This book was fun! It’s been a while since I read a book that was all adventure and excitement and very little else.  The French Revolution setting was exciting, the writing was beautiful at parts, and while I did guess the major plot twist, there was more that I didn’t anticipate. The main female character was annoying - not as stupid or “inane” (the author’s favorite word apparently) as female characters are often presented in 20th century fiction, but just rather pointless. The romance element was interesting in the beginning, but cheesy towards the end. My main complaint about the writing is that it was constantly belaboring the stakes, leading to entire paragraphs that I would just skip over. 

“The lust of blood grows with its satisfaction; there is no satiety.”

“It was terrible to see a young and beautiful woman - a girl in all but name - still standing almost at the threshold of her life, yet bereft of hope, bereft of illusions, bereft of all those golden and fantastic dreams, which should have made her youth one long, perpetual holiday.”