Rook

February 2, 2015
The Scarlet Pimpernel gets an eco-disaster update as Cameron (The Dark Unwinding) imagines how civilization would regress if a shift in Earth’s magnetic poles caused worldwide catastrophe. One could contest whether the structures and worldview of 1790s France would reemerge as a stabilization point 800 years after the apocalypse, but given this scenario, Cameron puts an entertaining spin on the original. Eighteen-year-old Sophia Bellamy, enabled by paternal inattention and fraternal complicity, darts between the ravaged British coastline and a partially sunken Paris. As the Red Rook, she rescues French prisoners doomed to the Razor by the malignant security chief LeBlanc. At home, she faces a loveless marriage to René Hasard, LeBlanc’s foppish cousin. Their engagement is still new when Sophia realizes that there is more substance to René—and more hazard in their situation—than she had reckoned with. Alas, one element Cameron preserves is the Pimpernel’s thoroughly male-constructed reality. While energetic, Sophia is nevertheless dependent not only on her beau but on a panoply of fairy-tale good guys to get her out of her messes. Ages 12–up. Agent: Kelly Sonnack, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.