The Other Woman by Graham
Thomas, Brandenburg #2
Abigail Hardwoode is content – the London
Social Scene offers everything a seventeen-year-old girl could want. She has
little concern for other people’s problems, least of all those in France where
great civil unrest threatens to erupt into bloody revolution… but while the
oppressed masses rise up, a new insidious organization emerges and it seems
that Abigail’s parent are incriminated.
Only British secret agent Hilary Weaver
believes the Hardwoodes to be innocent. Suddenly Abigail is pulled from her
peaceful existence and thrust into the chaos of Revolutionary France on a
mission with Hilary to clear her family name… but the call of the Revolution
and the injustice she witnesses may be too power for Abigail to ignore.
I think around somewhere this
time last year I was firstly introduced to the books of Graham Thomas. Starting
with “Hats off to Brandenburg”. I couldn’t find any fault in this book and was
just hooked from the start. Later I received a copy of a completely different
kind of book: Maria and the Devil, a supernatural thriller. Maria and the Devil
again just blew me away, adding another top mark for Graham Thomas. After some
emailing contact, I learned that The Other Woman would be the second book in
the Brandenburg series set to be released in July. The Brandenburg series is
plotted out for twelve books, where all twelve are set in the Brandenburg
universe but six will focus on one ongoing storyline and the other six focus on
individual characters alone, the stories alternate each other. But lets start
with The Other Woman.
The Other Woman takes us back
to 1789 (note that Hats off to Brandenburg took place in 1815). Hats off to
Brandenburg introduced us to an amazingly rich character cast and for The Other
Woman, Graham Thomas choose to highlight Abigail Hardewoode. The Other Woman doesn’t
start of with the focus on Abigail, instead you first follow the footsteps of
her parents Audrey and Alex Hardwoode who are an Other Woman and Other Man,
think of them as an earlier version of your MI:6, secret spies, James Bond
style! Who are set to free a specific asset. It’s later in the story that you
learn more of Abigail in her earlier years. Now I briefly want to emphasize the
spy part in this book, I firstly didn’t know how to go about this part, what
the significance of it would be, but later after checking Hats off to
Brandenburg a lot of things do fall into place. This spy part is all correlated
with one other thing in the book, one to which we were also introduced in the
first book, the insidious organization known as The Black Arm, and when I first
read about them in The Other Woman I just knew I would be in for a treat. This
book tops off at 777 pages (lucky number) but with Graham Thomas’ writing style
it feels more like 200.
The character that is being
highlighted in The Other Woman is Abigail Hardwoode. I did have to do a bit a
re-reading in the first book to get a glimpse of what she was there, I have a
good memory but a lot of books have passed the line so a bit of refreshing
didn’t hurt. So for Abigail, she had a relation with Benjamin Ananas and she
came over as quite the daring, tough and hard woman. And then you learn about
her in The Other Woman where she is completely the opposite, at least for the
beginning, quite shy, making sure that she gets on time to her tea parties and
pretty much enjoying the social scene of London. Until disaster strikes and
Abigail is being forced to abandon the luxurious life and is on the run for her
own life. For my point-of-view Graham Thomas really managed to grab Abigail’s
character so far in terms of showing what she is all about and how she became
what she was years later . Her overall development from the start of The Other
Woman to the ending showed that she already grew tremendous, and reading about
her in Hats off to Brandenburg, she does have the same essence but Graham
Thomas voices her as much older, which is of course logic, but he manages to
neatly capture how to write up a specific character.
With the adventures of
Abigail, in both England and France, you get to know a very large secondary
cast. All of these characters had their goals set out for them, and often times
not only one. The characters that you follow up more closely like Harry
Palmerston, Severin De Valois, Hilary Weaver (he’s a guy, quite confusing
sometimes!), Elise De Valois and Major Templeton just to name a few, all seemed
to be connected on a much larger scale. It was a true pleasure to read about
such and advanced connection between many characters; I can only imagine how Graham
Managed visualized this? Putting pictures on a board and drawing strings to
those who are connects? Anyhow it’s greatly executed!
This far it’s only been the
characters that I mentioned. So what about the plot and storyline itself? As I
recall from Hats off to Brandenburg, I came to a point in the book and then the
plot transformed completely towards a much greater scale. With this in the back
of my mind I had similar hopes for The Other Woman, and I don’t know how Graham
Thomas does it but again he introduces some very unexpected twists. For me it
was his engaging and often times funny writing style which really gave a way
into the story and you just go by what is being explained to you, but then just
as you think that’s that, you are thrown way off with your assumptions. The Other
Woman is like I mentioned part spy story with the Others but it is also set in
the times of the France Revolution. Graham Thomas neatly introduces this main
aspect of the book and revolves his own storyline around it, using several
French landmarks like the Bastille and the Palace in Versailles of Louis XVI
and Marie Antionette and even including the Women’s March on it, even further
enriching the storyline by these historical events. However it is not purely
historical fiction on it’s own. Like I mentioned above The Black Arm, yes!
Graham Thomas uses the real events and weaves them all into the plot with his
own created dark and insidious organization The Black Arm, that have plans of
power for their own. I was very pleased by this introduction and having seen
them alive in Hats off to Brandenburg I doubt it is the last to have seen from
them, but is was great read more about there earlier schemes and how they
wanted to achieve several goals.
I think this is enough talk
about The Other Woman, what you should do now is go and order this book and if
you haven’t yet get Hats off the Brandenburg as well, lock yourself in your
room and read them! Of what I have read so far from Graham Thomas, it just
comes to show that he definitely bringing his A-game where ever he goes. The
shear amount of world building, creating each time a great set of characters
and knowing how to write an unpredictable and amazing story really proves that
he is one of my favourite authors out there. I hope to read much, much more of
his works in the near future. Graham
Thomas is a force to be reckoned
with!