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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Laughing Cavalier (1913)di Baroness Orczy
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. A prequel to the Scarlet Pimpernel featuring one of his ancestors. A very nice swashbuckling adventure romance. The best thing about it is how unlikable the main character is, he's a real anti-hero which makes him more interesting than most. This whole book seems better written than the Scarlet Pimpernel. I'm not sure whether the author improved with age or if its simply because Pimpernel was adapted from a play. There seem to be a few small spots of confusion as to who knows what and when, but overall its a solid piece of work. Oh my lord this was stupid. It's partly a style thing - at the time (in all the books from this period I've read), the author was a lot more obtrusive than I'm used to with more modern books. It starts with random scenes with different people involved, and takes about 10 (short, admittedly) chapters to get everyone connected and the story actually started. And throughout those chapters, and slightly more lightly later on, the author is explaining and describing and, I guess, setting the scene - but the style drives me nuts. "If things had fallen out differently - if these gentlemen had been the slightest bit more thirsty - everything would have been different..." She says that, in slightly different words, about 5 times in one chapter. Bleah. So then the story starts - and each individual acts extremely stupidly at least once. Most of them act stupidly pretty much throughout - with the author pointing out how unwise their actions are, too, just in case I'd missed it. Elaborate plot to get Gilda out of the way - and as soon as it's done, no, no, bring her to the center of the action. We need to escape - so do an elaborate job of breaking down a window, rather than hurrying out the (open) door (which was, admittedly, closer to the enemy. But still). The link to the portrait is mildly amusing - probably would be more so if I'd ever knowingly seen it. But overall - I was so happy to _finish_ the stupid book...I was planning to read the entire Pimpernel series, or as many as I could find. I think I'll let that wait for a while, and a lot of good books, until I forget how stupid this one was... Buckle my swash and call on Erroll Flynn. The perfidious Earl of Stoutenberg waxes threatening against the Prince of Orange and would murder and usurp him. When rich and beautiful Gilda Beresteyn hears men plotting to take the Prince's life, she is doubly troubled to find that one of the conspirators is her brother and another is her ex-fiancée. The conspirators know that Gilda will find some way to thwart them, she being so good and noble, so they hire a soldier-of-fortune to kidnap and hold her until their plot can be accomplished. The man, however, is merry, noble, strong and kind and he finds a way to destroy all their plans. Despite some turgid prose, this is fun. At the end of the story we learn that the character is the ancestor of Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle SerieThe Scarlet Pimpernel (prequel 1.25)
The year is 1623, the place Haarlem in the Netherlands. Diogenes - the first Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel's ancestor - and his friends Pythagoras and Socrates defend justice and the royalist cause. The famous artist Frans Hals also makes an appearance in this historical adventure. Orczy maintains that Hal's celebrated portrait of 'The Laughing Cavalier' is actually a portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel's ancestor. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I have taken a sacred vow not to discuss book design, forevermore, but here I have been goaded beyond all possible human endurance. Since all the works of 1914 are in the public domain, they are printed by publishers who realized they can do virtually zero work and reap a tiny reward when fools like me buy the book. So you will find that these books have no front matter, back matter, cover art, writing on the spine, or formatting. They have not been run through spellcheck, and they are in tiny font and have no spaces to separate the chapters (making the book shorter and even cheaper to produce.) I accept all that, but this particular publisher chose to print The Laughing Cavalier in a very unwieldy size of 11 by 8 ½, or letter size. I feel there is no society in our galaxy where these proportions would be considered attractive for a book. And aesthetics aside, it’s very hard to read. It’s like the newspaper that Buster Keaton reads in The High Sign that keeps unfolding bigger and bigger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLM-y3O9XY, about 40 seconds in.) So while The Laughing Cavalier was one of the books I enjoyed the most, it was also the hardest to read. ( )