TITLE: Scarlet
AUTHOR: Genevieve Cogman
PUBLISHER: Tor
ISBN: 978-1529083729
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 136
REVIEWER: Hilary Wilson
The year is 1793. France is in the midst of a turbulent revolution. The King has been sent to the guillotine, and without intervention the rest of his family is certain to follow. Who, though, would rush to save them? France is teeming with informers and spies, all eager to have their allegiance to the Republic cemented by reporting any suspicious behavior. Fortunately, over in England, there is a certain group of people who just might be up to the job.
Genevieve Cogman, author of THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY series, has taken on the world of the French Revolution for her new trilogy, SCARLET (Tor, 2023). Cogman has been a lifelong fan of the Scarlet Pimpernel in all of the story’s varied forms and brings that passion, along with a vampiric twist, to this new adaptation. During the French Revolution the upper class, at times, were referred to as sanguinocrats. Cogman takes this literally and creates a revised world history that incorporates the monsters as regular fixtures of modern society.
Eleanor, a young maid in the service of an aristocratic vampire in England, has her life turned upside down when Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney bring her onto their staff. She rapidly becomes entangled in the affairs of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel in all too short order, and agrees to help them spirit away a particular aristocratic family from France. Little do they know that Citizen Chauvelin, as ever, is hot on their tail.
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL is a novel rife with difficulty when it comes to modern adaptations. While the original novel hardly questions Sir Percy’s motivations and the supposed injustice of the French Revolution, history looks back at it with a more critical eye. While certainly not everyone deserved to go under the guillotine, there were certainly enough societal issues present to warrant the revolution itself. Likewise, Cogman points out just how ludicrous it was that Percy’s servants didn’t pick up on his alter ego.
Cogman reimagines the classic through an intricate world where the aristocracy is bleeding the lower classes dry in a more than metaphorical way. Through the eyes of Eleanor, the reader gets to the center of the nuanced politics of the French Revolution, while also having a rollicking and swashbuckling adventure. This is an excellent first book in the series - I can’t wait to go into the fire for more.
AUTHOR: Genevieve Cogman
PUBLISHER: Tor
ISBN: 978-1529083729
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 136
REVIEWER: Hilary Wilson
The year is 1793. France is in the midst of a turbulent revolution. The King has been sent to the guillotine, and without intervention the rest of his family is certain to follow. Who, though, would rush to save them? France is teeming with informers and spies, all eager to have their allegiance to the Republic cemented by reporting any suspicious behavior. Fortunately, over in England, there is a certain group of people who just might be up to the job.
Genevieve Cogman, author of THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY series, has taken on the world of the French Revolution for her new trilogy, SCARLET (Tor, 2023). Cogman has been a lifelong fan of the Scarlet Pimpernel in all of the story’s varied forms and brings that passion, along with a vampiric twist, to this new adaptation. During the French Revolution the upper class, at times, were referred to as sanguinocrats. Cogman takes this literally and creates a revised world history that incorporates the monsters as regular fixtures of modern society.
Eleanor, a young maid in the service of an aristocratic vampire in England, has her life turned upside down when Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney bring her onto their staff. She rapidly becomes entangled in the affairs of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel in all too short order, and agrees to help them spirit away a particular aristocratic family from France. Little do they know that Citizen Chauvelin, as ever, is hot on their tail.
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL is a novel rife with difficulty when it comes to modern adaptations. While the original novel hardly questions Sir Percy’s motivations and the supposed injustice of the French Revolution, history looks back at it with a more critical eye. While certainly not everyone deserved to go under the guillotine, there were certainly enough societal issues present to warrant the revolution itself. Likewise, Cogman points out just how ludicrous it was that Percy’s servants didn’t pick up on his alter ego.
Cogman reimagines the classic through an intricate world where the aristocracy is bleeding the lower classes dry in a more than metaphorical way. Through the eyes of Eleanor, the reader gets to the center of the nuanced politics of the French Revolution, while also having a rollicking and swashbuckling adventure. This is an excellent first book in the series - I can’t wait to go into the fire for more.