The Pimpernelles, Book 1: The Pale Assassin

The Pimpernelles Book 1: The Pale Assassin

By Patricia Elliott

Summary:

The Pale Assassin tells the story of Eugénie de Boncoeur, a young aristocrat living in Paris in 1789 as the French Revolution begins.  Her mother and father are dead, and she and her brother are under the care their guardian.  With the help of Hortense, her governess, Eugenie lives the life of an aristocrat.

As the French revolution takes hold, aristocrats are being put the guillotine, and many are leaving the city.  When Eugénie's family home in Chauvais is destroyed and her guardian flees Paris, she is forced to leave her governess and live in a convent. Eugénie is safe there, or so she thinks. But she is being watched by the Pale Assassin, nicknamed Le Fantôme, meaning 'the ghost.'

Le Fantôme is a sinister, but very rich man who is involved in the revolution.  He has a team of people helping him keep the revolution going and also killing all of his enemies, one of his biggest enemies being the De Boncoeur family, because of their riches and his desire for revenge. He has no particular reason for revenge but he disliked Eugénie's father very much.  Unknown to Eugénie, her guardian betrothed her to Le Fantôme and she must marry him when she turns 16.

In the story, Eugénie tries to survive in an increasingly hostile city but also protect her brother Armand who is a aristocratic royalist. Armand is planning to help the Queen, King, Dauphin and Dauphine escape the Guillotine. Eugénie is urged by her brother to leave Paris and to go and stay with one of their English relatives in the English countryside. Eugénie will not go without her brother but Armand refuses to leave his beloved country.

Can Eugénie escape to England? Can she escape from Le Fantôme and his group of murderers?  Most importantly, can she survive?

Review:

I almost didn't write this review because I almost couldn't get through this book. I started it twice but the second time I got through the entire book. It was hard to read for 2 reasons:

#1 I didn't find the story very interesting and there were no cliff hangers.
#2 I found that there were a lot of typos.

This book was a hard book to read, but I thought that it was important for me to write a review for it. Here goes:

I have to admit that The Pale Assassin is not the best book I have ever read. As I said as above I didn't find the story very interesting or engaging.  Also Eugénie, I think, is not a character that you would want for a role model.  She always gets into trouble (that's normal for a teenager) but the worst thing is that she never gets herself out of trouble, it's always somebody else. So it is as if she doesn't try to help herself and sometimes doesn't think. She is a character who is smart but does not use her intelligence  at the right times. She doesn't pay attention to the important things in life,  just fashion and parties.

Also I found that the story starts fast but bit by bit it starts to slow down. Those are my only complaints.

On the positive side, I found the timeline (historical) really interesting, because I like reading about the French revolution. It is an interesting revolution because the people are fighting against the Royalists and that is not a common type of revolution.  The book had all the right historical facts and the dates in the right order.

Perhaps the author's other books are better and I hope to read another some day so that I can give them an other try . (In fact this is the first of three books in the Pimpernelles series).  I think that my choice fell on the wrong book this time.

Please note that this book is recommended for ages 12 and up.

424 pages