Rook /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Who needs a wedding ring when you can pick up a sword? A remarkable and utterly inventive novel from Sharon Cameron, author of THE DARK UNWINDING, which USA TODAY called "spellbindingly imaginative."History has a way of repeating itself. In the Sunken City that was once Paris, all who oppose the new revolution are being put to the blade. Except for those who disappear from their prison cells, a red-tipped rook feather left in their place. Is the mysterious Red Rook a savior of the innocent or a criminal?Meanwhile, across the sea in the Commonwealth, Sophia Bellamy's arranged marriage to the wealthy René Hasard is the last chance to save her family from ruin. But when the search for the Red Rook comes straight to her doorstep, Sophia discovers that her fiancé is not all he seems. Which is only fair, because neither is she. As the Red Rook grows bolder and the stakes grow higher, Sophia and René find themselves locked in a tantalizing game of cat and mouse. Daring intrigue, delicious romance, and spine-tingling suspense fill the pages of this extraordinary tale from award-winning author Sharon Cameron.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

From ROOKThe heavy blade hung high above the prisoners, glinting against the stars, and then the Razor came down, a wedge of falling darkness cutting through the torchlight. One solid thump, and four more heads had been shaved from their bodies. The mob around the scaffold roared, a sudden deluge of cheers and mockery that broke like a wave against the viewing box, where the officials of the Sunken City watched from velvet chairs. The noise gushed on, over the stacks of headless bodies, around bare and booted feet that were crowded thick across the flagstones, pouring down the drains and into the deep tunnels beneath the prison yard like filth overflowing the street gutters. The city was bloodthirsty tonight. Sophia dropped her gaze from the prison yard drains, where the din of the mob cascaded from high above her head, squinting into the gloom of the subterranean passage. The tunnel was one of dozens like it, long and narrow, a mausoleum of rough rock and stink and rows of heavy, locked doors. It was why they called it the Tombs. Sophia pulled the door to prison hole number 1139 shut behind her, letting the iron lock clank quietly back into place. She had planned for five prisoners to be in hole 1139, not thirteen, and there were not enough coffins to smuggle them out. Not all of them. She needed a new plan. Excerpted from Rook by Sharon Cameron All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

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. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up-"It was a fine night for an execution." but the Red Rook has other plans. Eighteen-year-old Sophia Bellamy, with the help of her older brother Tom and their trusted friend Spear, has freed the prisoners before the Razor could sever their heads. This retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel (a story unlikely to be familiar to most teens) is set in a far-future England and France, when magnetic pole shifts have rendered technology a distant memory. Candlelight, penned letters, and escapes on horseback are the order of the day, and shards of plastic can fetch a pretty price. A political atmosphere similar to the French Revolution has taken hold, and the Rook is determined that innocent lives will not be lost. When not wielding her sword (and a red-tipped feather as a calling card), Sophia is juggling her betrothal of convenience to handsome Frenchman René Hasard, meant to save the Bellamy estate from forfeiture. René is more intriguing (and smarter) than she expected, and though uncomfortable sparks initially fly between them, they soon find they are on the same side, despite René kinship to the Ministre of Security-the very man who has vowed to see the Red Rook brought down. Sophia and René are well matched, and Cameron's atmospheric writing keeps the novel moving. A good choice where Robin LaFevers's Grave Mercy (Houghton Harcourt, 2012) or Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution (Delacorte, 2010) are popular. VERDICT This dashing story line combines a technology-free dystopia with swashbuckling romance.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Cameron's future world is built on the notion of a polar shift destroying large segments of the earth while completely annihilating access to digital and electronic capabilities. Revolution finds enemies of the state falling to the Razor. Bold rebel Red Rook has been helping prisoners escape beheading, leaving a red-tipped rook feather in the empty cell. The Red Rook is in fact young Sophia, a fiercely intelligent and principled young woman about to enter an arranged marriage to save her family from financial ruin. Her fiancé, Rene, is likewise not the shallow ladies' man he appears to be but an equally clever, principled young man trying to save his imprisoned mother from the Razor. Cameron sprinkles her text with allusions to earth's prior history, and her sociological take on how future generations would evaluate artifacts from the twentieth century lends a thoughtful note. With the book's physically strong and admirably bright heroine and a swain who respects these characteristics in a partner, romance readers looking for more equal relationships between men and women will find much to enjoy in this quick read.--Carton, Debbie Copyright 2015 Booklist

Horn Book Review

This light yarn is a quasi-futuristic riff on The Scarlet Pimpernel, here with an adolescent female savior, Sophia (secretly the Red Rook), smuggling aristocrats away from the guillotine in a no-longer-industrialized Paris governed with terror by the mad, Robespierre-like official, LeBlanc. Thanks to the futuristic reversion to old ways, this reads as a period romance of sorts, complete with dicolletage and silken breeches. (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

A clever homage to The Scarlet Pimpernel, set in a post-apocalyptic future Europe. In a distant future where most modern technology has been lost, Sophia Bellamy, 18, leads a double life. By day, she is a young woman of the Commonwealth whose arranged marriage will save her family from debt. By night, she's the daring Red Rook, who rescues prisoners from the bloodthirsty revolutionaries of the Sunken City (which once was Paris). However, LeBlanc, the Sunken City's fanatical Ministre of Security, has tracked the Red Rook back to Sophia's home in Kent. Now Sophia must protect her family and the prisoners she has just rescued and determine whether her sly, all-too-charming fiance, Ren Hasard, is an enemy or an ally. Cameron (Unseen, 2014) riffs off Baroness Orczy's sentimental classic without losing any of the romance and adventure that has made it perennially popular. Rich descriptions bring Sophia's worldfrom the horrors of the Sunken City's prisons to her glittering social milieuto Technicolor life. Sophia's wits and bravado make her an irresistible protagonist; Ren proves to be a worthy foil, though unfortunately the same cannot be said of LeBlanc. Still, the novel's 456 pages mostly fly by thanks to the nonstop intrigue and the occasional swoon-worthy kiss. Full of derring-do and double crosses, this romantic adventure is thoroughly engrossing. (Science fiction. 13-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sharon Cameron was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She started out working several different jobs such as: a classical piano teacher, part-time genealogist, chair of a non-profit for a local theater group and a coordinator of the Society of Children's Book Writer's and Illustrator's Midsouth Conference. She soon found her passion for writing and now writes full-time. She made The New York Times Best Seller's List in 2016 with her title, "The Forgetting".

(Bowker Author Biography)