I’ve been splitting my time between a couple of books recently, reading The Twisted Citadel (for reviewing purposes) and The Scarlet Pimpernel. I’m enjoying them both a great deal, although they’re nothing alike. The Twisted Citadel is a dark fantasy novel, with legacies of power, winged warriors, and an evil menace that is perfect in its creation, while The Scarlet Pimpernel is about the French Revolution and a group of Englishmen who saved French aristocrats from the guillotine.

I picked up The Scarlet Pimpernel after a few years of avoiding it (and I can’t remember why I was avoiding it) and am very glad I did. I’ve been reading a lot of swashbuckling, sword-wearing, death-before-dishonor novels lately and everyone was suggesting The Scarlet Pimpernel as a book I’d enjoy reading.

I also just finished Birds of a Feather, the second Maisie Dobbs novel. Quite a good read, and even though I’d figured out who the “bad guy” was, I enjoyed the entire novel. Set in England fifteen years (or so) after the end of World War I, I was startled to come across a reference to Baroness (Emma) Orczy and her participation in The Order of the White Feather, a theme that features heavily in Birds of a Feather.

I knew about the practice of passing out a white feather to men who weren’t in uniform (during WWI), but I hadn’t realized there was an actual order of women…

And although I have no time to read (which has never stopped me before!), these books all sound very interesting:

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski
A Magic of Twilight by S.L. Farrell
Black Ships by Jo Graham
Bring Down the Sun by Judith Tarr
Fallen by Tim Lebbon
Gladiatrix by Russell Whitfield
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
Heart of Light by Sarah A. Hoyt
Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
Madapple by Christina Meldrum
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
Mind the Gap and Poison Ink by Christopher Golden
Soul by Tobsha Learner
The Queen’s Bastard by C.E. Murphy
Waking Brigid by Francis Clark

and, a non-science-fiction/fantasy novel, Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors