Fiction Reviews
Elusive
(2024) Genevieve Cogman, Tor, £9.99, pbk, 380pp, ISBN 978-1-529-08379-8
You may not have read the books, but the Scarlet Pimpernel retains a mythic status beyond their literary origins in the early decades of the last century. The idea of a British Robin Hood figure rescuing French aristocrats from the Revolution is a potent one, so too the idea of a supremely competent man hiding behind the mask of a dissolute playboy.
And of course the ‘They seek him here, they seek him there…’ couplets remain embedded in the language, whether one associates them with the elusive Pimpernel or not.
Dated as the original novels by Baroness Orczy are, the time is right for a revisionist take on the material and Genevieve Cogman is the right author for the job. Elusive is the second in her Scarlet Revolution trilogy, although I didn’t find myself unduly hampered by not having read the first, there being enough exposition to help the reader get up to speed.
Cogman makes a few key changes to the setting – recognising firstly that the Revolution bad/nobility good approach of the original is at the very least a little simplistic. Her point of view character and protagonist is not Sir Percy Blakeney (aka the Pimpernel himself) but Eleanor Dalton, a maid with an uncanny resemblance to Marie Antoinette and some unusual gifts. The Pimpernel is mostly offstage, which gives Eleanor and others a chance to shine, and also allows him to be used in a Gandalf-like way (advice, support, the occasional deus ex machina).
Like the originals, the novel is more about action and adventure than a deep enquiry into the Revolution or the human condition. But Eleanor’s class and gender do give her a different perspective on events in France and the rights and potential wrongs of the Pimpernel’s work, and Cogman makes the most of that.
Most significantly from a genre perspective, this is also a vampire fiction – with fanged aristocrats on both sides of the English Channel meddling behind the scenes and dominating the grand narrative running through the trilogy as a whole. It’s also suggested that the vampires ensured their survival by eliminating any other form of magic… or did they?
One novel in, by the time Elusive opens Eleanor is firmly established as an auxiliary member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The initial plot hook is their investigation of the mysterious disappearance from his English exile of Talleyrand (a man whose complex biography and numerous heel turns defies summary in this review but can be found here). However, it is in all honesty little more than the launch pad for the delightful chain of intrigue, spying, disguises, jailbreaks, kidnappings, romance and riots that follows across the rest of the novel.
This is, I suspect, very much in the tradition of the original series and underlines Cogman’s achievement in adeptly re-tooling an already compelling format for a contemporary readership. Eleanor is a highly enjoyable and gutsy character who saves the day and – with some caveats – wins the respect of the noblemen she works with in the League of the Pimpernel. She does have an attachment to one of them but (romantasy authors take note) is clear-sighted about its prospects.
In short, I found that I had enjoyed Eleanor’s company and Elusive as whole considerably more than I expected to do at the start. A fine adventuring tale with a modern touch, elevated by an author who knows the rules of pulp and how to break them.
Tim Atkinson
[Up: Fiction Reviews Index | SF Author: Website Links | Home Page: Concatenation]
[One Page Futures Short Stories | Recent Site Additions | Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]