The Scarlet Pimpernel
Emma Orczy (1865-1947)
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Summary
The Scarlet Pimpernel narrates the story of a rich English baronet who rescues French aristocrats facing the guillotine. He also taunted his enemies after each rescue by leaving behind a card that has a small flower on it – the scarlet pimpernel. It is a brilliant adventure story set at the time of the French Revolution. The plot is fantastic and rarely lets the readers pause for breath as it oscillates between London society and the dark night in Coastal France. The story follows a beautiful Countess who escapes from Paris as a committee there was making arrangements to send her to the guillotine. She is smuggled out by the Scarlet Pimpernel and brought to England. There she encounters young people who are part of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel and all have sworn to live and die for their leader. There is also Lady Blakeney, the wife of one of the most fashionable gentlemen in England, who is threatened by the French Ambassador to find information about the Scarlet Pimpernel. She successfully gathers the required information that would identify the man. The final stages of the book take place in France where everyone is vying to discover the hero's true identity. The Scarlet Pimpernel depends much on illusion and is a master of disguise. There is little doubt that the author is a master storyteller and the tension is successfully sustained till the climax of the story is reached in the final pages of the book. The background is historical and very complex in nature but it has been successfully used to weave an enthralling adventure story. It is a fantastic story written along the styles of Alexandre Dumas and won't disappoint the adventure seeker in you.
Reviews
peter
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well done
Good story, distracting voices
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This is an excellent story, but the changing voices are distracting and the quality varies too much.
Henry
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I had to stop listening at chapter 2. The different voices were distracting and varied greatly in quality. It sounded like some of them were recorded without a mic. The parts where the crowd was suppose to speak was unbearable. All of this was really unfortunate because i really liked the narrator.
Becca
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Had to stop after chapter two. Accents distracting. Taking you out of the story. Hoping it can be re-read without dramatic reading.
Rachel
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As others have noted, the different voices chiming in were distracting. Characters were not portrayed accurately, such as the innkeeper w/ an exaggeratedly Southern (American) accent, Percy with a French accent. The narrator parts were excellent.
Jayfess
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Dreadful accents for many of the characters.
Michael P
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This is a good classic read and I really did enjoy the story, although I only listened through Chapter 6. The quaint dialogue and the drawn-out etiquette scenes are charming and the first chapter sneaky trick captured me. The problem I had, though, was the uneven production. The narrator's volume was "normal" but often other characters' audio would burst in at higher volume - distracting ... no, disturbing. The other issue is heavy accents of some characters - the French characters are clear, but some of the English characters have garbled mumbly voices. I'm thinking mostly of the baronet husband with the beautiful French wife - his voice in Chapter 6 was unintelligible - but there are others as well. All in all it is a good story but the production seems rushed and not quite ready for release.
Michelle
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The Reader of Chapters 17 and 18 was very hard to listen too
Amy G
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Terrible reading. We had the guy from Mississippi, his daughter from the Midwest, their friend the leprechaun, the man who was read by a woman and a narrator from Australia. Baroness would roll over in her grave! In my Opinion it would have been best if the narrator from chapter three had read the whole book. I've never heard such a terrible recording.
Julie
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I stopped after the 2nd chapter. I couldn't tell what was going on with so many people trying to read this book. If it was just one person it would have probably been very good. Sorry, just couldn't take it any more!