Damned: The Scarlet Revolution Book 3 by Genevieve Cogman

Book Review

Pauline Morgan

Everyone has memories of the books they read when they were younger and retain impressions of what they have read. Those are the books that follow the reader through life. It is why the novels of Jane Austen are still popular. Sometimes it is the characters that remain in the memory. Once the books are out of copyright, anyone can indulge in their own spins of favourite characters, hence Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Graham-Smith and the wide range of books, stories and films continuing the adventure of Sherlock Holmes. For Genevieve Cogman, the characters that captured her imagination were The Scarlet Pimpernel and his friends. Created in 1903 for a stage play by Baroness Orczy and published as a novel in 1905, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel set about rescuing French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution. Cogman has taken these characters to weave her own stories involving them.

            Damned in the final book in a trilogy, the first two being Scarlet and Elusive. Although the characters may be familiar to readers of Orczy’s original novels, there are differences in the world in which they live. Some members of the aristocracy are vampires. While most live quietly, others have designs on power, as many parliamentarians are under their influence. In France, many were rounded up and sent to the guillotine.

            The focal character of Damned is Eleanor Dalton. She was a maid for Lady Sophie, Baroness of Basing, who is a very ancient vampire. She had planted Eleanor in the household of Sir Percy Blakeney. Eleanor has discovered that Blakeney is the Scarlet Pimpernel, a fact that Lady Sophie already knows. In previous books, Eleanor has discovered that she is a mage. The vampires had thought they had killed all of them, as their histories had intertwined and the mages held the secret of destroying the vampires. Eleanor has transferred her loyalty to the Blakeneys and freely uses her skills in their endeavours.

            At the beginning of this volume, Lady Marguarite, Sir Percy’s wife, has been accused of treason (she is French) on trumped-up charges instigated by Lady Sophie. She is held under house arrest, but because of the immediate threat of her being transferred to jail, members of the League break her out, and Marguarite, Eleanor, and Lord Charles Bathurst head for Oxford. Just as things are beginning to go right, Eleanor is abducted by the vampires and locked up in Bedlam. The League needs help from their arch-enemy, Chauvelin, to effect her escape and set the plot on course for a resolution.

            While sticking to the concept of the original Scarlet Pimpernel novels Damned has a different focus due to the elements added to turn this from a straight historical novel to a fantasy one. Although it is the third and final volume in the trilogy, the action is easily understandable. It is a pleasurable romp, but Eleanor is the only character with depth, especially in her developing romance with Lord Charles. This might be because this is the final instalment or because the treatment is reliant on familiarity with the original Orczy books. For most readers, this will happily while away a few hours.