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jocdillo's review against another edition
4.0
As a biography that reads like a fictional story rather than a series of dates and facts, I found this an excellent read. Though there are the occasional tangents, Troyat does an amazing job of unbiasedly presenting this historical figure in a fascinating light.
allyriadayne's review against another edition
3.0
3,5. A very complete biography on Catherine the Great, too bad the writing bore me so much.
bibliophiliadk's review against another edition
2.0
I have one major issue with the book and the is the sources that Troyat uses; memoirs and secondary litterature. To me, as I study history at the moment, memoirs are big no-no's. At least without having other sources to compare them with, which Troyat doesn't. At times I was completely convinced that what I was reading was simply a 3rd person re-writing of Catherine's own memoirs. Everything seemed to be taken from her memoirs and nothing was original work or research. The reason why I am such a big adversary of the use of memoirs in historical works is, that the writer of a memoir always have an ulterior motive with everything they write. They set out with a goal in mind, either to make themselves out to be heroes, victims, God fearing matyrs or something like that, or to make others out to be the big, bad meanies. Therefore memoirs are a pitfall of lies or at least re-writings of the truth. One must always be very critical of these works, but this critical approach cannot be sensed at all with Troyat. His use of secondary litterature isn't, at the base of it, that bad if it wasn't for the fact that he quotes the quotes in this litterature, meaning that he has not himselv read the primary source, he just chooses to believe that this secondary person has both correctly understood the primary text and correctly quoted it. That is another big no-no. And so, to me, this entire book becomes a BIG NO-NO!
nekokat's review against another edition
4.0
I don't generally read biographies, but I ended up with this one somehow and I've read it several times. It reads like fiction and is all the more compelling because it's a true story. I love the evocative descriptions of Russia and court life.
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