Irene

The book started out appearing witty and amusing but after being intrigued and full of anticipation of exciting things to happen ( I listened to it on audiobook and it’s about a 14 ish hour listen)…. after a couple of hours I could no longer take a meandering plot. The language that seemed quaint and charming in the beginning started to be very boring…. It seemed like the book and the author are in love with themselves, admiring the reflection of their image in the mirror but have nothing interesting to say.. The characters are flat, lifeless, not at all realistic, ( no bad mood ever, AI like)…You don’t really get to know them…It is kind of oversimplified and so not russian! Where is the depth? Where is character development? While the aspect of Russia and the revolution give the promise of something interesting and exotic….the author does not seem capable of any historical accuracy or the depth of the russian classic writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov… The overly pretty, simple and historically inaccurate depiction of the aristocrat surviving in post revolutionary Russia is a joke. I could not get past hour 3 of this book and as much as I hate to do it decided to punt…. I may come back to it at some point if I feel that spending another 12 hours is worth it …. This may be a good book for a 10-12 year old so if you bought the book, perhaps give it to a tween you know?