Foul Lady Fortune
Chloe Gong
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
“ORION!” Rosalind screamed.
“I AM DOING MY BEST, BELOVED.”
“YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE ME A HERNIA.”
That’s it. That’s the book. I love it.
Chloe Gong was always a bit of a gamble for me, given my historically low tolerance for romance and all its trappings, but here I am telling you that Foul Lady Fortune unapologetically uses the “Who did this to you” trope and I’m beginning to see the appeal. Other tropey things that are somehow very appealing when Chloe does them: fake relationship; forced proximity; opposites attract; grumpy sunshine (MY NEW FAVORITE); he falls first, and he falls hard; she’s the morally gray one (okay, I’ve always been a fan of this one). I can tell you right now that it isn’t Chloe’s prose that does it, but her characters are just so damn charming that I can’t help it, okay. I am finally a Rosalind fan, even if it took us three books to get here.
Set four years after the presumed deaths of the heirs of the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers, the story of Lady Fortune – or just “Fortune,” as she frequently reminds everyone, up to and including her victims – begins on September 18, 1931, on a Japanese-controlled train in Manchuria. Scourged by the family that never fully accepted her, bereft of almost everyone she ever loved and filled to the brim with self-loathing and regret, Shalin “Rosalind” Lang has spent the last several years trying to make amends for the damage she wrought at the behest of Dimitri Voronin. Once the Scarlet Gang’s most prized cabaret dancer, she was brought back from the brink of death four years ago by Lourens Van Dijk, a Dutch scientist affiliated with the White Flowers. Unfortunately, the substance that saved her life also bestowed her with instantaneous healing abilities and constant wakefulness, so that she is frozen at the age of nineteen and almost completely immortal – though poison will still unknit her as effectively as ever – and can no longer sleep.
Having received professional training from Nationalist operative Dao Feng, Rosalind is now the Kuomintang’s most infamous assassin, code-named “Fortune,” colloquially known as “Lady Fortune.” Her loyalty to the Kuomintang is minimal, but the job allows her to hunt down surviving White Flowers and wipe them off the map, so it does have some slight appeal. The assassination scheduled for September 18 belongs to a Russian merchant named Kuznetsov, who has so far managed to evade Rosalind’s efforts but cannot hide from her forever. After dispatching both Kuznetsov and his bodyguard with a poison-coated vase, Rosalind escapes their compartment through the roof, from where she observes Japanese soldiers staging an attack on the railway. Though this event will later come to be known as the Mukden Incident, the damage to the rails is minimal, and the train arrives in Shenyang without further trouble. Rosalind herself doesn’t get off so lightly: she is almost arrested upon arrival in Shenyang, ostensibly as a suspicious figure in the attack on the rails, but she escapes the police and makes her way back to the station, where she boards the next train to Shanghai.
Back in Shanghai, wealthy playboy Liwen “Orion” Hong – born in Shanghai, educated in England, now a Nationalist operative code-named Huntsman – is supposed to be having a quiet night in with his kid sister Feiyi (“Phoebe”), but he instead interrupts a home invasion by his older brother Lifu (“Oliver”), a staunch Communist. Their father, Nationalist General Buyao Hong, was accused of taking Japanese money against Chinese interests – a form of treason referred to as “being hanjian” – and, though he was eventually cleared through lack of evidence, the Hong family fell completely apart. Lady Hong left without explanation while Oliver defected to the Communists, and Orion and Phoebe were left with a cold, distant father, whom they rarely see these days. Orion still sees his mother quite regularly because she’s been using him as a lab rat for years, but, as she also wipes his memory at the end of every experiment, he has no memory of these encounters. As the eldest son by default, Orion has been desperately trying to prove that the Hongs are still worth a damn, and he therefore chases Oliver out of the house without hesitation, though he is unable to kill him.
These two profoundly damaged souls collide on the day Dao Feng introduces Rosalind to Orion and informs them that they have been assigned a joint mission within the Japanese-owned Seagreen Press, which prints Japanese-language newspapers for its Shanghai-based citizens but is also suspected of fomenting a terrorist plot on behalf of the Japanese government. The city has recently seen a string of unnatural killings, whose victims are dispatched by means of some unknown chemical, and, though the Nationalists are aware that the murders are somehow linked to Seagreen Press, they lack the evidence to make any arrests. They therefore arrange for Rosalind and Orion to enter the agency as a reception assistant and an interpreter assistant, respectively, over Rosalind’s protests that she is an assassin rather than a spy. As a final insult – at least as far as the outraged Rosalind is concerned – Dao Feng announces that they are to take on the cover of a married couple, code-named High Tide, and that Orion is to move in with Rosalind at once. To soften the blow, he privately tells Rosalind to keep an eye on Orion, whom he does not fully trust, and assures her that there will be plenty of White Flowers to murder after this mission is done.
Thus, despite Rosalind’s fury, she and her new husband infiltrate Seagreen Press hand in hand (uh, metaphorically), introducing themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Mu, and begin to work with the overseas Japanese, who are led by Ambassador Futoshi Deoka. This isn’t to say that Seagreen’s staff is 100% Japanese: Rosalind gets the shock of her life when she runs into the seventeen-year-old Alisa Nikolaevna Montagova, younger sister to Roma Montagov, former heir of the White Flowers. The recognition goes both ways, though Rosalind introduces herself as Zhuli Ye, while Alisa has been going under the alias Yelizaveta “Liza” Romanovna Ivanova. Alisa has been a Communist spy since the fall of the gangs, as Rosalind knows from her secret communications with her Communist sister Selin (“Celia”), but they cautiously team up for a couple of side quests, including the impromptu assassination of Zilin Tong, an overly mouthy coworker. (Rosalind does the assassinating; Alisa just helps her cover it up afterwards.) Later they pair off again to steal a file leaked by another Communist, which they believe contains compromising details concerning Priest, the Communists’ best and most secretive assassin; but, though Rosalind dutifully copies the information, it gives her nothing other than three code names – Lion, Archer, and Gray – belonging to Communists who have infiltrated the Kuomintang as double agents. En route to Rosalind’s meeting with Dao Feng, the copied information is stolen by an unknown assailant, and Dao Feng himself is apparently struck down by the chemical killer and rushed to the hospital, leaving High Tide without a handler.
Meanwhile, Orion attempts to carry out his duties with the help of his childhood friend Xielian “Silas” Wu, code-named Shepherd, a triple agent who joined the Communists as a Nationalist defector but is secretly still a Nationalist; however, Rosalind has a habit of keeping substantial secrets from him, and his steps are dogged by Phoebe, who insists on tagging along as much as she can. In spite of their theoretically secret mandate, Orion and Rosalind quickly find themselves working alongside Alisa, Silas, and Phoebe, growing closer all the while, much though Rosalind tries to resist her growing affection for Orion. Their mission grows stranger first when they are attacked by Communists who seem to want to capture them alive, then again when the Nationalists assign eighteen-year-old Jiemin, a laconic Seagreen coworker, as their new handler. Though prickled by his extreme youth, they forge ahead as best they can until the day Rosalind sets out to catch Seagreen secretary Haidi Zheng and instead finds out the hard way that Orion is the true chemical killer.
Outside of Shanghai in the small town of Taicang, Celia and Oliver have been passing the time by working with a couple of other young Communists to map the general area and follow the Nationalists’ movements. This seemingly straightforward assignment acquires a major wrinkle when Celia realizes their maps have failed to document a significant chunk of land. Her subsequent investigation leads her and Oliver to a hidden warehouse, where they find a number of implements that seem to suggest scientific experiments of the unpleasantly painful variety. Though Celia wants to report the warehouse, Oliver instead conceals its existence, recognizing the hallmarks of his mother’s work. They do, however, agree to warn their respective siblings that the warehouse is run by Nationalist soldiers, likely Kuomintang deserters who are working with the Japanese imperialists to destabilize the Chinese government. Though the meeting goes badly, Celia realizes in its aftermath that the chemical killings are experiments, and that the resulting deaths are only a side effect of the imperialists’ efforts to perfect a chemical weapon that basically boils down to a performance-enhancing drug.
All paths eventually lead Rosalind, Orion, and Alisa straight to the warehouse, where they find a horde of blank-eyed Nationalist and Japanese soldiers camped out on the floor. Though the soldiers die easily enough, there are too many of them, but Rosalind’s troop is saved by some timely and completely unexpected intervention from Priest. With the soldiers out of the way, Rosalind finds a crate of the presumably finalized chemicals and gives one vial to Alisa, telling her to give it to Celia for safekeeping in case it can be reverse-engineered into a cure. She then begins to destroy the notes that accompanied the chemicals, but Orion recognizes the handwriting on those notes just a few short seconds before they are confronted by his estranged mother. Rosalind puts the pieces together and realizes Lady Hong defected to the Japanese after the Kuomintang cut her funding over some very basic human rights concerns. She then made Orion the centerpiece of her next experiment, endowing him with super strength and giving him a keyword – “Oubliez” – that will completely wipe his mind and make him into a soulless weapon. Thus, he has been carrying out the chemical attacks around the city for quite some time while also investigating himself, though Lady Hong claims that she told her husband to call a halt to High Tide’s investigation. (The General for his part claimed that he had no control over covert affairs – this family is a mess.)
Anyway, Rosalind tries to end the Hongs’ plot by destroying the chemicals and setting fire to the warehouse, but Lady Hong wipes Orion’s mind and orders him to kill Rosalind. Orion just barely manages to stop himself, begging Rosalind to flee; Rosalind tries to stay with him, but Lady Hong shoots her several times with bullets that seem to block her healing powers, and she is forced to leave. Just before she escapes, she sees Lady Hong inject Orion with some new chemical that completely takes over his brain and erases any remaining resistance. Badly injured, she catches up with the other Nationalists – the ones who were trying to stop the Hongs’ plot, not the ones who were part of it – just in time to learn that they have already been massacred by Orion 2.0. Jiemin somehow survived, and, though annoyed with Rosalind’s interference, he arranges for her to be taken to the hospital, where she wakes up completely healed to find Celia at her bedside.
Their reunion is short: Celia only has a few minutes’ grace, during which she tells Rosalind that Alisa has disappeared with the formula, which she almost delivered before changing her mind. There’s more bad news: Dao Feng was the Communist operative known as Lion, and he faked his own attack when it became clear that he was about to be exposed. Rosalind’s cover as Fortune has been completely blown, her work and her continued existence trumpeted in the daily newspaper, though General Hong has been arrested for collaboration with the Japanese. Reeling from the loss of the world she had built for herself so painfully, devastated by her own forced abandonment, Rosalind manages to revive her sense of purpose when she receives a mysterious note offering to help her get Orion back, signed by Juliette Montagova.
Some time after her parents have been revealed as hanjian and her brother has disappeared, Phoebe strolls into the orphanage where Dao Feng has been hiding, and asks him point-blank if he deliberately set Orion to investigate his own crimes. Dao Feng quickly denies this, claiming that he wouldn’t waste time like that, and explains that it was considered more economical to see if the asset could be taken from Orion at the end of the mission. Though displeased with this answer, Phoebe seemingly lets it go, and introduces herself to the flabbergasted Dao Feng as the Communist assassin known as Priest.
It’s a good thing I reread this because I took too long reading the book the first time and Phoebe’s reveal made no sense, and I really thought it was just Chloe jerking us around for the sake of jerking us around. I won’t say that’s not a part of it because it’s kind of her thing, but it’s better coming back to the book with at least a vague memory of how things go, if only because it helped me understand Phoebe better. There were little hints throughout the second read that made it come together, but this was the line that really sold it to me.
“Let me speculate,” Phoebe said, tapping her chin in thought. “You mentioned a brother. An important brother. He must be a Nationalist – you work the opposite side to keep him safe. In a game of hide-and-seek, you choose to hide and watch others walk right past you unknowingly, gathering information from the shadows so that you can protect him.”
Not gonna lie, during the first pass Phoebe was just this relentlessly annoying little girl (and proud of it) and I wished she and her misadventures had been less prominent, but now, knowing what I know, I actually like her. She has far more depth than I gave her credit for, though those depths are currently hidden. Presumably they will be more prominent in the next book as she either works with Rosalind or begins to lay plans of her own, or both. I’m not even bothered by her relationship with Silas, who is such a simp for her. Granted, her attitude towards him is deeply unhealthy, but Orion says as much to her, and I love him for it. I will only object if there is no growth in the second book, but I have enough faith in Chloe to believe that Phoebe will mature over time.
As for our foul-tempered Lady Fortune, I didn’t know what to make of her in the first two books, in which she was relatively low-profile, but she’s the star of the show here, and I love what I’ve seen. I identify with her far more now that I know her. At some point Orion observes that whatever she’s feeling in the moment is painted all over her face, and I get it. Rosalind herself observes that she was skilled in prying money out of club patrons because they thought she was joking when she was rude and I get that too omg I love her. But she isn’t just grumpy and rude and murdery: she is also kind when she wants to be, fiercely protective of the people she loves, smart and resourceful and completely determined to get what she wants. I hope she eventually finds herself in the right place with the right people, meaning the kind of people who won’t later betray and/or abandon her. She wants to be deserving of the world, but I want the world to be deserving of her.
This might come as a shock, but I actually also love Orion, a goofy sweetie who is definitely on the sillier side – but I love that. As with Ros, he isn’t one-dimensional. He has demons of his own and he copes with them very differently, but in the end it’s these differences that draw them together and make them better than they would have been on their own. While I kind of wish he wouldn’t keep attacking Oliver every time he lays eyes on him, I’m assuming this is something that will be explored later. On the other hand, I love his relationship with Phoebe, right down to their mutual habit of stealing each other’s love interests without regard to gender. Even better that Rosalind, who judges Orion simply for existing, genuinely does not give a tweet about his interest in both men and women. Their relationship is so sweetly hilarious: he calls her “beloved” from the first moment of their acquaintance; she spends half of the book hating him and wishing she could murder him; she’d better get him back in the next book, or I will riot. They give such golden-retriever-falling-in-love-with-a-cat energy, and I love them.
Bonus points: I wasn’t expecting asexual rep, but I got more than I ever expected with Alisa, who is one of my new favorite characters. Alisa is solidly aroace, as she herself openly states. I particularly love the scene where she observes a feuding Silas and Phoebe and mumbles that she’s glad she’ll never have to deal with a lover’s spat, because that is exactly how I feel. If you watch enough botched romances from a distance, you really start to feel like you dodged a bullet. The other side characters are wonderful too: I love the gentle romance between Oliver and Celia, and I hope they have a long and happy life together. I completely believe Oliver when he says he’ll love Celia anyway even if she tries to keep him at arm’s length. I would ordinarily be annoyed with a man who throws “sweetheart” around as liberally as Oliver does, but this seems to be an endearment he uses only with Celia, and it’s cute. It’s the sincerity that does me in, every time; I get the feeling that he really means it.
Unfortunately, there is a reason this book didn’t get the full five stars, and that reason – as with the last two books – is Chloe’s writing. To be fair, the prose employed in Foul Lady Fortune is orders of magnitude better than the prose in the Violent Delights duology, or at any rate it’s better than my memory of the prose in those books. (It’s been a while since I’ve read them.) But for the love of anti-imperialism can somebody please sit Chloe down and teach her some word besides “evenly,” because SHE IS GOING TO GIVE ME A HERNIA. This is the point where, as usual, I am wondering where the fuck her editors were, because I know these books were traditionally published and I know that process theoretically includes editors who should be capable of catching very basic things like unintentional repetition, excessive use of the same adverb (I swear “evenly” is Chloe’s favorite word), and – more importantly than the first two – improperly deployed verbs. “Greeted” is a verb that requires an object, CHLOE. If you’re going to use “greeted” as a substitute for “said,” it needs to look more like this:
“Hello,” Rosalind greeted him.
Instead we got this more times than I care to count:
“Hello,” Rosalind greeted.
This isn’t my linguistic snobbery running wild. It is completely wrong, and it drove me up a wall because it happens so many times. I would have thought someone so clearly interested in Shakespeare would be more meticulous about their language, but I also thought any moderately skilled proofreader would have corrected that in a heartbeat, so what the hell do I know. The unintentional repetition bothered me less because it didn’t happen as much or as obnoxiously, but it still bothered me enough to make a note of it.
Rosalind was already gingerly lifting the lid from the box, presenting the contents inside with a flourish.
“A gift, Mr. Kuznetsov,” she said pleasantly. “From the Scarlet Gang, who have sent me here to make your acquaintance. Might we chat?”
She pushed the box forward with a flourish.
Come on, isn’t anyone reading these things before they get published? Or are they just not paying attention? I can understand getting absorbed in the story, but I was absorbed in the story too and I still caught that. I’m literally one meltdown away from marching to the nearest publishing company and begging them to let me edit their manuscripts. They don’t even have to hire me, if they give me a key I will sneak into their office at night like those elves with the shoemaker okay fine I will consider therapy are you happy.
As ever, my complaints should be taken with a giant spoonful of salt because I am still a massive Chloe stan and I have every book she’s published (to my knowledge), and she’s more or less on my auto-buy list. I suppose in the end all my critiques don’t matter a damn because she’s still got my money and she’s probably laughing on her way to the bank, and I fully intend to keep giving her money as long as she and her wild imagination can keep me hooked. Because in the end it’s not about the writing, which is certainly fortunate but also not surprising. Chloe Gong has created the perfect storm of Chinese history, badass women, and over-the-top spy and gangster antics, all of it loosely inspired by Shakespeare, and that is an offer I cannot refuse. Even when I get annoyed by her frequently clumsy prose, which shows all the hallmarks of a young and inexperienced writer, I cannot stay annoyed for long. She is amazing. Never in a million years would I ever have thought of a Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai and riddled with monsters, but here we are.
My final verdict on this book, and on the series in general: READ IT READ IT READ IT. Read it as many times as you have to until it makes sense. There are moments of unintended silliness – the characters seem remarkably unconcerned about carrying out highly confidential conversations in open-air cafés, for instance, and then they wonder how their information got leaked – but, on the whole, what a world. This isn’t the kind of series where you question every detail, because if we did that the whole world would fall apart. It’s enough to be along for the ride. Whatever my grievances, I am so glad I finally picked up this series. It’s been worth every minute.
