The Red Necklace

Name: The Red Necklace
Rating: 3.81 (8576 reviews)

by Sally Gardner Book 1 in the French Revolution series.

First published 2007

Amazon

3.8(8,576)

Paris and London, 1789. Yann Margoza performs with the magician Topolain and his guardian Têtu, using ventriloquism and an uncanny ability to sense the thoughts of others. At an aristocratic gathering he meets Sido, the neglected daughter of the Marquis de Villeduval, and attracts the hostility of Count Kalliovski, a financier and secret-society master who controls nobles through debt, fear and murder.

As revolution overturns the assumptions of the old regime, Yann is sent to safety in London but returns when Sido is placed in danger. His rescue attempt crosses theatres, prisons and streets transformed by political unrest. The novel combines magical gifts, romance and melodrama with aristocratic bankruptcy, social inequality and the first violent years of the French Revolution, making the private struggle against Kalliovski reflect the collapse of a system built on inherited privilege and coercion.