Les Enfants de la Terreur (Children of The Reign of Terror)

“"I'm thirteen,"" she said with a defiant stare.

And already nothing shone in her soft green eyes but a glimmer of resentment.”

In this uchronia taking place at the time of the French Revolution, Maximilien de Robespierre is ruling over Paris. The capital is in the middle of a revolution and at war with all its neighbours.

Two characters, caught between their ideals and their sulphurous past, narrate this tale: the Marquis de Sade and the Chevalier d'Éon.

Upon arriving in the French capital, Charles-Geneviève d’Éon discovers a city under the control of the Committee of Public Safety, children hunted down by the armed wings of the Republic, a camp where gendarmes are burning bodies… Therefore, d’Éon infiltrate the dodgy areas of Paris to investigate.

The Marquis de Sade lives off the articles he writes for various gazettes. During a riot, he meets an orphan girl, La Gigue, who impresses him with her resourcefulness. This gives him a new idea for articles: portraits of the children of the Republic, left to their own devices in the capital.

When a large part of La Gigue's group is kidnapped by men in black frock coats, d'Éon and Sade join forces to find out what is going on. While the investigation is going on, Bonaparte and his troops are also advancing in England, foreshadowing his return to France and the possible fall of the Republic...

Press

“Carried by the elegant style of its author, Les Enfants de la Terreur is a high quality uchronia that reflects on universal themes. Johan Heliot questions the role of the writer as well as that of the ruler, and offers the reader an excellent detective story in a Europe that teeters on the edge of the abyss.”

Just A Word