THE QUEEN'S SPADE

In this work inspired by real events and people, a Yoruba princess is kidnapped from West Africa as a gift for Queen Victoria.

Omoba Ina, princess of the Egbado Clan, was enslaved in the Dahomey Kingdom after her parents were slaughtered. In 1850, Capt. Forbes of the British Royal Navy, commander of the HMS Bonetta, arrives, taking the 7-year-old princess to England as a present for the queen, a gesture “meant to symbolize a victory of British abolitionism.” Queen Victoria makes Ina her goddaughter, deciding she can be transformed into a lady. The renamed Sally Forbes Bonetta becomes a ward of the court with all its expectations, but she’s never fully accepted because of her race. Now 18, Sally is done being used as propaganda for the realm, and she seeks revenge on all those who were involved in her kidnapping and imprisonment. But when Queen Victoria begins to suspect that Sally is behind her friends’ recent “humiliation and ruin,” she announces she’s arranged for her to marry a certain Capt. Davies and return with him to Lagos. With her freedom in peril, Sally forms a partnership with an East End crime boss to finish the job. Raughley deftly weaves together information about and critiques of colonialism, power, and racism. The novel’s true strength is Sally’s character development: Arya Stark meets Starr Carter, weaving a web of destruction despite her grief in order to reclaim her dignity.

Revenge, murder, and political intrigue will captivate readers.