Sharon Cameron’s “Rook” is a futuristic dystopian fantasy novel that almost retells “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. It also asks the question, could what has already happened happen again? There were a lot of layers to this novel which made it interesting and hard to put down. However, with so many layers, there was a danger that they wouldn’t all pay off. Retelling “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, now called the Rook, with a female protagonist was interesting and I thought was refreshing take on the classic. Sophia Bellamy, […]
Not much “there”, there.
The Dark Unwinding and its sequel A Spark Unseen are set in Victorian England and France, respectively, and have a vaguely steampunk theme that doesn’t go full-tilt but still includes a lot of clever era-appropriate tinkering and inventing. I review them together because while they, technically, stand alone, they are incredibly similar in tone and structure and I had similar problems with both of them. The Dark Unwinding begins when Katharine Tulman is sent from London, where she resides with her aunt and young cousin, […]

