Skip to main content

The Other Woman

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!

Popular posts from this blog

Author Interview with Christopher Fowler

Author interview with Christopher Fowler. Author bio:  Christopher Fowler is an English novelist living in London, his books contain elements of black comedy, anxiety and social satire. As well as novels, he writes short stories, scripts, press articles and reviews. He lives in King's Cross, on the Battlebridge Basin, and chooses London as the backdrop of many of his stories because any one of the events in its two thousand year history can provide inspiration In 1998 he was the recipient of the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year, for 'Wageslaves'. Then, in 2004, 'The Water Room' was nominated for the CWA People's Choice Award, 'Full Dark House' won the BFS August Derleth Novel of The Year Award 2004 and 'American Waitress' won the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year 2004. The novella 'Breathe' won BFS Best Novella 2005. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Christopher, welcome over to The Bo

Short Fiction Friday: Selfies

Selfies by Lavie Tidhar "Selfies", by Lavie Tidhar, is a creepy little horror tale about the fate of a young woman who makes the mistake of a lifetime when she buys a new phone in the local mall. It is only a few weeks back that I read a different but very interesting short story of Lavie Tidhar, Dragonkin . I found this story directly to my liking, the synopsis and build up of the story was unique and got me excited by it's less is more writing style. In the end this story for me had so much going on that I hope to see Lavie Tidhar exploring it even further. That aside, now its time for Selfies . I think I can now safely say that Lavie Tidhar is an author to watch out for, his stories will get you thinking and will scare you twice over.  I have been thinking a lot of the current situation with always being connected on social media and the likes. It's unavoidable. One thing that is connected with all of this is of course your smartphone, yes no longer a cell

Guest Blog: Alien Invasion Stories from Armada to Grunt Traitor

Guest Blog: Alien Invasion Stories from Armada to Grunt Traitor  By Weston Ochse © 2015   There’s something at once terrifying and romantic about an invasion. One wrong move could mean the destruction of everything you know and love, but in the heat of battle, there are crystalline moments in which true humanity shines. Like many military authors, I often look to history for guidance on how to write the future. I’ve always looked at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift as the perfect sort of battle to represent an alien invasion. One hundred and fifty British soldiers in a remote outpost are beset by four thousand Zulu warriors. The odds seemed impossible, yet in the end the British won the day. The early Michael Cain movie Zulu retells this story and stands as one of my favorite military movies of all time. There are moments in the film that resonate. In the face of overwhelming attack, the sergeant major lowly commanding his men to take it easy. Right when everything seems los