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A review by milktoast
Tsarina by Jackson Pearce, J. Nelle Patrick
3.0
I really, really wanted to like this book more than I did. Russia! Magic! Sad childhood love & forbidden love with The Enemy! Not to mention, I adore the author's other books!
And on many fronts, it does deliver. It's beautiful and breathtaking and takes you from the dizzying heights of royalty down to the stark reality of poverty, and then races you ahead in well paced adventure, only to slow down at the right places. It's a wonderfully paced book, except for the part I'm about to talk about later. I also loved her unique take on Rasputin.
The only real problem I had with the book, and why it didn't work for me, was that it required you to buy into a relationship that I desperately wanted to (oh man it hits so many of my tropes), but couldn't. ...I think maybe the time frame forces it to happen in a manner that was rushed and confusing to me. It wasn't that I didn't believe it would happen. I did, but the writing didn't convince me, I guess. I wanted more on so many fronts, more between them, more with the commnity of mystics she had built up, just more. I think that's a good thing in some ways, to leave me feeling like I want more. In others, it's a detriment though.
And on many fronts, it does deliver. It's beautiful and breathtaking and takes you from the dizzying heights of royalty down to the stark reality of poverty, and then races you ahead in well paced adventure, only to slow down at the right places. It's a wonderfully paced book, except for the part I'm about to talk about later. I also loved her unique take on Rasputin.
The only real problem I had with the book, and why it didn't work for me, was that it required you to buy into a relationship that I desperately wanted to (oh man it hits so many of my tropes), but couldn't. ...I think maybe the time frame forces it to happen in a manner that was rushed and confusing to me. It wasn't that I didn't believe it would happen. I did, but the writing didn't convince me, I guess. I wanted more on so many fronts, more between them, more with the commnity of mystics she had built up, just more. I think that's a good thing in some ways, to leave me feeling like I want more. In others, it's a detriment though.