I'm a little torn on what I ultimately think of the book. It was entertaining and informative. The author used fantastic source material. Turns out, that during the end of Catherine the Great's reign as Tsar in Russia, there did live a girl, Nadezhda Durova who left home and joined the calvary, disguised as a young man, and went on to fight in the Napoleonic wars for Russia. She did, indeed have a close relationship with Catherine's grandson, the eventual Tsar Alexander I. Later in life, Durov wrote her own biography, which Lafferty used as source material.
So the basis and the general story were great, but in parts it felt like the book was trying to do too much. Aside from Durov and Alexander, we also get snippets from Napoleon's POV which seemed unnecessary as well as fleeting insights from rather minor characters due to a 3d person omniscient point of view during chapters that were not about Durov. At some points, these details seemed completely unnecessary, at at others, there were moments where I wondered why the reader was left in the dark. Amid all of this, the timeline jumped around a lot too. One chapter would be 1799 and then the next would be 1795 and then back to 1799 until finally Durov and Alexander's timelines matched up toward the second half of the novel. It seemed a bit overdone for me - as if the editor wasn't giving the reader enough credit for being able to be away from one particular story for a long time.
And at times, the research got a little lazy. Towards the end of the novel, when Alexander is marching into Paris (1814), the novel notes a young French boy watching the events unfold - Jules Verne. Verne is best known for his adventure novels, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. But, Verne wasn't born until 1828, so he couldn't have been present at Alexander's march into Paris. It was this kind of detail, totally gratuitous and then historically inaccurate, which undercut some of the authentic feel of the book. And while I realize that this ultimately is a work of historical fiction - I like the events to at least be possible.
The writing itself was well done for this type of story. The prose wasn't overly difficult impacting the speed of the narrative. Durov herself seemed to be given a lot of accolades for her fighting in the war, but considering most of the details of her actions involve her getting yelled at for making stupid mistakes in battle, I'm not really sure how this came about. The end chapter was also a bit grating, as we see an elder Durov coming to terms with her life story - both the outward one she wanted to project, and the actual slightly seedier details she sought to hide. The author's choice to keep these details to the end, when it landed with more confusion than shock, fell flat for me.
3/5 Stars.
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