Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Scarlet Pimpernel


Wow, this was a surprisingly good and easy read.
For fans of Zorro and Batman and the whole playboy-by-day/hero-by-night genre of fiction, whether it be in movies, books, or comics, you need to read this. It's one of the originals and an inspiration for a lot of those more current popular works.
Orczy does a great job of educating the reader about the manners of speech, customs, and modes of behavior for the period without bogging down the reader with it and preventing them from enjoying the plot and story. And while the story started off slowly for the first chapter or two, during which I got a quick clinic on the previously mentioned dialect and customs of the time, once underway it really drew me in and I found it hard to put the book down.
I also recommend reading the forward which provides some biography of Baroness Orczy and some commentary on the book and how it's been received by readers from back when it was published until recent times.
I hear there are sequels...

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