Archive for 'Napoleon'



REVIEW: The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne

Dear Ms. Bourne,

It’s taken me a while to get around to reading your debut, The Spymaster’s Lady. Back in the winter, Robin asked me if I would review it in a conversational review with her before your next book came out, and I promised that I would. When I got to reading it last week, my repsonse to The Spymaster’s Lady was far from Robin’s own experience of the book and she suggested that I convert the notes I had prepared for a conversational review into this letter instead, so that the review could stand on its own.

Readers who have not yet done so can find a plot summary for The Spymaster’s Lady in Jane’s A- review. Another opinion can be found in Jayne’s A- review. And readers should also be aware that this review will contain spoilers.

The writing in The Spymaster’s Lady is crystalline in its beauty and sharpness. The prose is just gorgeous, scintillating, and as others have noted, the French dialogue and Annique’s POV thoughts in French are absolutely spot on in capturing the cadences of the French tongue. You are a brilliant stylist, a …

REVIEW: The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne

Dear Ms. Bourne:042521960701mzzzzzzz.jpg

What a struggle I had with writing this review. I know some ask what are the hardest reviews to write and I am convinced, after drafting and redrafting this one, it is the review of the book that you love. Because as a reader, I am trying to convey the beauty that is someone else’s writing so that others will see the same beauty. The best thing I can say to readers is to go the bookstore and read the first chapter.

The Spymaster’s Lady is about secrets. It is about the secrets the characters keep from each other. It is about the secrets that you, the author, keep from the reader. Annique, the Fox Cub, is an intentional mystery to Grey, the British Spymaster. But Grey is a mystery to Annique as well. Both characters fail to fit in the predetermined slots each has set for the other. “A man itches to peel you, veil by veil, laying your secrets bare, opening you up to reveal mysteries.”

However, the truth behind the secrets, the reveal, is always there for both the reader and the …