Chatterbox
02-19-2010, 05:09 AM
Cross-posted from Amazon.
I hate writing this negative review, because I wanted to love this book -- I'm a fan of Anne Perry's Victorian-era mysteries featuring Pitt and Monk, and even enjoyed her segue into the World War I era with a quartet of novels which I felt were generally less successful. And I'm a big fan of mainstream historical fiction, including the epics of authors like Sharon Kay Penman, whose company Perry is clearly trying to join with this, her first 'mainstream' historical novel.
But although I plodded my way diligently through all 500-plus pages, doing so sometimes started feeling like a chore; this was a book that, despite a fascinating setting -- the Byzantine empire in the late 13th century, threatened by a repeat of the devastating attack by Roman Catholic crusaders that had occurred in 1204 -- and a few vivid characters, was too easy to put down and forget about, even midway through.
The plot -- loosely, at least -- revolves around Anna, who disguises herself as a eunuch and travels to the empire's capital in order to try to unravel the mystery surrounding her brother's banishment to a distant monastery for having murdered a young Byzantine nobleman. But while most of Perry's conventional mysteries are resolved within the few weeks required for one of her detectives to ferret out the truth, this novel drags on for nearly a decade. Anna, disguised as Anastasius the eunuch, establishes herself as a physician to the nobility and even treats the emperor. His/her path crosses with members of the nobility, including some who are extraordinarily devout, extraordinarily manipulative and even extraordinarily murderous. The main plot becomes caught up in far too many sub-plots, many of which aren't well-developed or convincing. That in turn distracts the reader from the main plot, which in turn is related to Byzantine issues of state: will Byzantium accept changes to its Greek Orthodox faith in order to save itself from invasion from another bunch of crusaders? What will those who oppose these compromises -- who include some of the novels heroes and its villains -- resort to in order to preserve their way of life? The city is at war with itself, diplomats on one side -- including the city's emperor, Michael -- and religious purists like bishop Constantine on the other.
Unfortunately, instead of allowing the action to drive the plot, Perry far too often allows her narrative to fall into ruminations about theological issues, the nature of good and evil, heaven and hell, the role of religion in life, etcetera. Some of these discussions last for pages, and by the end had become so repetitious that I literally rolled my eyes, closed the book and thumped it down on a table on reading the following comment by one key character to another: "You missed the grace and the passion, the courage beyond anything we can imagine, the hope even in absolute darkness, the gentleness, the laughter and the love that has no shadow. The journey is longer and steeper than any of us can understand, but then heaven is higher, so it has to be steep, and far."
There is far too much florid, introspective language of that kind (always a feature of Perry's books) in this novel. It works when set in a shorter book, and when a character is in the midst of an epiphany, but is sententious, awkward and cumbersome when it happens every 20 pages or so. Anna notes of one character, "He described the funny and the absurd with pleasure and, she noticed, without cruelty. The more she listened to him, the more irrevocably she felt bound to the good in him." This could have been conveyed far more vividly in half as many words...
Perry has done a superb job of researching and recreating 13th century Byzantium, but I felt let down by the novel itself, the vehicle she used to try and convince her readers that it was a fascinating and dynamic place, a society so compelling that it becomes seductive to even those that start out as its enemies. It just doesn't work, and that's why I can't give this more than three stars or recommend it very heartily even to dedicated historical fiction readers. Byzantium isn't well-trodden territory in historical fiction, and this was Perry's chance to make it as fascinating and immediate to readers as Sharon Penman has done with medieval Wales and Colleen McCullough with ancient Rome. She doesn't pull it off, and it's because the novel meanders too much, pulled down by its multiple subplots, theological meandering and repetitive musing.
This will appeal to Perry's hardcore fans; those who sometimes struggle with her tendency to have her characters talk incessantly about their feelings and existential thoughts will find this book a far tougher read than her detective novels, because it's moving at a much slower pace. Personally, after finishing this, I really felt the need to go off and read something tightly and vividly written.
I hate writing this negative review, because I wanted to love this book -- I'm a fan of Anne Perry's Victorian-era mysteries featuring Pitt and Monk, and even enjoyed her segue into the World War I era with a quartet of novels which I felt were generally less successful. And I'm a big fan of mainstream historical fiction, including the epics of authors like Sharon Kay Penman, whose company Perry is clearly trying to join with this, her first 'mainstream' historical novel.
But although I plodded my way diligently through all 500-plus pages, doing so sometimes started feeling like a chore; this was a book that, despite a fascinating setting -- the Byzantine empire in the late 13th century, threatened by a repeat of the devastating attack by Roman Catholic crusaders that had occurred in 1204 -- and a few vivid characters, was too easy to put down and forget about, even midway through.
The plot -- loosely, at least -- revolves around Anna, who disguises herself as a eunuch and travels to the empire's capital in order to try to unravel the mystery surrounding her brother's banishment to a distant monastery for having murdered a young Byzantine nobleman. But while most of Perry's conventional mysteries are resolved within the few weeks required for one of her detectives to ferret out the truth, this novel drags on for nearly a decade. Anna, disguised as Anastasius the eunuch, establishes herself as a physician to the nobility and even treats the emperor. His/her path crosses with members of the nobility, including some who are extraordinarily devout, extraordinarily manipulative and even extraordinarily murderous. The main plot becomes caught up in far too many sub-plots, many of which aren't well-developed or convincing. That in turn distracts the reader from the main plot, which in turn is related to Byzantine issues of state: will Byzantium accept changes to its Greek Orthodox faith in order to save itself from invasion from another bunch of crusaders? What will those who oppose these compromises -- who include some of the novels heroes and its villains -- resort to in order to preserve their way of life? The city is at war with itself, diplomats on one side -- including the city's emperor, Michael -- and religious purists like bishop Constantine on the other.
Unfortunately, instead of allowing the action to drive the plot, Perry far too often allows her narrative to fall into ruminations about theological issues, the nature of good and evil, heaven and hell, the role of religion in life, etcetera. Some of these discussions last for pages, and by the end had become so repetitious that I literally rolled my eyes, closed the book and thumped it down on a table on reading the following comment by one key character to another: "You missed the grace and the passion, the courage beyond anything we can imagine, the hope even in absolute darkness, the gentleness, the laughter and the love that has no shadow. The journey is longer and steeper than any of us can understand, but then heaven is higher, so it has to be steep, and far."
There is far too much florid, introspective language of that kind (always a feature of Perry's books) in this novel. It works when set in a shorter book, and when a character is in the midst of an epiphany, but is sententious, awkward and cumbersome when it happens every 20 pages or so. Anna notes of one character, "He described the funny and the absurd with pleasure and, she noticed, without cruelty. The more she listened to him, the more irrevocably she felt bound to the good in him." This could have been conveyed far more vividly in half as many words...
Perry has done a superb job of researching and recreating 13th century Byzantium, but I felt let down by the novel itself, the vehicle she used to try and convince her readers that it was a fascinating and dynamic place, a society so compelling that it becomes seductive to even those that start out as its enemies. It just doesn't work, and that's why I can't give this more than three stars or recommend it very heartily even to dedicated historical fiction readers. Byzantium isn't well-trodden territory in historical fiction, and this was Perry's chance to make it as fascinating and immediate to readers as Sharon Penman has done with medieval Wales and Colleen McCullough with ancient Rome. She doesn't pull it off, and it's because the novel meanders too much, pulled down by its multiple subplots, theological meandering and repetitive musing.
This will appeal to Perry's hardcore fans; those who sometimes struggle with her tendency to have her characters talk incessantly about their feelings and existential thoughts will find this book a far tougher read than her detective novels, because it's moving at a much slower pace. Personally, after finishing this, I really felt the need to go off and read something tightly and vividly written.