A vividly imagined tapestry of turbulent times.
Upheaval in Tsarist Russia.
After Napoleon’s army retreated from Russia in 1812, years of brutal war left the populace impoverished, roiling with political unrest, and seething with rebellion. Epstein captures the tensions and contradictions of the time in a dramatic page-turner involving the tsar’s wayward younger son, Grand Duke Felix; Felix’s lover, Sasha, a soldier just returned from the war; and Sofia Azarova, a mesmerizing woman whom Sasha rescues when he finds her prostrate in the snow. Felix is an aristocrat out of central casting: “Tall, strong shouldered, and slim-waisted,” Sasha observes; at 28, “he still looked like a storybook prince.” His imperious father has exiled him to the sumptuous but far-off Catherine Palace, where he can draw on an ample allowance to indulge his “zest for grandeur.” But Felix’s life changes irrevocably when Sasha walks in carrying Sofia in his arms. Beautiful, fascinating, and undeniably charismatic, Sofia entices Felix, as if in a spell. Sasha warns him: There is something uncanny about her. She could be a witch, a vila, an evil spirit. But with Sofia’s arrival, Sasha realizes, “the trust between them had become fragile,” and Felix cannot heed his warning. Nor can Marya resist Sofia’s power. Marya is a member of the rebellious popular movement Koalitsiya, which agitates for “legal protections for workers and peasants, a reformed imperial council, religious freedom, [and] a clear path to emancipation for the country’s twenty million serfs.” Sofia infiltrates the movement, seductively manipulating Marya, at the same time as she insinuates herself into the palace. Violence, betrayal, murder, assassination: Sofia incites mayhem. “This was a woman who could change the shape of the world with a thought,” Marya comes to believe. Epstein interweaves a brisk plot with Eastern European folktales that reveal a vila’s insidious power. Sofia, hardly human, was “like a creature from legend, an ancient spirit hungry to watch something beautiful burn.”
A vividly imagined tapestry of turbulent times.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780385549097
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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