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"I Will Repay", Baroness Orczy
2 November 2024 01:18 pm"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord-- I will repay."
This book was billed in various editions as 'Further Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel' and 'A Scarlet Pimpernel Story', but in fact as a sequel to the enormous success of the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel it is a somewhat unexpected choice; the Scarlet Pimpernel himself has little more than a walk-on role, and the main character is an idealistic Citizen Deputy in the National Convention who is denounced to the authorities by a young aristocrat in revenge for events that had occurred before the Revolution. It's a bold development on Orczy's part, if nothing else, and I suspect may have disconcerted the contemporary audience as much as it disconcerted me when I first read it as a child, for in her next book she returns to the old set-up of Sir Percy squaring off against a returning Chauvelin in order to save the captive Marguerite. But this one is quite a departure, and I can appreciate it now more than I did on my original reading. ( Read more... )
This book was billed in various editions as 'Further Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel' and 'A Scarlet Pimpernel Story', but in fact as a sequel to the enormous success of the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel it is a somewhat unexpected choice; the Scarlet Pimpernel himself has little more than a walk-on role, and the main character is an idealistic Citizen Deputy in the National Convention who is denounced to the authorities by a young aristocrat in revenge for events that had occurred before the Revolution. It's a bold development on Orczy's part, if nothing else, and I suspect may have disconcerted the contemporary audience as much as it disconcerted me when I first read it as a child, for in her next book she returns to the old set-up of Sir Percy squaring off against a returning Chauvelin in order to save the captive Marguerite. But this one is quite a departure, and I can appreciate it now more than I did on my original reading. ( Read more... )