Scarlet by Genevieve Cogman
Scarlet #1
Historical Fantasy
Published by Ace on May 9, 2023
Reviewed by: Kate
I picked up Scarlet on the strength of the pitch alone – a Scarlet Pimpernel retelling with vampires? Color me intrigued. Additionally, I do love Genevieve Cogman’s first series, The Invisible Library, and was interested to see her take on something more historically based than that one.
I enjoyed Scarlet. I will admit – and maybe it was my mental state – but it was hard to get into in the beginning. I was rather overwhelmed with the list of characters and so it felt like there were a lot of characters whose names I needed to know right away! Luckily, once I got into the book (by the third chapter or so), I was pulled into the action and was able to finish it over the course of two days.
The main character of Scarlet, Eleanor, is nothing like the main character of The Invisible Library series, Irene. Where Irene is all competence and bad-assery, Eleanor is just coming into her own in a world where she’s at the bottom of the food chain, (literally, having served in a vampire household and fed the vampire that employed her) and trying to figure out what the revolution in France means for her – or people in general.
Scarlet is both fun and thought-provoking. Eleanor’s whole mindset changes as she goes through the course of the book, and as she learns more about life in France and how vampires act in other countries. She has a number of mental conversations with herself, where she’s thinking about these issues – does she really only want to be a modiste? Why isn’t she equal to the others she is working with, just because she’s in the working class? But at the end of the day, this is a spy and heist book. Eleanor is in France to rescue an aristocrat, and that’s the driving force behind the plot. And what makes it fun is the spying and the heisting, plus vampire drama and a twist that opens up a lot of possibilities for the rest of the series.
Scarlet is not a romance novel at all, but there is a tiny thread of a possible romantic plotline that may develop over the course of the books. I find myself also struggling with what to think about some of the other characters, other than Eleanor, and I think part of that is Eleanor herself struggles to fit them into a matrix of good or bad. As she learns more about the world, her opinions about various characters change over the course of the book, which is an interesting space to be in as a reader. I felt like it was well done and I was along for the journey with Eleanor.
Overall Scarlet was a great read, if a bit difficult to get into. I’ve never read the source material, so I can’t make any comparisons there, but it was a fun and slightly campy romp through the French Revolution, complete with a creative take on an alternate history where vampires exist. Definitely not your standard historical fantasy!
Grade: B+
Content notes: Some violence
Thanks for your review, Kate!
My daughter so enjoyed The Scarlet Pimpernel as a teen that she went on to read some six sequels. I’m putting this on a list for a future gift for her.