#grace watson

Fave Five: LGBTQ Takes on Pride & Prejudice

The Right Thing to Do at the Time by Dov Zeller (trans m/f)

The Story of Lizzy and Darcy by Grace Watson (f/f)

Gay Pride and Prejudice by Kate Christie (f/f)

First Impressions by Christopher Koehler (m/m)

Gay Pride and Prejudice by Ryan Field (m/m)

When Lizzy Bennet and Darcy Williams meet there’s an instand dislike between them. But when Lizzy’s sister Jane and Darcy’s best friend Charlie fall in love they have to spend time together. But as they get to know each other they als ostart to realise that maybe they judged too fast. Thanks a lot to Grace Watson for providing me with a free review copy! Source:  Goodreads.com I am going to start…

When this scene opens, everyone involved is already stressed and upset. Jac and Jonas are dead, Enne is essentially on the run, and Lola just got shot trying to warn them of the Dove trap. Everything is going to hell in a handbasket, then everything gets worse when Ivory shows up.

Ivory obviously isn’t there for any good reason, but she also visibly isn’t doing great (wonder why). She’s coughing a lot, to the point where Enne and every person there except for Grace winces in sympathy. I’m not counting this as part of the Thing, because no one other than Lola knew Ivory’s identity yet, but it’s an interesting detail that sets the tone of the scene.

When Lola announces that Ivory is actually Rebecca, Grace is the first person to respond. She doesn’t scoff or get snarky or even say something like “What do you mean, she’s obviously not.” She asks “What do you mean?” and I know this is a tiny thing to nitpick, but it seems to imply a lot more belief (or at least a willingness to believe) than I would have expected Grace to have in response to that statement.

This next bit is me reading symbolism into an innocuous detail (so par for the course lol): Grace brought a flashlight into the tunnels and it stops working. She’s shaking it to try to get the battery to work again, but everything is still dark. Then someone who appears to be the Dove Lord arrives, picks up the flashlight, and shakes it—this time, it works, and everyone can see Ivory’s face as it’s revealed that the face isn’t her own. To me, there’s definitely something symbolic to be found there between the fake identity and the fact that the flashlight was Grace’s to begin with. I strongly believe that Rebecca wanted her to join the Doves eventually, and may have already been laying the groundwork while she was at the Guild. She clearly encourages her being an assassin, but I think it goes deeper. I think she sees Grace as a project, someone she can shape into her Dove after freeing her from the One-Way House and earning a debt.

After this it goes into the confrontation over Grace’s card, but I’m gonna go on a quick tangent to say that the whole “the targets are random!!!” thing is such bullshit.  They clearly aren’t.  Bryce insists that “the shade devised it,” but who fucking devised the shade, Bryce...he just bound it to the people and the cards, Rebecca’s the shade-maker.  I believe that he thinks she had nothing to do with it, especially when his literal fatal flaw is his rose-colored glasses, but you can’t expect me to think Rebecca is being 100% forthcoming about her involvement when the Bryce’s and Enne’s targets just happen to be Harvey and Levi.  Because that happens by chance.  

In case you want a refresher of that funny twist of fate, Lola’s target is Tock and Levi’s was Jac, as well.  Also random obviously.  Also sure is a coincidence that the most powerful, dangerous people in the city are targeted by the people who are least equipped to deal with them.  Bryce’s card is being hunted by the whiteboot captain who admits in book one that he’s stupid and incompetent, Scythe’s by a prima ballerina, and you cannot convince me it’s a twist of fate for a relatively unimportant nightclub owner to have the Chancellor as his target.  Just no.

My rant about the “randomization” is done for now, but my point stands.  Rebecca carefully chose the cards’ recipients and targets.  She could have picked an easier target for herself, like Zula or Narinder or really anyone other than an assassin that she spent over a paragraph talking up in book two.  But she wanted Grace.

Then the whole exchange when Rebecca takes the High Priestess card is weirdly personal for what that scene really is.  All she had to do was threaten Grace and Roy and demand that she hand it over freely.  Instead, Rebecca takes the card out of Grace’s pocket herself and makes her retroactively give permission—which, like her display in the Guild, is subtle but a slightly terrifying power play when you think about it.  Grace obviously would have given it to her, because they were threatening to hurt Roy, but she didn’t get the illusion of a choice.  Rebecca physically took the card away from her and then told her to give her consent, plainly saying, I call the shots here.  Don’t forget it.  And Grace doesn’t; she keeps up eye contact with Rebecca the whole time, and this is after Lola has shared her identity, so she knows exactly who she’s looking at.

My final point here doesn’t actually happen during the scene I’m dissecting.  It actually happens afterwards, when they’re back in the Spirits hideout and Enne is talking to Grace in her room, and it shows a lot about how that encounter affected Grace.  Her voice trembles as she says, “I didn’t stop you then. Or help you. I could’ve, but I was shaken.” 

Grace Watson admits here that she was shaken by what happened.  Grace, the assassin who has killed numerous people in probably unpleasant ways and survived a childhood in a One-Way House.  Grace, who seemed completely unaffected when Enne offered her work immediately after the attack on the Guild, and presumably handled the massacre of her coworkers with not much more than indifference.  Grace was shaken.  The deaths of the Scarhands, however sudden, cannot have rattled her that badly.  

There’s an argument to be made that her reaction is partly because the Doves also threatened Enne and Roy, people that she cares about.  But we see what Grace gets like when her loved ones are in danger, and she gets terrifying, but specifically angry.  Not shaken, not frozen to the point where she can’t stop Enne from doing something or help her from doing it.

Grace was angry in the Mole tunnels, and even more so after the fact, but it was the realization that the Dove Lord (somehow) was actually Rebecca that made her freeze up.  And from what we’ve seen of their interactions, I really don’t blame her.  As I said in my first analysis post, Grace might seem nonchalant but she jumps at the chance to leave the Guild as soon as it’s offered.  I don’t think it was the Chainer or the living skeleton that made the thought of staying so unbearable; it was the woman who (probably) brought her in and now (likely) saw her as the perfect candidate for her to shape, show off, and indoctrinate.

Rebecca is a lot of things, but she isn’t subtle.  Even as Ivory, Enne remarks that she has no poker face.  As she tells Harvey later on in the Catacombs, she became Ivory so she could become powerful and take what she wants.  And given the opportunity to torment a runaway whiteboot or do any number of things to the most wanted streetlord in the North Side, she all but ignores Roy and Enne and shows, again, that she wants Grace.

Why of course :) I love her, and she’s so interesting to me because every character is so persistently wrong about her. She’s easily the most underestimated person in the series, even more so than Enne, because there obviously comes a point where Enne is Séance and everyone starts to realize who they’re dealing with.

Poppy, though? Sophia walks on eggshells around her thinking she’s going to be a wreck, and she’s grieving but actually really functional. Enne thinks she’ll feel betrayed when she finds out about everything Enne is doing on the North Side, but instead she gets excited and embraces it. Delaney treats her like she’s made of glass to keep her safe from all the danger, but she proves time and time again that she can handle it.

For most (if not all) of the other characters, it takes Poppy helping to kidnap someone and surviving a crash in the getaway car for them to take her seriously. But my favorite thing about her is that as a reader, this kind of thing doesn’t come as a surprise. She’s never done anything this extreme before, but she’s already proven that she’s more than just a ballerina.

At this point we’ve only just been introduced to Rebecca and we’re not sure what to make of her, but it’s clear that she's rude to Harvey (clicking her tongue at him, talking to him like a child) and Lola (shoving folders at her to hold, ordering her around).  She isn’t the Guildmaster, but we can tell right away that she likes to be in charge.

Then it’s time for Enne to find someone to join her gang, and she goes out into the courtyard and sees Grace.  When Lola tries to explain that she’s a counter, Rebecca interrupts to say that Grace is an assassin, and here is where the Thing starts.  Grace isn’t just an assassin, she’s “one of our most skilled.”  It isn’t just that Lola didn’t mention it to Enne, it’s “you should know.”  Rebecca sounds smug about it because she’s proud, and why shouldn’t she be?  Rebecca has become Ivory, the greatest assassin in New Reynes, so she understands the necessary skills well enough to know that Grace is good at them.

Then Rebecca does something really baffling when you consider that she’s talking to a client:  immediately after saying how talented Grace is, and how her work doesn’t come cheap, she actively tries to persuade Enne to not hire her.  From a business standpoint, this makes no sense.  From a personal standpoint, her approach here is really interesting, especially when she sizes Enne up and says that she doesn’t think Grace would want to work with her.

I know her well enough to know who she’d work with, Rebecca is saying.  Well enough to make the decision for her.  It’s a bit of a power play without being overt about it.  Just moments after bragging about Grace's talents and the price for them, Rebecca makes it clear that showing her own control over this deadly assassin is more important than getting paid.

The fact that Rebecca now leads a gang of assassins speaks volumes, I think, because it explains why she’s so possessive towards the best assassin of the Guild.  It’s my personal headcanon that Rebecca is the one who bought her contract from the One-Way House.  I have no evidence, but I highly doubt Harvey would suggest hiring an assassin and I don’t think Bryce would do it without encouragement from her.

Moving to the other half of this dynamic!  When Enne goes over to talk to her, Grace is nonchalant past the point of being believable.  She barely looks at Enne throughout the whole scene and is more invested in her book than the actual conversation.  But then Grace Watson, one of the most expensive assassins at the Guild, agrees to work for Enne doing a job involving a lot of math, which she professes to hate, in exchange for a party invitation and the vague promise to set her up with a wealthy bachelor.

Grace is selling her services that she doesn’t even enjoy doing for pennies on the dollar to a complete stranger.  That isn’t normal.  She’s so desperate to leave.

Cut to Enne sealing the deal with the Guild bosses.  Bryce isn’t thrilled but he’s keeping it together, Harvey is thrilled and barely hiding it (which is also interesting; he loves it when things don’t go Rebecca’s way, so he obviously knows how upset she is about this development), and Rebecca is frowning, which I take to mean glaring daggers at Enne because she isn’t the most subtle person.

Again, I repeat:  Rebecca would rather not get paid for an expensive contract than lose Grace.  She makes this abundantly clear, not only to her coworkers but to her client.