My New Year's Resolution Was to Consume Only Queer Media—Here's How That Went

Some of you may remember that since January I have been keeping track of every book I have read and every film/TV series I have watched, giving it a small review or comment, rating out of ten, and colour-coding it in a spreadsheet based on whether or not I would consider it queer media. I did start with some criteria, but threw them out early on because I realised things were slipping through the net. As a result, my categorisation is pretty much vibes-based. I am sure that some of my choices contradict themselves and many of you may disagree. To you I say, it's harder to find where the line should be drawn than you think. As a matter of fact, Plebs (Season 6) gets a special rating because I really could not work out where to put it. 

The categories are: Green (absolutely queer), Purple (debatable), Yellow (Plebs Season 6), Red (not queer).

Though I have tried my best to flag up any particularly egregious slips, product may still contain spoilers. Read ahead at your own risk.

BOOKS

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske — 8/10 — Maybe I was just feeling uncharacteristically generous towards smutty YA novels when I read this, but as William Morris' number one fan I wholeheartedly endorse it.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu — 5/10 — For all that Le Fanu tries to make her out as some sort of evil mastermind, Carmilla is in fact quite stupid.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov — 10/10 — This is what literature's all about, baby.

Letters of Anastasia Nikolaevna (translated) by Helen Azar — 10/10 — Does exactly what it says on the tin.

The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne — 0/10 — See here.

The Still by David Feintuch — 6/10 — Predictable and often exhausting. I am, however, in awe of Feintuch's bravery to deliberately write a protagonist who just really sucks for like 4/5ths of the book.

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice — 8/10 — As a fan of the first book's ending, I simply choose to believe that this is Lestat's fanfiction about himself.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins-Reid — 5/10 — I did not care about a single one of these characters.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee — 7/10 — A bisexual character who is in fact bisexual? Astounding.

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee — 3/10 — Felicity Montague is my go-to example of a 'feminist' character who isn't really a feminist and instead has a ton of internalised misogyny to work through. 

The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee — 8/10 — This was uncomfortably like reading my own inner monologue spilled out on a page. Fantastic job.

The House by the Dvina: a Russian Childhood by Eugenie Fraser — 7/10 — I'd like to issue a general recommendation for this and also the accompanying documentary.

The Princess Cassamassima by Henry James — 8/10 — I loved the vast majority of it but the awful awful non-ending means that I can't in good conscience recommend it.

Elektra by Jennifer Saint — 4/10 — Oh look, somebody else who needs to search up what the word 'feminist' means.

Maurice by E.M. Forster — 9/10 — Brilliant quality aside, how cool is it that this exists at all‽

The Intoxicating Mr. Lavelle by Neil Blackmore — 4/10 — Blackmore imagines himself profound. He is not. In addition, having read this and half of another of his novels, I can say with some confidence that his characters all have one trait and act accordingly. 

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov — 5/10— An interesting concept that I don't think quite hit the mark. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt — 9/10 — I don't think a day has gone by since I read this that I haven't thought about it at least a little bit.

Daughters of the Winter Queen by Nancy Goldstone — 8/10 — This book reignited an obsession but I'm afraid that my family favourite remains Prince Rupert.

The King Must Die by Mary Renault — 6/10 — Not her best work, it must be said. 

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb — 7/10 — I am desperate for a Verity spin-off novel. I would happily read a book about this man tying his shoelaces in the morning.

The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria by Christopher Mcintosh — 5/10 — Frankly, there wasn't all that much information about Ludwig in this book.

Letters from Russia by Adolphe de Custine — 7/10 — I just learnt that Custine is the guy spouting scathing critiques of all the courtiers in Russian Ark which I feel is a legacy he would be proud of. 

Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb — 7/10 — There was simply not enough Verity content in this book. I expect better in future.

The Russian Court at Sea by Frances Welch — 6/10 — Some of Welch's wording...made me a tad uncomfortable. Let us not discuss queer historical figures as though they're quaint and amusing curiosities please.

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio — 8/10 — I have an awful lot to say concerning the ending so if you are planning to read this book, skip ahead. Ahem: The idea of Oliver getting out of prison only to learn that James killed himself due to guilt is a great one, but to turn around and then say 'oh he was just pretending actually' makes the whole thing ring really hollow. Like, what was the in-universe point? Even in a writing sense I cannot understand it—the only reason I can think of would be for the Romeo and Juliet symbolism but there isn't any because Oliver doesn't then proceed to kill himself. If it was because Rio wanted to avoid the 'kill your gays' trope then she could've ended on a slightly grim but ultimately very touching reunion which would have left a much better taste in my mouth.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt — 10/10 — What a masterpiece. Certainly the best thing I've ever read and quite probably one of the best novels ever written. Beyond deserving of the Pulitzer.

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich — 3/10 — Everything I disliked about Heartstopper turned up to max. Felt like barely passable fanfiction of another story.

The World of Christopher Marlowe by David Riggs — 9/10 — Informative and wonderfully written.

Stats:

Out of 29 books read, 20 fell into the green and purple categories giving me the somewhat unfortunate score of 69%. 

FILMS

Effie Gray — 3/10 — In a word: dull.

The Handmaiden — 9/10 — Some performances were less than stellar but otherwise brilliant.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) — 6/10 — Everyone in this film is astoundingly pretty. That was my main takeaway.

Giant Little Ones — 7/10 — Really quite sad.

Juno — 1/10 — The cast was fantastic, unfortunately they were given nothing redeemable to work with.

Firebird — 10/10 — My love for this film goes beyond words. If for some god-forsaken reason you don't want to watch the whole thing, you at least have to watch the wedding sequence—a masterclass in filmmaking.

Downton Abbey: A New Era — 5/10 —I wish Julian Fellowes wasn't so insistent on having his characters be either married or in a relationship at all times.

Containment — 3/10 — Didn't really get it.

Gosford Park — 2/10 — On paper I like this film, in practice it didn't click with me.

Crimson Tide — 7/10 — Genuinely amazed by how much I enjoyed this. I typed up a huge paragraph about how good the scene where Ramsey's lurching up the stairs to the control room is but for once I'm going to spare you.

Ammonite — 2/10 — Another dull one. 

Operation Hyacinth — 8/10 — Big fan. Simple as that.

Benediction — 7/10 — Visuals? Sublime. Acting? Exquisite. Writing? Sure. Editing? Argh.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies — 8/10 — Police Squad on steroids. Best gag is how softly Moeller says "oh scheisse" as he repeatedly tries to pull the flag away only for the damage to keep getting worse and worse. 

The Scapegoat (2012) — 7/10 — Some aspects were great and others highly questionable. I don't know how the source material deals with it but I didn't get the impression that Sturridge is aware of how creepy the ending is when you think about the implications.

Persuasion (2022) — 1/10 — We all know.

War and Peace (1956) — 6/10 — At this point, I'm beginning to think that my man Hippolyte Kuragin doesn't appear in any adaptations. I'm also a particularly big fan of the scene where Petya gets on his horse, it cuts to Natasha, and then cuts to what is very obviously a grown man galloping away. 

Beverly Hills Cop — 5/10 — You could so easily do a gay reading of this. Like, you'd barely even need to invoke death of the author.

Look Both Ways — 5/10 — Cool concept, mostly entertaining.

Austenland — 6/10 — I didn't really care for the first two-thirds but the last third unironically blew me away.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio — 7/10 — I'm sure you can guess how pleased I am about Hubert's character arc but the film as a whole felt a little tired.

Atonement — 3/10 — Kind of just wanted to be watching something else.

The Half of It — 7/10 — Another that I didn't expect to like as much as I did. Some not half-bad social commentary either. 

Thoroughbreds — 9/10 — Man, what a loss Anton Yelchin was. If the film was this good then I cannot imagine the experience that would've been watching this play out in a theatre. 

Brokeback Mountain — 8/10 — A lot of stuff I liked, some stuff that feels a bit out of date. Someone please tell me that the hat symbolism is, like, film 101 and not just me reading into everything again.

Your Name Engraved Herein — 4/10 — I think it might've been down to a bad translation but I could not follow this film at all. The parts I could understand were lovely, though.

The Goldfinch — 8/10 — Aneurin Barnard as adult Boris was an inspired decision and an absolute treat to watch. My critical (slightly spoilery) notes, however, are thus: 1. Amsterdam was way too condensed, the film is already like two and a half hours long they could've stuck another ten-fifteen minutes on there. 2. I'm a little miffed about how they almost completely ditched Boris/Theo—maybe the young actors were too young to show one of those scenes (also that's another point, why don't they get any older during Vegas?), but I think the fact that teenage Theo self-admittedly loved Boris is an important factor in why he's willing to trust him so much as an adult despite his betrayal. 3. In the book when the painting is stolen again and Boris gets shot, it's Boris and not Theo who is nearly hysterical about the painting while Theo's just desperate to make sure Boris is okay. Film-Theo barely glances at Boris and apparently just...leaves him bleeding out in the car park? If I were film-Boris I wouldn't have bothered coming back.

My Policeman — 5/10 — Considerably less than the sum of its parts.

Stats

Out of 28 films watched, 16 fell into the green and purple categories giving me an overall score of 57%.

TV SERIES

Troy: Fall of a City — 7/10 — I'm so pleased that this wasn't yet another aggressively masculine and heterosexual Trojan War retelling. I am not so pleased about the bizarre way they decided to handle Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis. Iliad-Briseis is a slave. Iliad-Achilles is a rapist. It's fine. David, it's fine. Nobody was going to call you a misogynist.

All of Us are Dead — 9/10 — Pointed criticism of the Korean government disguised as a fun zombie show. Especially poignant if you read up about Sewol before watching. 

Someone Has to Die — 6/10 — 144 minutes of mediocre drama followed by 8 minutes of the most spectacular television that Netflix has ever or will ever produce.

What We Do In the Shadows — 7/10 — Pansexual vampires, what's not to love?

Gentleman Jack — 3/10 — I do not care about mines or finance; I cannot stress this enough. Had a very pro-capitalism and pro-industrialism take which I understand the reasoning behind but dislike nonetheless.

A Very English Scandal — 9/10 — Watched this with my father who kept saying "I remember that" after every scene, but otherwise very enjoyable. I wish the government had kept sending out NICs because I can never find my number when I need it.

This is Going to Hurt — 8/10 — Yeah, it did. 

Good Omens — 5/10 — Twee in that very specific, late 90s/early 2000s British media way.

Bridgerton (Season 2) — 4/10 — Better than the first but that was a very low bar to clear. My personal theory is that they're pushing back the Benedict season because they can't decide whether they want to make him bi or not. 

The Gilded Age — 4/10 — It's just...he's just doing Downton Abbey again. This is the script for Downton Abbey except the token gay man is rich this time. 

Our Flag Means Death — 10/10 — I am a fundamentally different person for having watched this show. 

Heartstopper — 4/10 — I see the appeal, but it's much too sweet for me. Felt like I was shovelling spoonfuls of sugar into my mouth the whole time.

Derry Girls (Season 3) — 7/10 — Liked most of it, but the ending felt very mawkish. 

First Kill — 5/10 — I need you to know how ready I was to love this. Lesbian vampires? Written by V.E Schwab? It just...the CGI sucked and you can absolutely tell that Schwab has never written for a visual medium before because of the sheer amount of voiceover that she seems to consider necessary at all times. It was actually distracting. 

The Sandman — 9/10 — Loved it on the whole, but there were a few misplaced comedic moments that really messed with the tone. 

Kingdom (Season 1) (2019) — 5/10 — Fine, just not really for me.

Plebs (Season 6) — 6/10 — I adore Plebs but it should've wrapped up a season or two before this. 

Ghosts (Season 4) — 5/10 — This one wasn't very funny to me but I can't pinpoint why.

Rings of Power — 5/10 — They uh...they certainly made some choices, didn't they?

House of the Dragon — 10/10 — This was so interesting in a character-writing sense. In their desperation to make the Blacks the unequivocal good guys, the writers made them all really dull except for maybe Daemon and Corlys. Even though a lot of the Greens are 'bad' people, probably because of that, they're just so much more compelling.

Young Royals (Season 2) — 7/10 — Not quite as good as the first but the cliffhanger made me very excited for a potential season 3. 

Stats

Out of 21 TV series watched, 17 fell into the green and purple categories giving me an overall score of 81%

All of this gives me a total total score of 53/78 or 68%. Did I do what I set out to do? Obviously not. But in my search for queer media to beef up my scores, I found some hidden gems that I probably wouldn't have glanced at otherwise. Maybe this extraordinarily long list has given you a few ideas too.

If you have any thoughts or would like to kick up an argument, feel free to send me a message detailing everything I got wrong. Otherwise I thank you dearly for reading, and wish that your upcoming holiday season be merry and gay. 

The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne — a Very Negative Review

Imagine, if you will, the most average book ever written. A book attempting nothing that hasn't already been done to death, a book that challenges nobody, a book with no surprises save just how bad it is. That book is The House of Special Purpose.

I'll be separating my review into three sections:

Things I Didn't Like About the Book as a Book, Historical Inaccuracies, and Characterisation. Please do note the absence of a Things I Liked category. It wouldn't have been worth typing out the heading.

1. Things I Didn't Like About the Book as a Book

This book is, simply put, boring. Considering the source material, that fact might be an achievement in and of itself. 

The main problem is that a lot of things happen but the writing is such that you don't realise anything has happened until it's already over. For example, the inciting incident is our protagonist Georgy preventing the assassination of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. I don't remember much about this sequence beyond slight confusion as I struggled to parse what exactly Georgy was doing and how he possibly had the time and room to do it in. You may think that this was a deliberate effort to portray the panic and disorientation that such a situation would cause. I can assure you it was not. 

A consequence of this is that while hypothetically interesting events are left, right, and centre of the narrative, they remain only hypothetically so. This might not be such a problem in the hands of a more skilled writer, but Boyne is evidently not that writer. Plot-driven stories are perfectly valid and that seems to be what Boyne was going for here, but the trouble is that you need to be able to write a plot.

He also doesn't seem to know how to write characters...at all. You don't get attached to any of them because they are either so bland or so inconsistent that they don't feel anything like real people. What can I tell you about Georgy? Well, he's nice. Except for one scene wherein he is the most arbitrarily cruel character you have ever read about. He has old-fashioned values, which we are explicitly told is a trait of his before ever getting to see it in action. 

Another problem it had—though this is tangentially related to the main one—is that there are too many improbable situations waved away for the sake of the story. In historical fiction, such scenes are to be expected and even encouraged. But, as Boyne has discovered, there is such a thing as too much fiction. Why on earth would both Alexandra and Anastasia be walking (separately) unguarded and alone through Mogilev at night? How could Maria possibly orchestrate a full-on affair with a random guard who her parents barely know and do not trust? Most egregiously, in what universe would it be possible for Anastasia to sneak out of the Winter Palace and wander around St. Petersburg?

My next problems are, I suspect, the result of personal preference so read ahead with that caveat firmly in your mind. 

Boyne does the thing I despise where the author sprinkles in words from another language in order to make the book feel more authentic. The only thing this achieves is to draw the reader out of the book and make them wonder whether, as the rest of the book is not explicitly in Russian, we are to imagine that all of this is being conducted in English. 

Next, and this problem is three-pronged, names. Boyne is somewhat inconsistent in how he chooses to spell names. He anglicises Nikolai to Nicholas, Nikolaevna to Nicolaevna, and Maria to Marie. This is all well and good, but it does beg the question of why he chooses to leave other names such as Daniil or even Georgy in their transliterated forms when perfect English equivalents exist.

I also suspect that Boyne doesn't quite grasp Russian names. The protagonist's sisters are only ever referred to by the diminutives of their given names: Asya, Liska, and Talya. At first, I thought this was to show how close he was to them, but after reading the rest of this book I have the sneaking suspicion that Boyne thinks these are the given names. 

One character has the patronymic "Vladyavich" which would imply that his father's given name was Vladya; a diminutive of Vladislav. Very bizarre, but not necessarily out of the realms of possibility. I think, however, that Boyne means to imply that this character's father was Vladislav and not Vladya because of the even more bizarre names possessed by two other characters: Kolek Boryavich and Sergei Stasyovich (who is incidentally Maria's guard love). Not only is Kolek a very strange name in and of itself, but his patronymic is not real. We are told explicitly that Kolek's father is called Borys and so his patronymic should be Borisovich (or Borysovich as Boyne insists on spelling it). Stasyovich, if we follow the line of logic set out by these, is in Boyne-world supposed to come from Stanislav but in reality would imply Stas', a diminutive of Stanislav. I'm beginning to think that Boyne is allergic to research.

Another peculiar example is the nickname "Pasha" belonging to our protagonist, whose given name you might remember is Georgy. Pasha is a common diminutive of Pavel and so an odd thing to call a Georgy. The justification is that Pasha means "small." You may note that Pasha means small because Pavel means small and not because it's simply a word independent of anything. This leads me onto the third prong.

Georgy, a peasant boy from nowhere-ville with zero education, seems to know the meaning of every name off the top of his head. Zoya means life, Pasha means small, Arina means peace, Georgy means farmer—all this and more he dutifully rattles off over 493 pages. Does any of it have any bearing on the plot? Not really, no. Boyne would just like us to know that he did some googling before sitting down to write. In fact, the very last words of the book are explaining the meaning of Zoya which in some ways felt quite fitting—it at least let me get one last eye roll in.

2. Historical Inaccuracies

Oh, where to start?

The first problem makes itself apparent quite literally on page 1 when Georgy informs us that he was born in Kashin, a town in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. What is the Grand Duchy of Muscovy? Well, you'd be forgiven for asking given that it hasn't existed since 1547. And this is not Georgy showing off his splendid education yet again, as he later tells someone that he's from the Grand Duchy of Muscovy and that person responds as though this is a perfectly normal thing to say and not the equivalent of me describing myself as hailing from Mercia. What Boyne meant is the Moscow Governate, but I suspect he was too tired to find out after looking up all those names.

We continue with the theme of location for my next point (which is really two points, but it's probably best to put them together). This book begins in 1915, some time into the War and a year that the Imperial family spent almost entirely at the Alexander Palace. Reading this book, however, you wouldn't know it. Much of it takes place in the Winter Palace—a residence that Nicholas II and his family barely used at the best of times, nevermind during the War. Throughout 1915 and 1916, they are described to be taking their usual holidays to Livadia and aboard the Standart "as if the world was as it had ever been." The Standart was, in fact, placed in dry dock when the War broke out and wasn't removed until long after the 1917 revolution. Similarly, the last time Nicholas II and his family stayed at Livadia Palace was before the War in 1914. I can understand that Boyne wanted to give a little variety to his settings, but to do so and then put it forward as evidence for the Romanovs' nonchalance towards their country's suffering is perhaps a little deceitful.

My next few points are comparatively minor, but worth mentioning all the same. Firstly, the Grand Duchesses are described as having all their lessons as a group of four. In reality, they had most lessons individually with occasional lessons being taken in their pairs (Olga & Tatiana and Maria & Anastasia). The only teacher ever mentioned in the book is Monsieur Gilliard (known as Zhilik within the family) who taught all the children French and oversaw Tsarevich Alexei's entire education. It's strongly implied that he was the children's only teacher which would be rather a lot for even a man of Gilliard's capabilities.

Now we come to Eira. Eira was a yappy terrier who belonged to the Empress and who, as Boyne correctly characterises her, was little liked by others. Unfortunately, I must now revoke this singular historical accuracy point because she died in 1906 and was therefore not present at the Ipatiev House, as Boyne claims.

On the subject of the Ipatiev House, Boyne has much insight to offer. Apparently, it had an "utter lack of security" with both the front door and the gate being kept open at all times. Georgy, and probably the reader, wonders why the family "didn't simply come downstairs and flee." The windows were seemingly not whitewashed in July as Georgy sees the Empress through one of them, and then Maria is allowed to simply waltz out onto the street in search of Eira who has run out of the aforementioned open front door. Georgy even asks Maria how she was allowed out and she informs him that "They give us as much freedom as we want." Need I even comment?

Later that same day, Alexei comes wandering out to meet Georgy at the front gate and proclaims that he "has been quite well." In reality, Alexei suffered a haemophilic attack several months earlier at Tobolsk and was unable to walk for the rest of his life.

There is a claim made by Anastasia that "My parents went to a different party every night of the week" before the War broke out. This is obviously an exaggeration in order to get across the point she's making, but even a scaled-back version of this claim would not be true. Alexandra hated parties because they gave her headaches and she avoided them as much as possible—part of the reason the aristocracy hated her so much was because throwing parties was considered one of the Empress' duties and Alexandra didn't fulfil it.

3.  Characterisation

Let's do this one from best to worst. That way, I can pretend that this review has any sense of structure and coherence.

I've already spoken a little about Georgy, but let's dig deeper. As I mentioned before, he's a generally mild character with seemingly no real opinions about or attachments to anything beyond his love for Anastasia and by extension her family. The biggest problem I had with him (and, for that matter, the plot) is that I cannot imagine Anastasia falling for such a nothing person. This man has the personality of microwave porridge. And yet, somehow, he is also simultaneously The Worst.

At one point, his sister Asya turns up in St. Petersburg. She explains that she's hoping he'll be able to get her a job at the palace, and that she's been living in a fairly bad situation in the city but will return home should he be unable to find her anything. Asya's entire characterisation up until this point has been how much she wants to live in St. Petersburg and, if she can't be a part of it, to at least be adjacent to high society. He has been hearing all his life about how much she wants this. So Georgy agrees to ask around, and they part ways. He speaks to the head of staff at the Winter Palace and she does have an opening for a maid, so he puts his sister forward. But when he meets up with Asya, he decides to tell her that there was nothing available which forces her to go back to Kashin. Why does he do this? Georgy doesn't really have an explanation. The real reason is, of course, so that Boyne can wave away the question of why none of Georgy's siblings are ever seen again after the first third of the book. But it means that Boyne has now written a character who does awful things like that for no real reason and never follows up on this trait. You might say that real people do mean things for no reason all the time in real life, and you'd be right. But this is fiction—and fiction has to make sense.

With one (almost) irrelevant exception, the rest of the main cast is comprised of the Romanov family who are accurate to life with wildly varying degrees of success.

I think the most well done was Alexei. In fact, beyond a few grievances with how and when he gets injured, I'd say that Alexei is pretty much perfect. I don't really know how Boyne managed to achieve this; the entire time I was reading I kept waiting for him to write something horribly un-Alexei-like but I don't think he ever did. There, he can have back that point I took away for crimes against Eira.

I'm going to award second best to Olga, but don't be fooled! This does not mean that Olga was done well—I would go so far as to say that she wasn't done at all. She gets two lines, and neither betray much about what she's like. The first is something about Georgy looking tired, while the second is complaining about having to become a nurse. Olga appears a few times in the background of other scenes but doesn't really do anything and so unfortunately that's all I can comment on.

Third place goes to the Emperor himself, Nicholas II. I believe that Boyne has generally portrayed him well, though there are a few...hitches, I suppose you could say. First, book Nicholas seems quite happy to divulge his innermost thoughts to some eighteen-year-old in his guard. Georgy doesn't really do anything to make himself a particular friend to Nicholas and never says much of consequence during these little monologues—that would require Georgy to have opinions, and we don't want that. Nicholas is also very exasperated by his wife, Alexandra, and Boyne claims that "their relationship had begun to disintegrate." Anyone who has read their wartime letters can tell you this is exactly the opposite of the truth; I had to stop at one point because they're almost painfully sentimental. Most, if not all, interactions they have throughout the book involve some sort of argument and it's made obvious that Nicholas is quite tired of her.

Alexandra herself suffers from the usual charges set against her by historians who like to build easy, one-dimensional caricatures out of those they study. Boyne's Alexandra is hysterical, frigid, and unkind. When she isn't shouting at staff she's ignoring them, when she isn't lecturing her children she's tricking them into caring for her. Her family all dislike her and seem to try to avoid her as much as possible. If you know me, you know how strongly I feel about this abhorrent treatment that Alexandra has been given over the years. It's reductive, misogynistic, and frankly betrays a lack of research. If she was truly this awful, selfish, cold-hearted person then why would she have so many friends? Why would her husband speak of her with nothing but adoration? Why would her children spend so much of their time in her company? Reading her scenes in this book I was certainly disappointed, but I can't say that I was surprised.

Now, Boyne's portrayals of Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia are very much a race to the bottom.

Anastasia is our love interest for this book and consequently a nothing character. Not quite so bad as Georgy, but certainly far from good. I can see almost nothing of the real vivacious, high-spirited Anastasia in this book Anastasia. Oh and, surprise, she somehow manages to survive her family's murder by simply walking out of those aforementioned open front gates. Truly, an original and well-written twist.

Maria starts out by being quite mean and stuck up, but halfway through does some sort of spontaneous 180 when I assume Boyne deigned to read her Wikipedia article. The only thing she does of consequence is have that affair with the splendidly named Sergei Stasyovich, because in Boyne-world being a romantic translates to going against your entire belief system to have a little fun. Poor Maria.

Without a doubt, the worst of all was Tatiana. I think it's actually impossible that Boyne did even the tiniest amount of research into her, and if he did then he actively decided to go against everything he read. 

Our introduction to book Tatiana is her teasing Anastasia for defending Georgy against one of Maria's mean comments about him. What does Boyne write? "'Our sister is in love,' cried Tatiana." It was at this point I knew all was lost. In real life, Tatiana was as shy as her mother and wouldn't have dared to say something like that in front of a stranger the very first time they met—in the middle of a lesson, no less! She then goes on to discuss Georgy as though he isn't there, going so far as to call him a "simpleton."

Halfway through the book, during a supposed mid-war stay at Livadia Palace, Alexandra suggests that she along with Olga and Tatiana train to be nurses. Real Tatiana was dutiful and eager to help in any way she could during the War, and regardless adored her mother so that she would've done anything she asked without complaint. So what does Boyne write? "I turned to look at the Empress's two eldest daughters, who had both grown a little pale at the mention of their names [...] 'Father?' began Tatiana, but he was already nodding his head..."

Boyne then appears to mix up Olga and Tatiana, describing Tatiana thus: "She looked pale and had lost weight since her nursing duties had begun." Olga, in fact, suffered from what might be called depression while she worked as a nurse and later suffered a nervous breakdown. Tatiana thrived. She did not, for example, say things like "There are mornings when I wake up and wish that I might fall ill myself in order not to have to be there." She also talks about how little the doctors seem to care about rank—something that I find indescribably funny given that one of the most well-known anecdotes about her (one that was included in her 2013 Wikipedia article, I checked) concerns how she complained about not being allowed to boil silk and breathe carbolic acid on account of her age and rank. 

I shall leave you with a quote that Boyne attributes to Tatiana while discussing her nursing, but which I think would be far more suited to describing how he writes historical fiction:

"Oh but I'm terrible at it!"