The Book of Thorns by Hester Fox (Historical Fantasy Novel, 2024).
Set during Napoleon’s march to final, bloody defeat at Waterloo, this compelling adventure focuses on two young women escaping cruel circumstances. Each has no idea the other exists, let alone that they are related–or that both share a fantastic secret ability to communicate with the flowers whose beauty is almost the only positive things in their hard lives.
Cornelia Shaw escapes England and her cruel scheming uncle, only to end up penniless and on the run in the turmoil of France as the deposed Emperor returns from Elba to retake the throne and have a last showdown with his enemies. She is recruited to accompany Bonaparte’s Grand Army as a naturalist and herbal healer, thanks to her combination of her sketching talent and her hidden, supernatural abilities.
Elsewhere, a younger servant girl and supposed orphan, Lijsbeth, is sent from one wealthy employer to another, encountering and struggling to maintain her dignity in the face of a succession of entitled, lustful men. She, like Cornelia, hears voices from the flowers she delights in arranging so beautifully.
Both young women have multiple adventures and, despite the odds, find actual if unlikely seeming love as two armies close on each other in the Belgium countryside. The final bloody encounter will, of course, take place near a small town called Waterloo and the results will overwhelm all concerned.
But the flowers bring the two women to one another’s attention, even as Cornelia loses a lover to the carnage and gets herself carried back to England. She’s put on trial for both witchcraft (she manifests her flower magic in the grief-struck aftermath of her soldier’s death) and a ridiculous treason charge (her published articles explaining what each variety of flowers symbolize are taken as spy code in the paranoid heat of battle). She’s even framed for murdering her sleazy uncle by the lead villain of the book (in order to grab the rich bastard’s estate). Not aware of the sisters’ status, while with Wellington’s army in Belgium, the very same creep had narrowly failed to rape Lijsbeth–thanks to her potent, anger-fueled flower magic.
Lijsbeth is brought to England as the new wife of her true love, a British officer who reluctantly tries to help the young woman save her newly-discovered sister from the gallows. Meanwhile, Lijsbeth is led to the family’s ancestral estate, where the new bride learns the brutal truth of how their uncle separated the girls at a very young age. She also learns the awful secret of their mother’s fate, but on the plus side she encounters an elderly servant whose testimony will bring the uncle’s true killer to justice.
But what of Cornelia, convicted for the other offenses and sentenced to die? Will her flower magic somehow enable her escape? And will she overcome her misplaced guilt to use it?
The ending is as hopeful as circumstances allow, including the renewal of Cornelia’s life in Paris under her article-writing pseudonym and her rekindling of a forbidden same-sex love.
Chapters go back and forth between the magical sisters’ viewpoints, and in an artful touch, each is headlined by the thematically appropriate meanings of various flower blossoms. It’s an intriguing and ambitious novel with an intricate and gripping plot, featuring all manner of betrayals and insights both historical and emotional.
My only complaints (and they don’t ruin the work for me) concern the male characters. The main bad guy is so totally slimy–almost cartoonish. I also find a figure later revealed as a double agent a little hard to believe in.
But the big problem is Lijsbeth’s true love, Captain Norton. He’s so instantly love-struck that he puts aside every ingrained social/class attitude and the period psychology he’s grown up with to defend the girl without so much as a blink of hesitation. Sure, it’s romantic–and he’s right from the reader’s point of view. But shouldn’t he at least want to know a few more details? Instead, he’ll back up his almost silent love/new wife regardless of his lack of information.
Again, that gave me pause–but didn’t overall spoil my enjoyment of an interesting, often moving and effective book. The whole flower magic thing is fresh and new to me, as well.
jimleeauthor 