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Let’s start off with the good news: Joanna Bourne clearly isn’t a Oneder. (Insert sigh of relief here.) The slightly less good news? My Lord and Spymaster isn’t quite as blow-me-totally-out-of-the-water terrific as The Spymaster’s Lady, but it’s a very, very good historical romance featuring complex and flawed characters far out of the typical wallpaper mode.
Jess Whitby is out to prove that her father is wrongfully accused of being an infamous French spy. The intrepid young woman devises a complicated plan to pick the pocket of shipping company owner and captain Sebastian Kennett, her father’s main accuser, in an attempt to locate evidence. Her plan goes awry when she is suddenly attacked and her intended target rescues her from the consequences of her head injury and takes her to his berthed ship. And, yes, the requisite scene in which the unconscious heroine is stripped naked by the lusty sea captain follows.
Soon enough Jess finds herself ensconced in Sebastian’s Mayfair mansion along with his family after the two arrive at a sort of a truce. Sebastian seeks to protect Jess from whoever is attacking while Jess continues to look for evidence that will prove her father’s innocence.
The plot here is complex – perhaps too much so, quite honestly. Jess and Sebastian seem to view each other with distrust at various points in the story and, to be honest, their shifting feelings sometimes made sense to me and sometimes they didn’t. But while I wasn’t overly enamored with all the ins and outs of the author’s plot, I did love the characters of Jess and Sebastian who constitute the reason to come to this party.
When Jess found herself orphaned on the streets of London as a child for reasons that are really too complicated to explain here (that twist-y plot again), she was taken in by the king of the city’s underworld where she developed allegiances and talents that are still a part of the adult woman she is in this story. As if that weren’t enough, she is also a gifted businesswoman and mathematician largely responsible for the enormous success of her father’s shipping business.
Sebastian is a truly wonderful character with many classic heroic attributes, but he possesses one quality I found especially endearing: He admires and respects everything about Jess just as much as he lusts after her. (And how cool is that?) As a bastard child of the aristocracy raised initially on the streets of London and later by a loving aunt and uncle, Sebastian comes along with his own complicated past and he is more than a match for Jess.
On the downside, I have a quibble that bothered me enough in the book’s early pages that it bears mentioning. The author employs some rather odd syntax. For example, on the book’s very first page there’s this: “The afternoon faded in around her, drizzling.” Okay, strange sentence structure aside, but since when did an afternoon drizzle? And on page 11: “Almost, he could hear them breathing.” I’ve never been an English teacher, but I was an English major and I longed to write “awk” in the margin with every fiber of my being. All told, I marked six passages (the cat “picking his way, finicky, across the cobbles”) in the book’s first 13 pages. These instances seemed to diminish into virtual nonexistence in the remainder of the book, so their prevalence in the book’s early pages is puzzling. And undeniably distracting.
Quibbles and too many plot twists aside, the characters are more than enough reason for those who enjoy meaty historical romance to read My Lord and Spymaster. Joanna Bourne is an undeniably powerful new voice in historical romance and I look forward to reading her books for many years to come.
Grade: B+
Book Type: European Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 15/06/08
Publication Date: 2008/07
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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This is an utter DIK for me. My fave of the Spymaster books.
I love this book *so much*. It’s by far my most re-read of Bourne’s books with Forbidden Rose coming in second.
IMHO there is not one wasted page in this novel, I enjoy it all. As I have said many times it has maybe my favorite Adrian moment in it and one of my favorite non-romantic love scenes. I think the hero and heroine are just tailor made for each other. I find Lazarus and the padding ken fascinating. Absolute DIK for me.
It makes me so happy someone else loves it too.
Honestly, we should just only read books the other likes!
LOL, don’t we? Kidding. I think our Duran rankings are different but with Bourne it’s kind of scary how much we agree.
OK–now I have to see your Duran rankings!
I think I have to reread a bunch as some I only read once years ago when I first starting reading her and blew through about 3 immediately. The ones published after I took as they came and I think I digested them more. I know Lady Be Good ranks much higher with me than it does with you.
It’s wonderful, but better than The Black Hawk? TBH is one of my most re-read books – the characters, the slow burn and the first sex scene!!
The Black Hawk isn’t even my second favorite! (Although it’s excellent.)
From best to least best, I’d rank them thusly:
My Lord and Spymaster
The Forbidden Rose
The Black Hawk
The Spymaster’s Lady
Rogue Spy
Beauty Like the Night
I know I’m getting repetitious but I am going to co-sign this list. It’s starting to get scary. This is exactly how I would rank these for my own personal taste.
I will say objectively that Black Hawk may (technically speaking) be Bourne’s best work. Added to the fact she had written herself into a corner by publishing a book with Adrian published years before that takes place many years after Spymaster’s Lady and Rogue Spy. So she was stuck with that timeline.
I really appreciate The Black Hawk and was incredibly moved by it. I think the writing is first rate and I was thrilled to see Adrian finally get his girl but it’s much more serious and melancholy than the other happy endings (IMHO) so it doesn’t spark the same joy for me as others. It’s more wistful and a “mood” than some of her others.
I think the last three books are much more melancholy than those that preceded them.
I agree, I’m not sure if it’s just because as a reader you have so much backstory on everyone by these books and it cuts deeper, or they are just more melancholy in general.
I know with Adrian it had been going on for so many books and over so many years I had ALL the feels.
I loved The Black Hawk so much I wrote a review of it. It utterly blew me away when I first read it and I treasure my signed arc of it. When it comes to re-reads though, it’s not the one I reach for first, or even second.
I know most people think Spymaster’s Lady is her “best” work writing wise, I would argue The Black Hawk. My Lord and Spymaster is my best loved of her works with Forbidden Rose a very respectable second place.