I didn't realize until after I started reading The Betrayal of the Blood Lily that I was coming into the series a bit late. I'd never heard of this series, and was a bit surprised to find that this was the sixth novel in a series of flowery named spy novels. Nevertheless, I forged ahead, regardless of what I might not be clued into (having no idea if this was the type of series where you would need to have read the previous ones to understand the current selection). And, I must say, this was a terribly delightful book! I felt like I was being thrown curve balls every few pages, and was kept on my mental toes to keep track of what happened, but the experience was wonderful.
The whole thing starts off with a grad student, Eloise, working on her dissertation. (Eloise is a bit of a strange name for an American, though. I think of Eloise as being a six-year-old children's book character.) Of course, she's writing about spies, but like many a grad, she'd rather keep researching than commit to writing out a thesis. Strangely enough, her boyfriend's family has a connection to her research and the story of Penelope Deveraux, or Lady Frederick Staines, comes about when Eloise in going through the boyfriend's aunt's notebooks from an office in India. So, there's a lovely change of time period and location throughout the novel; Willig takes me from London in the relatively present day, to India around 1804. I don't quite see how Eloise contributes to the novel, except that maybe she is what connects them all, or that she serves to increase my suspense about what will happen in Penelope's story. However, overall, I think that Eloise's life is believable, detailed, and amusing, in it's own way.
The bulk of the novel is devoted to a very short time in India. It must be only a month or two that goes by from beginning to end, and a good deal of that time is spent traveling from Calcutta to Hyderabad, so not too much goes on there. Willig starts off with a scandal, and gives more details about it as the story goes on. At first, there's just a vague hint that Lord and Lady Frederick's marriage is tainted somehow. It's a quick hook, and I took the bait and kept reading, but the story is about something more than their relationship, which isn't a good one. It's about so many things, and none of them are really more important than the others. Everything is necessary and vital to whatever happens next, and it's difficult to recap the novel without going through it in a ridiculously detailed way.
Suffice it to say that Penelope gets a happy ending, and I hope that means she learned from her mistakes. I wish there had been more spying involved, but the novel was lovely all the same. I also would like to know who/what the Blood Lily was meant to be, since it's not mentioned in the novel at all, as far as I can remember. I really liked the descriptions of India, and the relations between the British and Indian cultures, as well as the way Willig created such a twist at the end that I never saw coming. I've already purchased two other novels in this series, in no particular order, and look forward to being as delighted by the as I was by Blood Lily.
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