up (for me) once I hit the middle books!

[graycardinal]

So basically this is the alternate universe where Elizabeth Peters wrote the "Pink Carnation" series minus the mostly superfluous present-day frame (and/or Patricia Wrede & Caroline Stevermer had written the "Sorcery & Cecelia" books in a non-magical universe)....

That sounds more than worth a look.

[skygiants]

KIND OF, yes, although, I mean, don't get me wrong, the tropes are definitely much more Romance than anything Patricia Wrede or even Elizabeth Peters usually writes. A bug or a feature depending on what you like!

[ceitfianna]

Oh this is useful. I've been meaning to read these books but wasn't sure which ones to read.

[skygiants]

They have definitely made for great travel stress-reading!

[osprey_archer]

EXTREMELY QUALITY CONTENT. At one point she shoots him!

This is how all romance novels should be judged.

[oracne]

Ditto. See also, Loretta Chase's LORD OF SCOUNDRELS.

[skygiants]

It has been an amazing criteria for me in identifying books of interest!

[katherine]

These sound really fun. I'm putting The Black Hawk on my get around to reading that list.

[skygiants]

I have a great weakness for spyjinks!

[littlerhymes]

'orphan child is SECRET MOB ROYALTY.'

Oh my god. I love it already.

[skygiants]

I LAUGHED SO HARD. "it would be disastrous for international policy if we were allow her to be harmed, [incredibly important mob family] would cause RIOTS!"

[vcmw]

This series review is delightful and extremely useful to me, as I'd read the first book and was sort of meh about it, so I hadn't continued. It sounds like I missed all sorts of fun, and I'm putting the series back on my tbr but with plans to restart with number three. (I'm perfectly happy to read just part of a series or read it out of order.)

[skygiants]

Oh good, I'm glad it was helpful! :D I hope you enjoy the rest!

[meganbmoore]

I read the first 2 books when they came out than then never got around to reading the rest. maybe I should.

[skygiants]

I had a lot of fun with them! They're very enjoyable nonsense.

[genarti]

You have sold me on this; I'm hit or miss on spy romance tropes as a rule, but the last four books here all sound HILARIOUS.

[skygiants]

I VERY MUCH LOOK FORWARD to hearing your thoughts, esp. in re the faux-translation stuff we have discussed on previous occasion, and also in re the plot point wherein Our Heroes forge letters from like 40 important French revolutionaries in one night. :P

[genarti]

oh my god but--

NEVER MIND logistics later okay yes, I will read it and you can watch my face as I react to it. *laughing* Out of curiosity, do you have physical copies of these books, or...?

[skygiants]

I don't, alas, but they are all available from the BPL in digital & physical form so I can loan you them on my Kobo this summer if nothing else!

[genarti]

:DDD

[pseudo_tsuga]

Oh my god, the series from The Forbidden Rose sound EXCELLENT; it's hard to tell all the different napoleanic spy books apart so I'm eager to read a Scarlet Pimpernel alternate take.

[skygiants]

It's my favorite Scarlet Pimpernel-esque thing I've read that's not actually a variant on The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think!

- no, that's not true, I really loved The Way To the Lantern but that's a very different kind of book.

[izilen]

Could I read The Black Hawk on its own?

[skygiants]

Hmmm, I would recommend reading The Forbidden Rose first because the protagonists from The Black Hawk first meet in it, but I think you probably could pick up The Black Hawk on its own if you really weren't feeling it!

[lokifan]

Oh, the Black Hawk <3 I started reading them because someone really liked the first but I completely agree that they get way better. Forbidden Rose delighted me too.