Post Apocalypse and the French Terror

I ran into an interesting confluence of events last week. The book I requested from NetGalley, Tell the Wind and Fire, and a book I've been wanting to read for years and finally got from the library, Rook, were set in the same time period. IN THE FUTURE. Not just any future, however, but a post-apocalyptic French Terror sort of future. It was intriguing.

Sarah Rees Brennan, author of The Lynburn Legacy, has written a retelling of A Tale of Two Cities in her new book, Tell the Wind and Fire. I don't know about you, but in ninth grade English we read Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities and there was a LOT of Lucie bashing. Ms. Brennan has taken that on, making Lucie beyond redeemable. I really liked her and her courage as she stood against not only the oppressive government but the overly enthusiastic rebels as well. The story is set in a future New York City, where magic has divided the populace into two kinds of magic users--Dark and Light. The Light magicians are oppressing the Dark magicians and have walled them off from the general population, but you have the usual Romeo and Juliets out there, causing mayhem with their cross-boundary love and creating untenable situations for their offspring. Ms. Brennan's writing is beautiful, and she has a gift for giving the reader just enough information about the characters to decide if they're likable, but leaves out enough to keep them mysterious. The suspense was well done and I found the resolution satisfying.

Rook has been on my radar since it was published, but being poor makes me subject to the library's purchasing whims. *dramatic hand to forehead* But my awesome little branch library in my new city had it and I devoured it. Sharon Cameron is also the author of The Dark Unwinding series, which I loved, and Rook was yet another example of her deft writing. Her characters are gleefully complex and hate fitting in with society's expectations, something I can identify with. And the plot is richly textured too, bringing together the worlds of post-apocalyptic Britain and France like a wonderful brocade. This story is also a retelling, this time of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and was an enjoyable, tense, exciting read. I really adored it.

I'm no historian, but I think that these two stories do an excellent job of showing that man's inhumanity to man--as demonstrated by The Terror, in this case--brings out some formidable heroes and provides a complex background on which the best of men and women truly shine.