The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak is a historical fiction novel based on the early life of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Through the eyes of bookbinder’s daughter turned lady-in-waiting Varvara it tells the story of Catherine’s arrival at court and of her navigation through Court politics to the Imperial Throne itself. Now, historical fiction is not a genre of which I read a lot; however I was intrigued by this one and it turned out to be the perfect antidote to my waiting-for-Dorothy-Must-Die reading slump. I don’t know a great deal about Russian history and I found myself checking Wikipedia from time to time to learn more and to help me separate fact from fiction. What I liked Engaging protagonist. Although the novel is about the rise to power of Catherine the Great, we follow her story through Varvara’s eyes as Varvara herself goes through her own journey. Varvara is intelligent, resourceful and has a keen eye for observation. Although she starts off relatively powerless, by the end of the book, she has amassed considerable wealth and influence, making hard choices along the way. In that respect her journey mirrors Catherine’s. The vivid picture Stachniak paints of court glamour…
This week I suffered every bookworm’s worst nightmare; I have a TBR list of over 100 books (some of which I have been offered free to review) and I could not interest myself in any of them. This is because the book I really, REALLY wanted to read – AKA Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige – has not been released yet. I’m sure you avid readers can empathise with my dilemma. I flicked through several different books and just couldn’t get into any of them. In the end I managed to break out of my reading slump by picking up a book that is completely out of my normal genre – I’m currently reading The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak, a historical fiction set in Russia in the time of Catherine the Great. So far I’m really enjoying it. A full review will come soon. [book-info title=”Attack the Geek” author=”Michael R. Underwood”] One book I did manage to read this week was Attack the Geek by Michael R Underwood, which I received free to review from Netgalley. This is a novella in the Geekomancy series which had been on my radar for some time. I was intrigued by the…