Originally I had wanted to read 'The Romanovs' by Simon Seberg but seeing as that book is incredibly long I decided to pick something a little lighter, given that I am supposed to be writing my MA thesis at the moment. Anyway, I've been interested in the Romanov family since I was around 10 years old, when the film Anastasia came out: it was the first film I saw more than once in the cinema and I remember renting it on VHS so many times, before I finally got my own copy. So clearly this book had to take me pack to the Russian empire and why not do it with a murder mystery - or rather, a survival mystery. I am familiar with the narrative idea of a kitchen boy (because it was also used in the film) but other than that I didn't know much of those last few weeks; a fiction book is probably not the best informative tool, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.Comments:
It was incredibly slow at first, and given that I'm going on a 2 week holiday to Canada later this month, I wanted, if possible, to finish this book before then. I therefore decided to get the boring bits over with and then read one chapter each night of the (hopefully) good ones. Well, suddenly I couldn't put the book down and I just had to finish it so I did... 5 hours later I was done. I have no idea how accurate the book is with regards to the family's life in that little house, but seeing as two corpses were never found, it's always interesting to see what a writer does with that kind of set up and I was not disappointed! I thought I had it sussed, but the final twist was very good and actually quite believable. So even though the book is a bit slow, the ending more than makes up for it!
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