The best fantasy books featuring a lady spy/assassin

To avoid execution, Yelena becomes the Commander’s food taster. Under the tutelage of the Commander’s spy and assassin, Valek, she learns about poisons, subterfuge, and how to fight. She also finds herself developing magic, which she must keep secret because it is outlawed in her country. This novel is dark and full of political intrigue, with Yelena battling inner demons and unsure who to trust. The gray morality is interesting, as neither the country of Ixia nor its enemy Sitia are particularly sympathetic. The slow-burn romance between Yelena and Valek is sexy and well-done. While Yelena spends most of this book learning how to be a spy, it is just the first of a fantastic series, which follows her adventures as she tries to prevent war between the two nations.

Ismae is trained at the convent of Saint Mortain in France as a daughter of Death. Sent to the high court of Brittany, she must navigate treachery and intrigue while assassinating the marks assigned to her by the convent. As she begins to fall for one of her marks, she starts to question if the convent really speaks for Saint Mortain or for its own interests. I love a dutiful assassin who begins to question her loyalties, which is especially interesting here because being an assassin is part of her religion. This novel blends historical fiction with fantasy, as each daughter of Death has a different magical ability. The other books in the His Fair Assassin series follow other daughters of Death, who all have a unique personality, inner demon, and love story.

Technically two books (Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen), this duet follows Alianne, daughter of the heroine Alanna and spymaster George, who is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave to an outcast royal family. The trickster god enlists/coerces her to aid the family’s plot to reseize their throne, which has Aly working as a spy against her homeland. All of Pierce’s books are fantastic, and the Tortall series shaped me as both a reader and writer of fantasy. It was interesting to move away from the heroism and adventure of the earlier books in this universe to a more morally gray protagonist with spy and assassin training who is secretly working for a god. Also, her love interest is a crow turned human, and it works surprisingly well.

Tess learns that she is not actually a princess but a decoy, and that the king and queen, who raised her as their child, have hidden the real princess away in a convent for her protection. It would explain why the chancellor taught her the arts of diplomacy, politics, self-defense, and subterfuge and had her build up a tolerance to poison. Despite feeling betrayed by her parents, after they are murdered by a usurper, she has to use all of her skills learned since childhood to reclaim the throne for the actual princess. While Tess is a bit bratty in the beginning (not surprising since she thinks she’s a princess), she develops into a mature (but still snarky) spy. The sequel, Princess at Sea, continues her adventure after restoring her “sister” to the throne.

Katsa, a Graceling, is unnaturally skilled at murder. As a result, she is forced to work as an assassin for her uncle, the king. Unlike the other characters on my list, Katsa hates being an assassin and loathes her abilities (in fact, she has quite a bit of self-loathing). She also prefers using her brawn over her brain. Her love interest, Po, is very much her opposite—a soft, well-read boy who also has a secret Grace of his own. Together, the two must rescue a princess and take down possibly one of the most awful villains I’ve ever read. Graceling is also part of a series that further expands the world, its characters, and its primary villain, and be prepared because it gets dark.