Mini Review: The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

Release Date: January 10, 2012
Publisher: Bantam 
Pages: 444
Received: Bought
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars overall with 4 stars for the end

Goodreads

 

The Winter Palace takes the "fly on the wall" approach to historical fiction storytelling. Instead of following Catherine the Great, I got to follow a fictional character whose life intersected with Catherine's. I'm not a big fan of this style, mostly because I want to read historical fiction from the perspective of interesting real people. I don't care about an author's fictional maid.

And Barbara was not a particularly interesting person. She wasn't very likable and her story wandered around, occasionally taking digressions I didn't care about at all. This made the book feel slower and dragging at points.

Barbara opens her tale with a bold statement about being a super spy, but I was never impressed with her spying capabilities. She seemed incredibly naive and not at all able to keep up with the political machinations of the real historical figures. Most of the book skirted around the periphery of Catherine, Russian politics, and her rise to power. I felt left out of a lot of the meat of Catherine's story.

As far as a history lesson cheat sheet, The Winter Palace was decent, but not spectacular. I definitely felt the difference between the Russian court and other European courts I've read about (mostly English and French). I don't feel like Eva Stachniak dug as deep into the nitty gritty details I want out of historical fiction, but this was a good foundation. Knowing little, I learned a lot. Had I known more though, I think the details would have felt pretty sparse. 

All that said, The Winter Palace is the type of book I needed to read to the end in order to get the full impact. It wasn't until the end, when Barbara came to an huge realization, that I realized just what the author had done and how powerfully she had managed to convey the ruthlessness, calculation, and cruel genius of Catherine. I don't think this would have hit so strongly had she chosen a first person narrative through Catherine's perspective. It reminded me a lot of the narrative trick Megan Whalen Turner pulls off in The King of Attolia.

Bottom line

So, while The Winter Palace was in some ways a big disappointment, in other ways it was a huge triumph. I'm very glad I read it, even though I still feel like I want to find a book to get to know Catherine better.

The book covers Catherine's earlier years before she became Empress and ends right as she gains power. There is a sequel, but The Winter Palace ends just fine as a standalone and I don't think I'll be picking up the sequel (BAD reviews).

Explanation of rating system: Star Rating Key 
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