So very obviously written by an academic; author Charles O'Brien should have stuck to essays, as his first attempt at prose is leaden and cliched.

Characters are rigidly divided into class backgrounds - greedy, vane and immoral aristocrats over the honourable, downtrodden bourgeois, who are forgiven their sins for being maltreated - without deviation, and the narrative is leeched of all colour by the author's blandly liberal/politically correct revision of history. 'Heroine' Anne is so tedious in her independence/capability/equality that I quickly hoped her confidence would be the death of her, and O'Brien rams the point home again and again - 'This woman was strong!' - instead of letting the reader step into her shoes. Everybody admires her, from the love of her socially enlightened noble hero to the respect of her enemies - not one single character underestimates her, or is disappointed by her failings ... because she has none. Actress, acrobat, teacher, street brawler, gunslinger, and yet still beautiful and modest, Anne is sickening and far from sympathetic - O'Brien might have benefited from a little less bias and a lot more depth with his protagonist.

As expected, the research is accurate, and I was forewarned from Googling every other detail by a previous review, but the dialogue and action are anachronistic and Americanised (Anne shooting her way out of a tight situation, for instance). I appreciated the step back into 1780s Paris, but couldn't care less for the characters or who killed who, and only finished because I paid for this book.

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