Title: The Spymaster’s Lady
Author: Joanna Bourne
Publication Info: Penguin Group, January 2008
Genre: Historical Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Wow. Just…wow. Next time someone asks “What is good writing?” I have my answer: this book. Not good writing. Brilliant writing. Now that I’ve spent many months trying to write I can really appreciate good writing when I see it. Writing is hard. Good writing is really hard. Brilliant writing? A gift from the gods.

Let me chose a paragraph to illustrate:

The noisy town of Dover stretched above her with its stone houses stacked one upon the other up the hill and the castle above everything. Around her, gray green water washed the pilings, splashing tiny explosions of light, spinning bubbles of silver and snow white. In baskets of fish, the scales shone in iridescent ripples. (172-173)

Brilliant imagery. The heroine is French and I can hear her thinking in French, with cadences and word order in the French way. When the characters switch into German it is the same – though the words are technically English the language use is not. Truly impressive mastery of linguistics. The characters are Brilliant too – complex, detailed. They suck you in and make you fall in love with them. Bourne engages all your senses: your tastes, smells, sights, sounds, touches… your heart.

See how she describes Annique’s spy roleplaying like a garment, repeating the imagery in the next paragraph. It’s awesome.

She took another deep breath and let the role close around her like a familiar garment…. Hid beneath layer and layer of soft foolish Harlot, she waited. (p14)

Plot:
Annique Villiers is a master spy during the reign of Napoleon, trained to lie at her mother’s knee and raised on the battlefields of France. She is one hell of an awesome heroine. When she finds herself in a French prison with two English spies, she concocts an escape and frees her enemies too, tossing her right out of the frying pan and into the fire. Abandoned by her people, injured, alone, Annique must outwit those who hunt her and try to escape the most perilous clutches she has found herself in yet – those of British spymaster Robert Grey.

I dare not give you a full summary for fear of ruining the plot twists. Read the Smart B*tch review or the Dear Author review for more in depth analysis. All I can do is drool. I adore this book. It is going on my list of all-time awesomeness. I CANNOT WAIT FOR BOURNE’S NEXT OFFERING!!!! (My Lord and Spymaster to-be-released July 2008)