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The Tsarina's Daughter | 
 enlarge | Author: Carolly Erickson
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.21
You Save: $10.74 (43%)
New (33) Used (11) from $12.40
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 9247
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312367384
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312367381
ASIN: 0312367384
Publication Date: September 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From the bestselling author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette comes a dramatic novel and powerful love story about the last Russian imperial family. It is 1989 and Daria Gradov is an elderly grandmother living in the rural West. What neighbors and even her children don’t know, however, is that she is not who she claims to be—the widow of a Russian immigrant of modest means. In actuality she began her life as the Grand Duchess Tatiana, known as Tania to her parents, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. And so begins the latest entrancing historical entertainment by Carolly Erickson. At its center is young Tania, who lives a life of incomparable luxury in pre-Revolutionary Russia, from the magnificence of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to the family’s private enclave outside the capital. Tania is one of four daughters, and the birth of her younger brother Alexei is both a blessing and a curse. When he is diagnosed with hemophilia and the key to his survival lies in the mysterious power of the illiterate monk Rasputin, it is merely an omen of much worse things to come. Soon war breaks out and revolution sweeps the family from power and into claustrophobic imprisonment in Siberia. Into Tania’s world comes a young soldier whose life she helps to save and who becomes her partner in daring plans to rescue the imperial family from certain death.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Reads like a trashy romance novel... November 19, 2008
I would like to at least say that this book was an entertaining read, but honestly can't... I am not even sure how I finished it... The second daughter of the Tsar of Russia having two lovers before the age of 18? Gallivanting all over town on her own? Some whimsy in historical fiction is ok I suppose, but this went completely overboard... Many parts of this book basically read like a very bad and corny romance novel. I won't mention any of the other "plots" in case someone still wants to read this, but I am hoping that the reader won't take any of it seriously... None of it has to do with history. Too bad the author had to choose a historical character to run away with her imagination, she would have done better creating a completely fictional Russian girl who lived during the revolution... I would not recommend this book, even for entertainment value... To me it read more like a trashy novel than anything else, and smacked strongly of someone just trying cash in on the current interest in the last Russian imperial family.
 The Tsarina's Daughter November 17, 2008
it's great, a true page turner taking one back in time and putting the reader in the charactor's shoes. it's really good.
Which factoids are true and which aren't? November 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I first found out about TSARINA'S DAUGHTER, I was faced with a quandary. First off, I knew that the last two Romanov bodies had been found and identified through DNA tests. On the other hand, this was historical fiction by Carolly Erickson, a historian whose books I'd read. Could she sneak in enough little known factoids to make this worth reading?
Well, we find out that Tatiana was forced to wear a back brace by Minnie, Nicholas's domineering mother. We also learn that Anastasia had a worm farm and that Olga was the smart one in the family, obnoxiously so. Erickson tells us Nicholas had a ballerina mistress and that he liked to drink with his buddies. We also learn that Adalbert, the Kaiser's son, asked for Tatiana's hand in marriage, but was turned down. Fiction begins to enter the picture when Erickson gives Tatiana a love life. She becomes enamored of a young doctor and then a wounded soldier. Then there's Freud. Did he really talk to Alexandra at Minnie's behest with the goal of placing her in a sanitarium?
Nicholas and Alexandra are both a little more unhinged than I had been led to believe. I've read all the Massie novels and a few others. Nicholas appears disinterested when he's at the front. Alexandra is a regular nut case. Rasputin suddenly loses his "powers," ostensibly because he became too fond of good food, women, clothes, and money.
Tatiana tells the story as a 93-year-old grandmother living in Canada, which limits much of what Erickson could do with this. We don't get a good look at the Rasputin assassination, nor do we meet Felix Yussoupov, his murderer. We don't meet Lenin, although the ineffectual Kerensky does show up at least twice to move the plot along.
Erickson has a tough time making the climactic scene where Tatiana is rescued work. The conscientious Tatiana just doesn't act like she has throughout the novel. She risks her life helping the poor, and instead of having her radical maid shot, she protects her and helps her have her baby. Would Tatiana leave her family in the lurch?
Seriously?????? November 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I can forgive many things in an historical novel that's exceptionally well written, but for a novel to be poorly written AND wildly historically inaccurate is unforgivable. Sigh. Where to begin?
I don't fault the writer for imagining that one of the Tsar's daughters - Tatiana - escaped. She couldn't have known at the time she was writing about the DNA analysis which just confirmed that everyone was slaughtered. What I can and do fault her for is making up wild tales to go along with that. Why not stick to the history? Why have Sigmund Freud attempting to declare her mother insane, or Tatiana gallivanting outside the palace disguised as a commoner - as another reviewer correctly points out. The book plods along as though it will never end, and when it does it end, you want to chastise yourself for devoting so much time reading such silliness. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone really, unless they have absolutely nothing else on their shelf and desperately need a distraction.
 Not worth the $$$ November 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm giving the book one star more than I usually would simply because the author, Carolly Erickson, is such a good historian -- when not trying to craft historical fiction. But to my mind, good historical fiction should not require me to suspend all knowledge of history. It's reasonable, when building a novel around a historical personage, to take a few liberties to make the character compelling and the plot move along briskly, etc. But Erickson has gone waaaay off the range in this and her other books. In one, Marie Antoinette romps off to visit her Swedish lover in his homeland; the Empress Josephine gets up to equally improbable stuff with people who never existed. In this one, not only does Tatiana Nicolaevna survive the slaughter (and in an utterly implausible manner) but she routinely escapes the palace to pass among the ordinary people and successfully fends off a plot to have her mother declared insane by Sigmund Freud. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Most of her characters lived highly eventful lives. If she would choose either to create a work of fiction based on characters that didn't have well-documented lives or who are themselves fictional, or else use her skills on creating a historical novel about a well-known historical figure that isn't so completely ridiculous, plotwise, readers would be much better off.
I'm not just being a grump about this. When the historical absurdities distract me so much that I can't focus on the plot, the book simply isn't a good read.
Recommended ONLY for those who don't give a fig for historical accuracy or who don't know anything about the subjects.
If you're looking for a book that does take a liberty with history but makes it work, try Alison Weir's novel about Elizabeth I. Or if you really want to read a work of fiction about a rescued Romanov archduchess, try "City of Shadows" by Ariana Franklin. Here, that escape from the Ekaterinburg massacre is almost incidental, and the suspense is killing -- with a great twist at the end. Either of these are great examples of ways an author can cause you to willingly suspend disbelief around one or two crucial facts. I hope Carolly Erickson will return to writing history; I know that I won't be buying any more of her fiction.
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