Ellen Alpsten’s Tsarina took a look at the life of Catherine I, and The Tsarina’s Daughter gives us a peek behind the curtain at the life of Catherine and Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth. The novel is overlong and overly florid, with soapy plot twists abounding, just like the previous book in the series, and many moments of high, ridiculous operatic drama. It is at least less rapey than its predecessor, but you’ll find yourself skimming pages of florid sex scenes anyway. It lands in the C range for me because it is never dull, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re looking for camp melodrama.
Alpsten introduces magic and fate into the series with Elizabeth’s story – there are tarot cards, and prophecies from a wood sprite (!!) warn her that major tragedies are afoot. So it transpires that her father dies and she’s stuck playing political games when her mother is named Peter’s successor and ascends the throne. Her mother and fiancé also die, which means Elizabeth must survive years of rule by her uncle’s (illegitimate, it turns out) sons before leading a coup de état that mostly happens off-page. It would have been a more interesting book if we got to at least see some portion of Elizabeth’s reign, but the entire book is about the build-up to it. Also if you’ve read the first book it’s hard to sympathize with her feelings about Peter since, y’know, the rapes in the previous book made me hate him.
It’s hard to root for any of Elizabeth’s love interests, since they pop into her life and she falls dramatically into and out of love with each of them. Perhaps if the entire enterprise was less cornball and soapy, I would have cared more about the characters and Elizabeth’s romantic travails, but this one went nowhere for me.
The level of historical inaccuracy here is almost hysterically off, with forms of address thrown about incorrectly, improper word usage, and Matryoshka dolls showing up hundreds of years before they were invented. The timeline is, in a word, hinky, and it’s hard to tell what’s happening when and who is doing it sometimes.
I will give credit to The Tsarina’s Daughter for entertaining me, in spite of its weaknesses. If you like’ em big, operatic and a little inaccurate, this might just be the book for you.
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Sensuality: Warm
Publication Date: 03/2022
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