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Overview

The Adventure of the Golden Woman is the concluding novella of the author’s Blood-Thirsty Agent series.Lesbian vampire spies at the cabaret!It’s 1931, and conquest of the earth isn’t enough for the British Empire. But the demi-mondaine of occupied Berlin harbors a resistance movement, and the double agents Lucy Harker—Dracula’s daughter—and her lover, the vampire Carmilla, steal England’s spaceship plans. Then the handoff to American agent Adolph Hitler is foiled by an impossibly advanced mechanical woman, and the lovers are imprisoned on a lunar spaceship scheduled for imminent launch. Now Lucy and Carmilla’s only hope of saving the solar system is to overcome the ship’s robot crew and outthink England’s greatest espionage agent: Sherlock Holmes.Review“The wildly fun, fast-paced finale to Ward’s Blood-Thirsty Agent series (after The Adventure of the Naked Guide) finds vampire double agent Lucy Harker, daughter of Dracula, working against the power-grabbing British empire through a resistance unit housed in 1931 British-occupied Berlin. After her attempt to deliver documents to Dolf Heidler is foiled by an oddly graceful, golden automaton, Lucy lands in the hands of her step-uncle, Sherlock Holmes. With the help of her vampire lover and fellow double agent, Clarimal Stein—Countess Karnstein of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla—Lucy must complete her mission to halt Britain’s conquest of Earth before the empire can expand outward into the galaxy. It’s an exhilarating example of alternate history, weaving classic characters into a narrative that’s as bombastically entertaining as it is thoughtful. Ward also commendably finds time for nuanced explorations of discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, and origin in the midst of the thrilling espionage plot. This deeply satisfying conclusion is a win for series fans.”Publishers Weekly,7/1/2021Praise for the Blood-Thirsty Agent series“Cynthia Ward’s Lucy Harker novellas give the modern reader an updated frolic through avant-garde genre fiction, a frolic frosted with a myriad of clever fandom-esque references sure to delight adventurous readers.” Michelle Ristuccia, Tangent, February 2020“Cynthia Ward brings her Blood-Thirsty Agent series of novellas to a close with The Adventure of the Golden Woman. Lucy Harker is on a mission, ostensibly for the British government, to Berlin in 1931. Her contact is Christopher Isherwood – and, as ever in these stories, we meet, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes as major characters, a tantalizing mix of fictional and real people – Sally Bowles is here (name slightly changed), and Josephine Baker, and even a man named Dolf with a toothbrush mustache who seems to hate Jews. (For that matter, there is a very brief nod to Ursula Le Guin.) Much of this is just grace notes – but graceful ones! – but the true nature (fictional and otherwise) of the recurring characters (like Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes in this case) matters. In this alternate history, England has conquered most of Europe. George V is visiting Berlin on board a huge airship, aided by Martian technology. And there are reports of mysterious mechanical golden women.... Lucy, soon in the company of her lover Clarimal Stein, as well as Sherlock Holmes, gets enmeshed in a twisty series of plots, involving the mechanical women, American agents, British agents, a spaceship – more than need be detailed. It’s fun, full of action, and a satisfying capstone to the series. (And while Lucy and Clarimal’s story seems to come to a logical conclusion, there is plenty of room for more stories in this milieu.)”Rich Horton, Locus

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