May 27, 2010: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry

Discussion:

This month’s Page Turners’ selection, The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry, received a pretty positive reception. Eight group members gave it a thumbs up vote, two voted thumbs sideways, and one voted thumbs down.

The main detractor from the book was its hokiness. There were a few incidents in the book that seemed very unlikely. One of these was the idea that Alexi Romanov was the antecedent of the new heir instead of Alexi’s sister Anastasia. With Alexi’s hemophilia, Anastasia seemed like the more realistic choice to produce an heir, yet Berry killed her off as a young woman. Another example of hokiness in the book concerns the two would-be assassins Droopy and Cro-Magnon. It does not make a great deal of sense for the people who wanted Lord dead to use the same gangsters every time, especially after he learned to indentify them. Nor would it be realistic to continue employing them after they failed to dispatch their target so often.

One Page Turner found this hokiness and some of the invented fictional details a little too much, and even discussed some of the authentic historical facts in a blog post which she read to us. She commented that reading history as opposed to historical fiction is often more interesting.

Several of us really enjoyed the historical bits in the novel. Many of the group members confessed to having long-held interests in the Romanov family, as well as Fabergé Eggs which played a small part in the book. We thought the description of the Romanovs concealing their jewels on their bodies was particularly realistic, and enjoyed the parts concerning Rasputin too. At the meeting we learned about the legend of his death. Apparently there were many attempts on his life such as a poisoning and a stabbing, before he was finally shot and drowned.

A few readers brought related clippings with them. One was an article that described some DNA testing done in 2008 which confirmed that all the Romanovs had been killed in 1917. The other clipping was a review of the book George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I. Interestingly all three of these royal men were related through England’s Queen Victoria. George V was her son Edward VII’s son, Nicholas II married Alexandra, daughter of Alice, Victoria’s second daughter, and Wilhelm was the son of Princess Victoria, the eldest daughter of the English Queen.

We also discussed the bad guys’ practice of taking on the names of previous politicians such as Lenin and Khrushchev. We liked this because we did not have to figure out too many difficult Russian names, having already been familiar with these men.

We wrapped up the evening by talking about a few of Berry’s other books. One Page Turner had read The Charlemagne Pursuit and recommended it to the rest of us, and another mentioned The Third Secret. We also touched on a few other enjoyable historical fiction series, Gabaldon’s Outlander and Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear.

Flyers for upcoming programming and copies of next month’s selection, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, were distributed as usual, and group members were encouraged to bring suggestions for next year’s reading list to the June and July meetings.