This is the twelfth and last (for now, anyway?) Pink Carnation book. I haven't read the eleventh book as yet, but the review of book ten is over here. (Edited to add: finally read book eleven, it's over here.) This book also spoils the end of book ten, so I guess I have to put the review behind the spoiler cut. I'll just say that this is an excellent finish for the series and gets four and a half stars.
Spoiler space
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The author has always said that the last book in the series was going to be one about Jane, which makes it both something to look forward to and something to feel sad about. And I do feel sad about this series ending (more or less, for awhile?--we). Even though I've skipped reading the books here and there that seemed ah...less on point with the flower spies stuff--I may go back and read them later--most of the ones "on point" really delighted me, and this one is no exception to that.
The Pink Carnation has been doing an excellent job of being a spy for five years now in book time (it's 1807), but the last few have been...wearing. Since she can't return to Paris and decided to go it alone, she's been working in different countries with no family and no allies...and in between books, she had a straight up Miss-Gwen-not-approved romantic involvement with the Gardener, i.e. Nicolas, the Chevalier of the Silver Tower. We hear about how it went off and on in this one, but she ended up breaking it off--and he's still interested anyway. They have a personal détente about each other's spying activities to this day, but how long is that going to last?
Anyway, Jane's latest gig is in Portugal, looking for the lost and mad Queen Maria, who Bonaparte could use as an excellent trophy if he ever catches her. However, she doesn't speak Portuguese and doesn't know the territory--her usual spying activities are in drawing rooms, not roaming across the country. So she's made arrangements ahead of time to meet up with the Moonflower, a former French spy turned English spy. You may recall him as Jack Reid, who briefly turned up at the end of The Betrayal of the Blood Lily and stole the jewels of Berar in The Passion of the Purple Plumeria--which kicked off all of Jane's major trouble in the last few years. Jack, however, has no effing idea who his contact is supposed to be and is naturally quite surprised when he finds out that this fussy looking woman that he assumes is a prostitute is really the Pink Carnation. Then she follows him in soldier garb and saves his butt.
"So far, in their brief acquaintance, she’d managed to fool him twice, first as a courtesan, then as a soldier. Jack didn’t like it. It made him feel as though his feet were on shifting ground. He was the one who made the ground shift, thank you very much.
In the eight hours since the Pink Carnation had arrived at Rossio Square, Jack had been beaten with a parasol, outwitted, and kicked.
This did not bode well for their partnership."
Bwahahahahahah. Anyway, Jack is totally modeled off Harrison Ford's various movie characters, but Han Solo in particular (hey, the author's said it), even down to calling Jane "princess" all the time. She doesn't seem to mind. He wanted to work for the British and got done out of it by legal rules, he wasn't eligible for most jobs, and thus he's...well, living the dubious spy life. He feels a bit scornful to say the least of someone who looks like she's used to being pampered, but Jane's been through her own issues being a woman in the 1800's, and later one who got disowned entirely when she insisted on traveling alone. And when I say disowned, I mean her parents literally faked her own death complete with tombstone. Seriously, Woolistons?! I knew they were airheads, but geeeeeez, I wouldn't have thought they were that vicious. Anyway, both of them have a sense of saudade--nostalgia for a past long gone (check this?!)--and relate on that level, as well as relating to being secret agents always on their own.
Their mission involves various disguises, traveling across the country, snooping around a monastery, bathing in hot springs (hubba hubba), and ducking the Gardener--after running into him, Jane runs for it and Jack drugs his beverage in a very unromantic way, but she knows she'll have to deal with him again at some point. Especially if he's after the mad lost queen as well. Anyway, despite his reputation and what she's heard about him, she finds that he's a reliable fellow to have on the road, and just the kind of guy you want to have your back when crossing rough territory. And even though Jane has a reputation for being cool and controlled, hanging out with Jack brings out the opposite urges in her. And despite the first impressions Jack had of her, he finds out that she's just the sort of person he could love. Whoa. Though there's still her spy ex to deal with, and when Jane gets the idea that Nicolas might have the queen ahead of her and comes up with a plan to go to him about it, Jack's unthrilled.
And then Jack goes off to see...well...let's just say there's a semi-contrived-ish reason to bring a lot of old favorites back onto the scene, and I enjoyed it muchly even if it was a bit crazy at times.
"Love wasn’t an ideal; it was messy and muddy and fraught with inconsistencies. It was a hard arm around her shoulders when she slipped and might have fallen, a reluctant nod in the middle of an argument. It was the slouch of Jack’s shoulders and the crooked line of his smile. It was knowing that whatever hardships befell them, they would stumble through it together."
Jack and Jane are lovely together, and get a lovely mysterious epilogue, and end in about the way you'd hope they'd go.
As for the usual chapters featuring Eloise, researcher of all things flower spy...well, this is probably the best it's ever gotten with her. After being told that her dissertation read like fiction, she's quit grad school and about to get married to Colin. Colin's aunt who helped her out with the flower spy research in the first place delivers her a present of an abandoned trunk belonging to the Pink Carnation--and then Eloise gets a weird half-heard phone call that indicates that his aunt (a former spy herself, apparently!) has been kidnapped, and to bring "the box." What box?! So this is the sort of thing Eloise is worrying about dealing with after the rehearsal dinner. It all gets a bit ... silly, but eventually blows over quickly and we move to the HEA, both in regards to the wedding and to Eloise's future career writing about the Pink Carnation.
“So,” I announced to my future husband, my almost-sister-in-law, and our assailant. “I’ve got a book deal!”
"Once, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. Now I hadn’t a clue. But I had a book and I had Colin, and I had learned to take the unexpected in stride. The future lay ahead of us, uncharted and full of possibility, and I gave silent thanks to the Pink Carnation for turning my plans upside down. If she had been any less elusive, I wouldn’t be here."
Awwww. I give this book four and a half stars, it's near epic.
There's also a lot of juicy tidbits that the author gives after the book is over that fans will enjoy: a scandalous revelation that never quite made it into the books, who Lizzy will end up marrying, what books in the series/world she intended to write and never got to writing*, and what the characters got up to after the series and spying were over. It's a lovely ending, but someday I hope she gets to writing some more in this world. It's been a good ride.
* though part of me does want to grumble stuff like, "You decided to write about the freaking Fitzhughs instead of Jane's romance/bastardy scandal/the crime-solving Uppingtons?"
Comments