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helwyse 's review for:
The Elusive Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy, Baroness Orczy
Well, I'm officially done with the Scarlet Pimpernel series, at least for now. I need a break. After reading the first 7 books in my collected volume, I am getting tired and bored with them, and the flaws are starting to get too jarring for me to enjoy them at all.
The characterisation is just so shallow: Percy with his two facets (the inoffensive, lazy high society dandy with an "inane laugh" and "lazy blue eyes"/the adventure mad, giant of a hero, who borders on the supernatural), Chauvelin the evil weasel, and all the power-mad revolutionaries, who are rarely more than brutes and self-serving idiots. Not to mention Marguerite, who is supposed to be the smartest woman in Europe and who instead walks into every trap, and is in despair for most of the books in which she features, waiting for Percy to sort out the mess she's caused but not doing anything useful to fix it.
It is clear that Orczy attempted to make the plot a little different from the rescue missions in the previous books in the series (the duel set-up gave me hope, and the hostage situation was new, if extremely obvious and irritating). In spite of that, she fell back into her comfort zone (a trap laid for the Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite being a gullible idiot, Chauvelin being too cocky and making preventable mistakes, the league using disguises and a crowd to get away...).
Usually the pacing and action make up for some of these flaws, but here the middle section really dragged and I just couldn't wait for it to be over.
The characterisation is just so shallow: Percy with his two facets (the inoffensive, lazy high society dandy with an "inane laugh" and "lazy blue eyes"/the adventure mad, giant of a hero, who borders on the supernatural), Chauvelin the evil weasel, and all the power-mad revolutionaries, who are rarely more than brutes and self-serving idiots. Not to mention Marguerite, who is supposed to be the smartest woman in Europe and who instead walks into every trap, and is in despair for most of the books in which she features, waiting for Percy to sort out the mess she's caused but not doing anything useful to fix it.
It is clear that Orczy attempted to make the plot a little different from the rescue missions in the previous books in the series (the duel set-up gave me hope, and the hostage situation was new, if extremely obvious and irritating). In spite of that, she fell back into her comfort zone (a trap laid for the Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite being a gullible idiot, Chauvelin being too cocky and making preventable mistakes, the league using disguises and a crowd to get away...).
Usually the pacing and action make up for some of these flaws, but here the middle section really dragged and I just couldn't wait for it to be over.