The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

I became familiar with The Scarlet Pimpernel by osmosis at about age 5 due to my mother’s being in love with the Leslie Howard movie. I quite possibly have it memorized, despite never actually sitting down to watch it. (Rather similar to how I used to have 90% of the original Star Wars trilogy memorized line for line, but never actually sat down to watch it until I was a teen.) I’ll address that sometime soon.

This is, I suspect, something along the lines of the ultimate adventure novel for women. Set during the French Revolution, foppish Percival Blakeney was madly in love with Marguerite St. Just, the wittiest woman in France, only to learn at their wedding that she had caused the St. Cyr family to be executed. Marguerite, of course, had never intended to cause the family harm, despite a previous enmity with them, but was unable to keep words she thought had been spoken in private from causing their deaths. Unfortunately, this causes Percy’s love to turn to contempt, which in turn causes the same feeling in Marguerite. I figure the servants spent a lot of time chipping off icicles.

All of England is in love with the Scarlet Pimpernel, a hero who rescues French aristocrats marked for execution. Naturally, Percy is the Pimpernel, but can’t tell Marguerite because he doesn’t trust her. Which doesn’t help things when a representative of the revolution, Chauvelin, blackmails Marguerite into helping him uncover the Pimpernal’s identity.

Orczy clearly sides with the aristocracy, almost to the point of completely ignoring the actual problems of the revolution. The writing is also melodramatic, almost a bit too much so. (Disclaimer: Not a big melodrama person particularly in print, unless it’s OTT Awesomely Melodramatic, along the lines of “these scars…that only you can touch.”) It is, however, fabulously entertaining, and I like how, despite being and adventure novel with all the trappings to be all about the dashing hero and follow his exploits, the primary perspective is that of Marguerite (who admires the Pimpernel like everyone else, but doesn’t have any particular romantic ideals about him) and her learning what’s going on, and reconciling the different aspects of her husband.

Magic Lessons and Magic's Child by Justine Larbalestier

( spoilers for whole trilogy )

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

I’ve seen the 1935 movie with Errol Flynn often enough that I was worried the book may end up a bit of a rehash for me, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Possibly because, while the movie is fairly faithful up through Blood’s escape from slavery (about 1/3 of the book) it changes things up quite a bit after that. In particular, most of Blood’s adventures as a pirate are left out of the movie, and the remaining events are altered a good bit. This is arguably the most famous pirate novel out there (though I suspect a lot of its fame comes from the movie) and possibly the ur-pirate novel as well.

Peter Blood is a former soldier who returned to medicine, only to be falsely accused of treason when he tends to a member of the Monmouth Rebellion who’s been wounded. Predictably, the rebel gets off due to his connections, and Blood is transported to the Caribbean as a slave. There, he’s purchased by the cruel Colonel Bishop at the urgings of Bishop’s niece, Arabella, who took pity on him, as he was about to be bought by someone even worse. Granted, I’m not sure Bishop was much better, as his only good quality is that he’ll sometimes let his much kinder niece influence him. Blood gains some esteem on the island once his medical background is discovered, but still plans to escape, and becomes a pirate when he does so.

Lots of fun, with engaging leads and an interesting plot, and considerably less sexist than expected. (I tend to be leery of adventure novels, despite many of the older ones technically having many elements I like.) But then, I kind of think general treatment of women in fiction comparatively improved drastically in the first half of the 20th century, and then had a backlash in a lot of ways. (Or rather, ran into “well, we’ve done enough, no reason to bother anymore” mindset in many things.) About what you’d expect regarding race and class, but without the “did you really just…” of many contemporaries.

And now I’m (mostly) caught up with blogging I wanted to do before WisCon, and will be largely AFK until I get to Madison tomorrow. Not sure how much I’ll be on there, though Kraehe is coming with me and we’re mooching off of wireless.