This review is for the audiobook verson of The Spymaster’s Lady, by Joanna Bourne, the first in her Spymasters series.
Full disclosure: I listened to this while I was sick and not really with it (thank you cold medicine and naps), so that probably had an effect on my feelings about this book.
After learning that My Lord and Spymaster was second in a series, I decided to listen to the first. It too was read by a woman with an American accent, but it was less strange this time because there were so many different accents.
This is a story about an English spy and a French spy that meet in prison and team up to escape. They encounter many obstacles and the blind French woman even ends up surgically removing a bullet from a young English spy in a clearing in a forest. Miraculously the blind woman regains her sight, which leads to the part of the story I didn’t like. Instead of telling her who he is, the English spy she fell in love with when she was blind pretends to be a fisherman and takes her to his boss. If there’s one trope I hate in romance novels it’s when lovers pretend to be someone else and end up making a muddle of things.
Mostly it was just ok, pleasant enough to listen to while drifting in and out of sleep or eating soup. I don’t know that I’ll listen to any others in the series, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
My favourite Joanna Bourne books are the third one The Forbidden Rose (Doyle’s story) and The Black Hawk (Adrian and Justine’s story), which is really best saved until you’ve read the others and seen how Adrian steals every scene he’s in in all of them. Then getting his and Justine’s epic love story is just so much more rewarding.
I really liked The Spymaster’s Lady up until the point when Annique gets her sight back, but apparently loses all brain power and suddenly can’t recognise the man she’s spent so much time with, just because he’s changed his voice slightly. She’s trained as a spy, and has had to rely on feel and smell and hearing – how the heck doesn’t she figure out who the fisherman is. It frustrates the hell out of me, because the book is pretty good up until that point.
I wish she had stayed blind. I think it would have made a better story
Huh I loved this when I read it (ages ago). Maybe I should reread and see if it holds up. I do remember feeling that blind Annique was far cooler than sighted Annique. I mean if a blind spy gets her vision back, shouldn’t she be MORE awesome at that point?