Linda Lafferty

I liked this book much more than I expected to. It kept subverting my expectations.

The title character, Ahmed Kadir, is a classic strong-and-silent type military man who lives for his duty and hides his pain. Everyone else, however, has complexities that slowly emerge over the course of the story.

The other thing I enjoyed was the importance of religion to the novel and to the characters themselves. Very passionate and very pragmatic people abstain from certain actions because of their beliefs. Several of the main characters were born in Christian communities but were compelled to convert to Islam after they were captured by the Ottomans. However, this is not blamed on Islam, but the political agendas of the rulers - and the converts are generally shown as embracing Islam while still cherishing aspects of their early Christian faith. Islam and Christianity are presented as equally worthy religions.… (meer)

This novel is a fictionalised account of a real historical Ukrainian girl, Natasha Durova, who fought disguised as a man (Alexandrov) in Tsar Alexander's army fighting against Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. Natasha grows to love the military life from a very young age as her father tours the Empire on his duties and later runs away from home to join the army. The bulk of this novel is actually about Tsar Alexander as he grows up, his relationship with his grandmother Catherine the Great and his father, the mad Emperor Paul. Durova/Alexandrov disappears for large portions of the novel and sometimes came across to me as a bit of an afterthought. While this was a good read, I thought it lacked the beauty and atmosphere of Lafferty's other novel, I've read, the Shepherdess of Siena. I have several more of hers, though, which I will certainly look forward to.… (meer)

I feel bad not giving this book a higher rating, because throughout the novel, the author's passion for the subject and research on the time period is evident. But... I found this book less interesting than I should have - there were murdering Medicis and dramatic horse races, but I still found myself a bit bored and hoping for it all to be over. The Medicis were hard to keep straight (and I kinda hoped they would all ended murdering each other) and I suspect this book could have been much better if an editor had shortened it down. Overall, this wasn't a bad book and I do want to investigate some of the historical sources the author mentioned at the end of the book, but I'm also a bit disappointed in it.… (meer)