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Timeline confusions
Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance
I've had a couple people come away from the timeline of the books a little confused. In fact, the sound of heads banging on desks is about deafening.
So let me provide a general comment on the timeline as a Guide for the Perplexed. And then I'll probably do it again in a week or so, but with more specificity than I can scrape together right now.
We have three distinct time periods. Unfortunately, sometimes I have two books happening at once.
1794 – And we are in Forbidden Rose. Hawker, Pax and Justine are all young. Hawker is 12 or 13. Justine, 13. Pax, about 16.
Galba is Head of the Service. Grey has not yet joined the Service. Annique is living with the gypsies at this point. Doyle is a senior Independent Agent. Hawker is merely a raw possible recruit, on probation.Black Hawk also visits 1794. This is in the first fallback section from the frame story. We open with Justine and Hawk meeting in Paris. This is the day after Doyle is freed from prison in Forbidden Rose. In this segment of Black Hawk, Pax, Hawker, and Justine go to the Coach House and rescue the last Caches-in-training.
Forbidden Rose and the 1794 section of Black Hawk then come together and end with the same scene. That's the one where Justine gives Severine into Maggie's keeping.
1802 -- This is where it gets complicated, because we got three books involved.
In 1802 Justine and Hawker are 19 or 20. Pax is 24 or so.The action of Spymaster's Lady openss five or six days after that shooting scene. There is Hawker in prison, dying from Justine's bullet.
Rogue Spy starts when we're in the middle of the Spymaster's Lady timeline. The two stories go forward simultaneous. Action of one story happens while stuff is going on in the other. While Pax in that tavern working up the courage to go
to Meeks Street, Grey and Annique are walking across Devon to London.
When Hawker visits Daisy's house in Rogue Spy it's been maybe three weeks since he was shot. He's only now come to terms with his final breakup with Justine. Meanwhile, across town, in Spymaster's Lady, Grey is dealing with Annique as a prisoner at Meeks Street.
Rogue Spy wraps up with the death of the Merchant before the later events of Spymaster's Lady. So Meeks Street headquarters gets shot up and Annique escapes to Soulier's house when Cami and Pax have already been married and sailed for France.
1818: Now it's 16 years since Justine shot Hawker. Sixteen years since Cami and Pax, Grey and Annique married.
This year 1818 is the frame story of Black Hawk. Hawker is now Head of Service. Galba has retired. We can assume Cami and Pax, Grey and Annique have had many adventures in the intervening years, done important work, and have settled into a happy life. Maybe they have kids even.
And in 1818, Hawker and Justine marry.
So that's the way all these events spread out.
And that's just as clear as mud, isn't it?
Go ahead. Ask me something. I'll try to clarify.
RITA-winning author Joanna Bourne writes historical fiction set in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England. It was a time of love and sacrifice, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.
Source: http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2015/01/timeline-confusions.html
