“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion?”, Thomas Jefferson, 1787. Triumphant Thistle, the third book in the trilogy, is a dystopian adaptation by Coll MacLaren of Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s ‘The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel’. This third and concluding adventure in the Violet Thistle trilogy is set in 2094 during the climax of the brutal insurgency that brought about the Apostolic States of America. A beautiful Mexican woman, Marcela Esquivel, is a catalyst for intrigue, seduction, and upheaval. Is she also destined to gain a highly prestigious role in the regime? Her unwanted suitor Bart Moncrieff risks thwarting her ambitions as his bravado, publicly renouncing the tyrant Rummelhoff, makes him a target of the brutal regime. Our hero, donning wearable robotics, a biomechatronic exoskeleton, and disguised as a bulky heaver of coal sacks, is gallantly bound to rescue those Liberal Americans who are most at the peril of electrocution on the Electroline. Amongst them, his treacherously kidnapped wife Meggie Fergusson faces summary execution as the clock counts down in the regime’s capital city, Fort Triumph. Can Torquil rescue her in time and how on earth can he pull that off this time? Will Marcela fulfil her high destiny? What will become of the despotic regime? “Bringing a modern angle to the story works really well, I very much enjoyed this fantastic read.”