from the sidelines of history to the Queen of Sweden

The Queen's Fortune: A Novel of Désirée, Napolean, and the Dynasty that Outlasted the Empire by Allison Pataki

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When one thinks about Napolean Bonaparte, perhaps one thinks about conquest and exile, Josephine, and the advice never to fight a land war in Asia.  But what about the woman who loved him when he was still just Napoleone Buonaparte, an upstart military officer from Corsica?  Those who read Annemarie Selinko's book Désirée, published in 1951, know her story, but it's taken 70 years for anyone to take another look at her.  And her life is worth looking at!  Although neither Selinko nor Pataki portray Désirée as having had much agency in life, let alone in world events, she was witness to a lot of history, from the French Revolution to the beginning of the Victorian Era, seeing much of it from her perch as the Queen of Sweden.  How did a French girl from Marseille become Queen of Sweden?  Pataki (and Selinko) bring Désirée's history and France in this era to life.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

a quest through the realms

The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fantasy

Review: Did you ever think about what happens to the book that don't get written?

In A. J. Hackwith's imagination, they reside in the Library of the Unwritten, a lesser known part of Hell.  There, they are presided over, protected by, and under the care of the Librarian.  The Librarian is in charge of keeping the books quiet, and making sure none of the character escape from between the covers (except for a few Damsels, who can clearly do better in life).  When Claire Hadley, the current Librarian, gets word that, not only has the main characters of one of the books gotten loose, but is talking to its author, she heads topside to intervene and get the character back into its book where it belongs.

Unfortunately, she and her team get caught up in a dispute over the Devil's Bible, a book believed by those in both Heaven and Hell to hold great power.  In an effort to keep it out of the hands of a demon who wants to use it for his own nefarious purposes, they seek to return the book to the Library for safekeeping, but must travel through several realms, including Valhalla, on their way.  Meanwhile, the Library itself is under seige, and the team must split up.  Will they be able to win the fight on two fronts, and still remain strong enough to keep the Lirbary intact?

As with any work of fantasy, this book requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, and readers who characterize themselves as religious may have an ever harder time, given that the subject matter includes a somewhat jaundiced approach to Heaven and Hell, demons and angels.  Other readers may appreciate Hackwith's multi-cultural mythologizing, her notion of a literary duel, and her ideas about what can happen when characters become separated from their books.

For fans of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu, and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry.

and then there were...?

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When Hollywood's darling, Katie Barstow, marries her childhood friend, she decides to take her 5 closest friends, including her brother and pregnant sister-in-law, along on their honeymoon safari in the Serengeti.  But when the party is kidnapped, who is the real target?  And how many of them will make it out alive?

The chapters rotate among the kidnapping victims, including one of the safari porters.  Each chapter is a small frame, beginning and ending with the current situation, bracketing a brief bit of the character's history.  The effect is to steadily ratchet up the tension, while at the same time deepening the reader's connection to the characters.

This is another excellent book from Bohjalian, complete with a twist that I maybe should have seen coming (maybe), but definitely didn't.  And for another look at the politics of Central Africa in the same time period, read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a personal favorite of mine.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.