Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten

From the publisher: Before there was Catherine the Great, there was Catherine Alexeyevna: the first woman to rule Russia in her own right. Ellen Alpsten's rich, sweeping debut novel is the story of her rise to power.

St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless and passionate as Peter himself.

Born into devastating poverty, Catherine used her extraordinary beauty and shrewd intelligence to ingratiate herself with Peter’s powerful generals, finally seducing the Tsar himself. But even amongst the splendor and opulence of her new life—the lavish feasts, glittering jewels, and candle-lit hours in Peter’s bedchamber—she knows the peril of her position. Peter’s attentions are fickle and his rages powerful; his first wife is condemned to a prison cell, her lover impaled alive in Red Square. And now Catherine faces the ultimate test: can she keep the Tsar’s death a secret as she plays a lethal game to destroy her enemies and take the Crown for herself?

So, like many people, my knowledge of Russian history is mostly confined to Rasputin and the Romanovs, and names like Peter, Catherine, and Ivan, and wars being fought in terrible winters, with no real idea of the details. So I was excited to read a novel about a female ruler I had never heard of, Catherine I (not Catherine the Great), who rose from poverty to empress. In the publisher's information, New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin is quoted as saying Tsarina 'makes Game of Thrones look like a nursery rhyme", and this is absolutely the case. This is a book filled with depictions of violence, sexual assault, torture, and multiple consensual sex scenes. You should be aware of what you're getting into before you start reading.

As stated by the author, the book opens as Peter the Great is dying. With the line of succession in question, Catherine declares herself empress. While waiting to hear how Peter's grandson and the city will take the news, she thinks back to her (very) humble beginnings as a illiterate serf named Marta in what is now Estonia (according to Wikipedia). From there she ends up as a maid to a cruel merchant, then later in the household of a pastor. After a very brief arranged marriage to a soldier, she is rescued from yet another rape and ends up in Peter's camp. Once taken under the wing of his best friend's mistress, she begins a whirlwind life as a royal mistress and later Peter's wife. While she genuinely loves Peter, she is also very much aware of how much of her position lies in producing a surviving male heir. She will let little stop her in her efforts to secure her life and standing.

I found this book to be an absorbing read for the most part. The stark contrast between the life of an average Russian citizen and the glittering nobility is a constant theme throughout the novel. The book was difficult to follow in the beginning scene, when many characters in Peter's court are introduced with little backstory or context. It was difficult to appreciate Catherine's precarious position at the time without this information. I would be very curious to read a well-written biography now, and see how much of what is in Tsarina is historically accurate and what was added to make a better story. If you're a fan of historical fiction or Game of Thrones, you should check this one out.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC. Tsarina will be out on November 10, 2020 and will be available from Galesburg Public Library.

The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

The Lost Plot is book 4 in the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman. This series has moments of great fun for lovers of fantasy, libraries, dragons, Fae, and strong female leads.

In Cogman's world, Librarians can work a sort of magic by speaking the Language. They travel into alternate time periods and versions of our world to find rare and alternate copies of books. Irene Winters is a Librarian with a dragon apprentice and a Victorian detective friend. She gets involved in a remarkable amount of intrigue as she goes about her book finding duties.

In The Lost Plot, Irene and her assistant head to Prohibition-era New York and are thrust into the middle of a political fight with dragons, mobsters, and Fae. In a 1920s-esque New York, Prohibition is in force, fedoras, flapper dresses, and tommy guns are in fashion, and intrigue is afoot.

The tension between the Fae and the dragons adds some spice, Irene is a resourceful and intelligent lead, and there is a nice balance between character interaction and action. I really enjoyed the 1920s gangster setting of The Lost Plot.

The romantic tension and hints of a love triangle are by far the least interesting aspects of this otherwise fabulous series. I wish the author would drop the romance and concentrate on the fun.

I read an advance reader copy of The Lost Plot. It will be released on January 8, 2018, and the Galesburg Public Library will own it in print and as an ebook. If you want to get started on this fantasy series, The Invisible Library, book 1, is available at the library.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

From the publisher: At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, she forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows. As danger circles nearer, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a lovely and lyrical telling or retelling of a fairy tale. (If this is based on a real fairy tale, I am not familiar with it.) The language is beautiful, although a knowledge of Russian might come in handy as I had some trouble keeping the characters and their many nicknames straight. There is a glossary of Russian words at the back. The book has a gorgeous cover.

This is a very slow moving story; readers looking for lots of action will not find it here.  This is not a book that gallops along. It is a quiet, intriguing tale. I will admit, although I enjoyed The Bear and the Nightingale, I really wanted to love it. I don’t need a lot of action, but I would have liked more character development. The characters did not move beyond being one dimensional fairy tale characters, even though the story is 300 pages long. I did enjoy the descriptions and the variety of the many household spirits Vasilisa sees and honors.

The story does not reflect well on the church and organized religion, but it does have a definite and obvious feminist point to make:

All my life,” [Vasilisa] said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. (p. 279)

Some readers may rejoice at this firm and clearly expressed message; I would have preferred something a little more subtle.

If you enjoy novels based on fairy tales and full of beautiful language and imagery, especially those with a strong and spunky female main character, I recommend The Bear and the Nightingale.

I read an advance reader copy of The Bear and the Nightingale. It will be published in January 2017, and the Galesburg Public Library will have the book in print and electronic format.

The Map of Bones by Francesca Haig

From the publisher: 400 hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire. For some unknowable reason every person is born with a twin. One is an Alpha—physically perfect in every way; and the other an Omega—burdened with deformity, small or large. With the Council ruling an apartheid-like society, Omegas are branded and ostracized while the Alphas have gathered the world’s sparse resources for themselves. Though proclaiming their superiority, for all their effort, Alphas cannot escape one harsh fact: whenever one twin dies, so does the other. Cass is a rare Omega, one burdened with psychic foresight. While her twin gains power on the Alpha Council, she dares to dream the most dangerous dream of all: equality. For daring to envision a world in which Alphas and Omegas live side-by-side as equals, both the Council and the Resistance have her in their sights.

The Map of Bones is the second book in Francesca Haig’s Fire Sermon trilogy. The Map of Bones is easy to get into and easy to read, and it has a strong female lead. I will read the final book when it is published.

Still, The Map of Bones didn’t really pop for me. A surprise reveal toward the end seemed a bit pointless and dispassionate, as did the secret Zoe, an Alpha fighting for the Resistance, has been carrying. I have no emotional investment in the characters and I don’t sense any real commitment and feeling between them. Narrator Cass again makes some idiotic decisions, like insisting on burying an acquaintance found hanged even though her party is in an enormous hurry. The language is sometimes a little overwrought (“We trawled those dusty rooms for hours. Walls with a tracery of rust and damp. A baby’s skull the exact weight of a nightmare.” p. 275 of the digital advance reader copy)

I do recommend The Fire Sermon trilogy for those who enjoy dystopian fiction and strong female leads, and I look forward to seeing how the trilogy wraps up. I read a digital advance reader copy of The Map of Bones. It will be available at the Galesburg Public Library starting May 3 in print and as an ebook. The library also owns the first book, The Fire Sermon,  in those two formats.

Postscript: One thing that bothered me was that while the book is called The Map of Bones, the phrase “maze of bones” was used over a dozen times in the book while “map of bones” was only used once. I found this very distracting. As I read a digital advance reader copy; maybe the text will be changed before the final book is printed (although I think The Maze of Bones would have been a better title, and the cover could still have used an Alpha symbol as the A and an Omega symbol as the O).

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

I loved Uprooted by Naomi Novik. It’s an original fairy tale populated with well-developed characters. The world building is fabulous. The author uses unfamiliar words, but not too many, and the story feels like a fairy tale told in a European country. The plot took turns I did not expect, and some elements of fairy tales were turned upside down. The first time the heroine, Agnieszka, meets the Prince, he assumes it is okay to bed her and she knocks him out with a breakfast tray. Only the wizard’s magic saves his life. The wizard teaches Agnieszka a spell that dresses her in beautiful ballgowns; she learns to mumble the word so it will dress her in something practical and comfortable instead.

Agnieszka lives in Dvernik, one of a few small towns near a scary Wood. The witches and wizards in this realm take on new names that reflect their magical personalities. The wizard who lives near her hometown is called the Dragon. He uses his magic to help the towns, and, most importantly, he protects them from the evil Wood. Every 10 years he takes one girl from the villages to live alone with him in his tower. No one really knows what life is like for those girls for those 10 years; when the girls are released, they leave the village.

He chooses a girl who is 17, and there are 11 girls to choose from when Agnieszka

 is 17. He always takes the most special girl, and everyone has always assumed he will take the intelligent, talented, beautiful Kasia, Agnieszka’s best friend. But when the day comes, he takes Agnieszka instead of Kasia. Although she doesn’t know it, Agnieszka has magic in her. So does this story.

The main character is presented as clumsy and often wearing stains of food and dirt. This seems like a tired characteristic, but it comes in to play in an unexpected way as the story moves on. The author delves into how people feel. How Kasia felt, knowing she was expected to be the one the Dragon took. How Agnieszka felt, fearing the loss of her best friend but relieved thinking it wouldn’t be her that was taken. How Kasia’s mother felt, pulling away from her daughter in anticipation of the loss.

But the story also has plenty of action as well – battles between armies, struggles against the Wood. The author has no qualms about developing characters and then killing them off. We are not left to wonder why the Wood is evil; there is a good explanation, and we hear all about it before the end of the book. The book straddles the line between young adult and adult fiction. It feels like the author didn’t care – she wrote her story and the readers can decide who wants to read it. That felt refreshing.

Uprooted has a strong female lead, but the male characters are not portrayed as weak in comparison. There is a romance, but it’s not the primary focus of the story. The Dragon is not as fleshed out as Agnieszka and Kasia, but I got a real sense of his personality. Hopefully there will be sequels, and we’ll get to know him better. (At this time, however, the author says the book is a standalone title.)

I am a fan of Novik’s Temeraire series (which the Galesburg Public Library owns in several formats), but this book is entirely different. I would not have guessed it was written by the same author. I highly recommend Uprooted to anyone in the least intrigued by its premise.

I read an advance reader copy from netgalley.com. Uprooted is scheduled to be published in May 2015. The cover is not great, if it's the final cover. I don't think it conveys the depth of the story.

Half the World by Joe Abercrombie

Half the World is the second book in The Shattered Sea fantasy series. It picks up where Half a King finished up, but Yarvi has become a secondary character in his own tale. The new main characters are Thorn and Brand. Abercrombie is a little heavy handed with Thorn’s name, as she is a thorn in everyone’s side.

Brand and Thorn are teenagers trying to become warriors for Gettland. Due to a series of connected circumstances, they fail at passing their tests and become part of a crew on a ship with Yarvi. Yarvi is trying to find allies for Gettland against the High King.

I enjoyed Half the World but not quite as much as Half a King. It’s one long set up for the climax. A misunderstanding keeps two lovers apart for longer than was believable. I expected to see more of King Uthil, and he is a minor and ineffective character. I hope he returns in glory in the third book.

Abercrombie is a gritty, realistic writer, which I like most of the time although he seems a little obsessed with snot. (There are multiple references to people picking their noses or expelling snot.) Thorn’s inconvenient menstruation is a plot point early in the book – refreshing to find in a fantasy novel - but it never comes up again.

Thorn is not as sympathetic a character as Yarvi and definitely not as likeable. Brand is much more so but the focus is on Thorn. Yarvi is clever, a man of deep cunning, and a master manipulator in a complicated relationship with his fascinating mother the Queen. I would have liked to have seen inside their heads more.

I like Abercrombie’s world and his way with words. I like that he has strong female characters and thoughtful male characters. Brand and his sister have lived in poverty and struggled to survive for many years. When he returns from his long voyage with his pay, he finds that his sister has become a swordsmith and now lives in a fine house.

“Gods,” whispered Brand. “I was going to change your life. You did it by yourself.” (p. 231 of the advance reader copy)

This entry in the series feels less original than the first, but it’s packaged in an entertaining way. There are many echoes of Tolkien (including a warrior who says “it has been foreseen that no man can kill me”), but that’s not a bad thing.

If you enjoy gritty high fantasy with well developed characters that is thoughtful about the “glory” of war, I recommend Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea series.

I read an advance reader copy from netgalley.com. It is scheduled to be published February 17. The Galesburg Public Library owns the first book in the series, Half a King, in book and audio formats. 

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson

Positives: strong female lead and a gorgeous cover

Negatives: love triangle and a PROPHECY

Princess Arabella, who prefers to be called by Lia (the shortening of Jezelia, one of her middle names, and this is Important to the plot), is about to be married to a prince she has never met. The book opens with the complicated creation of a wedding kavah, a kind of temporary tattoo, on her back. It is an intricate depiction of her kingdom, Morrighan, joined with Dalbreck, the kingdom of her intended. It will be splendidly displayed by the low-cut back of her wedding dress at the ceremony.

But Lia and her attendant Pauline have made other plans. They escape by horseback to Pauline’s childhood home of Terravin, where they take employment as serving wenches in the inn. Lia shows spunk, handling the crude comments of the soldiers who enjoy the inn’s brew. Then Rafe and Kaden, two handsome young strangers, arrive. One of the older servers guesses they are a fisherman and a trader. But unknown to Lia and her friends, they are the prince she left at the altar and an assassin sent to kill her.

I enjoyed The Kiss of Deception. It is well written and the plot is easy to follow. The world building is solid and the alien words not too cumbersome. The main character is strong and determined. The two handsome strangers have some depth.  But there are some pretty unbelievable plot twists, and the characters do some stupid things. I found the fight and make up scene between Lia and the young man she is most attracted to a bit cringe worthy.

The author keeps secret which young man is the prince and which is the assassin, and that annoyed me. I am certain I would have enjoyed the book more if I’d known earlier. I finally went online to find out (ironically, by reading the description of the second book in the series) long before the author revealed the secret.

The Kiss of Deception cannot stand alone. It is definitely a first book, and I liked it enough that I will read the second book. If you enjoy YA fantasy with strong female characters and don’t mind love triangles, I recommend The Kiss of Deception.