"The Romanov Empress" by C.W. Gotner

It was refreshing to read a book about a Romanov Empress that did not focus on the last Romanov family. Rather, this is a story of the last tzar’s mother Maria Fyodorovna. We follow her as a young girl moving from Denmark to Russia to marry the tzar’s heir. Overall, this is a fictionalized account of Maria Fyodorovna’s life. So it is by no means serious historical fiction. Those who prefer well-researched and more comprehensive accounts of historical events will be disappointed. This is more of a light-weight loose historical retelling with many dramatized sections.

I read an advanced reader’s copy and it did have a lot of inaccuracies in the use of Russian patronymics and in one place a proverb was written in a very bad Russian. These are the kinds of details that irk me as a reader and show the author’s carelessness with research. If he takes so little care with the language, one can only assume that historical facts are probably just as muddled. I hope these were corrected in the final published version, but I did not check.

That said, I think the novel gives a very basic introduction to the life of the Russian imperial family, and those who enjoy historical drama, will undoubtedly like this novel. To me, it lacked historic authenticity and was overall a bit too shallow. 2.5 out of 5 stars.