Scarlet
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Revolution is a bloodthirsty business . . . especially when vampires are involved.
It is 1793 and the French Revolution is in full swing. Vampires—usually rich and aristocratic—have slaked the guillotine’s thirst in large numbers. The mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, a disguised British noble, and his League are heroically rescuing dozens of aristocrats from execution, both human and vampire. And soon they will have an ace up their sleeve: Eleanor Dalton.
Eleanor is working as a housemaid on the estate of a vampire Baroness. Her highest aspiration is to one day become a modiste. But when the Baroness hosts a mysterious noble and his wife, they tell Eleanor she is the spitting image of a French aristocrat, and they convince her to journey to France to aid them in a daring scheme. Soon, Eleanor finds herself in Paris, swept up in magic and intrigue—and chaos—beyond her wildest dreams. But there’s more to fear than ardent Revolutionaries. For Eleanor stumbles across a centuries-old war between vampires and their fiercest enemy. And they’re out for blood. . . .
Scarlet is the first book in a wildly engaging new series from Genevieve Cogman, which reinvents the beloved tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cogman (the Invisible Libraries series) launches a historical fantasy series with this complex tale of aristocratic vampires, an updated take on the Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel that has Dickensian levels of historical inaccuracy when it comes to the French Revolution. After vampire Lady Sophie, Baroness of Basting, loans housemaid Eleanor Dalton to Sir Percy Blakeney (the alter ego of the aristocrat-rescuing Scarlet Pimpernel) Eleanor becomes a pawn in an ambitious plot to save Marie Antoinette from the guillotine by posing at the former Queen's body double. Cogman's attempts at creating a nuanced Revolutionary France are appreciated, but lacking: Eleanor's dawning class consciousness gets abruptly halted so that Percy's rescue plot can continue, and the portrayal of every French man (and most French women) as bloodthirsty, dirty, weasely turncoats and torturers rings hollow. These problems undermine both the narrative and the book's attempts to interrogate its source material; Cogman ends up seeming to agree with Baroness Orczy's most extreme moments of reactionary conservatism. This supernatural swashbuckler will certainly appeal to royalists, but those with sympathy for the revolution should look elsewhere.
