Customer Reviews

The Aviary Gate: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman, graduate student Elizabeth Staveley is researching captivity stories from the late 16th century when she comes across a four hundred year old manuscript tucked inside of a book in the Oriental Library Reading Room at Oxford University. Knowing the treasured, never before told story she is about to uncover, she transcribes the manuscript before turning it over to the library staff.

While tied up in a frustrating relationship with a suspected womanizer, Elizabeth takes off from Oxford and flies to Istanbul to further research the story of Celia Lamprey, the daughter of an English sea captain who dies at sea leaving her to eventually be sold into the harem of the Sultan of Constantinople. While a controversial member of the Sultans harem, she discovers that her fiancee, Paul Pindar, whom she was supposed to marry prior to being sold into captivity, is in fact in Constantinople as the secretary to the English ambassador to deliver a gift to the Sultan thus opening English trading opportunities.

The story is woven between the present day and the year 1599 in Constantinople (now present day Istanbul). The story of the secret life inside the harem has been well-researched and very intriguing, although the present day story of Elizabeth lacked a little intrigue. Other notable, fascinating characters in this book are the Valide Sultan (Sultan's mother), the black eunuch guards, and Jamal al-Andalus, an outstanding astronomer. Overall, this was a very rich, exotic, and interesting read, especially since I enjoy historical fiction.

The Aviary Gate intertwines the story of modern Oxford researcher Elizabeth Staveley with the 400-year-old story of Celia Lamprey, a sea captain's daughter assumed to have died in a shipwreck but actually held as a concubine in the Sultan's harem in Constantinople. Celia's fiance, an English merchant, also happens to be in Constantinople serving as secretary to the British Embassy, and a rescue attempt ensues. Hickman recreates the world of the Sultan's harem in vivid detail, and this exotic setting is the best aspect of The Aviary Gate. The other nice touch is the ending. Without giving anything away, Hickman resolves the historical story of Celia and Paul with grace and restraint uncommon in many of the other historical books that are so popular right now. On the downside, Elizabeth and Celia are not particularly likeable or interesting as protagonists, though Celia shows more gumption and strength of character than Elizabeth, who continues to moon over an obviously commitment-phobic boyfriend. Also, some of the dialog in the historical story is overly modern and jarringly anachronistic. Overall, the interesting setting and the masterful ending make this book a worthwhile read.

I'm not sure why I seem to be doomed to try and seek out books I really loved again, only by different authors and with different plots, like they've been reincarnated. I guess I'm chasing that experience you have when you find a really good book-the kind of high that leaves you envious of all the people who have yet to discover the treasure you have propped up in your lap. Yes, I admit it. I, Lilly Flora, am a story addict (drug of choice historical fiction.)

This is how I ended up with this book, despite the lukewarm reviews. I was hoping to find something similar to "The Fourth Queen" by Debbie Taylor (so wonderful!) and got instead some kind of weird cross between "The Secret History of the Pink Carnation" by Lauren Willig (decent) and "Harem" by Dora Levy Mossanen ( so horrible and with the incest and child abuses.)

"The Aviary Gate" is a novel with two stories. One is set in the modern day, starring Elizabeth, a grad student chasing down captivity narratives for a philosophy thesis when she comes across a fragment of a document relating to a Celia Lamprey who was presumed to have drowned in a shipwreck but may have actually survived to be sold as a slave to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Elizabeth has an intuition about the fragment and a feeling about the story (and a hateful boyfriend to get away from) so she heads to Istanbul to see what she can see.

The other half of the novel is the story of Celia in 1559, locked behind the harem gates in the Empire's capital with one other survivor of her attacked ship, a young nun named Annette and Celia's fiancé Paul, a merchant who has been in Constantinople on a diplomatic mission which seems to consist of waiting for a suitably impressive gift to give to the Sultan to arrive from England so trading rights may be secured. Needless to say, neither one of the lovebirds knows the other is there....but then through an almost impossible once in a lifetime lucky break Paul finds out. Unfortunately, Celia's current position means she might as well be dead as she belongs solely to the Sultan and there is no way out.

Will Paul and Celia find each other? Will Celia escape the harem? Will the scandals and secrets and plots in the harem ever make sense to the reader? Will Elizabeth do any actual research or just get mystic feelings about the past? Will she get over her crappy boyfriend?

They say it's not good to mix certain drugs together and I think the same applies to books. Though I'm sure the plot of this novel was an original idea, and not a bad one at that, Katie Hickman wrote a book about white women in harems, which my book lust sensors picked up on but it affected my brain like a bad mix of a book I loved (The Fourth Queen) and one I pretty much hated ("Harem.") Add that in to a plot that's going nowhere for the first two hundred pages, a bunch of obscure references to nightingales which eventually turns out to be not nearly as important as one thinks and character reactions that make no sense and you get....well a book I'll never be addicted to.

Despite wanting to love it (oh so much) in the end I didn't even like "The Aviary Gate."

Long story short, I wouldn't prescribe this book to anyone (unless maybe you enjoyed "Harem). Two stars.

" The Aviary Gate" is absolutely amazing reincarnation of the times of the passion, secrecy and surviving. Brilliantly written, breathtaking and imaginative . One of these rare books which will haunt you for a long time and make you continue this story on your own. Just a gem.

The Aviary Gate is a story of two romances. One takes place in ancient Constantinople, the other takes place in present day Istanbul. Elizabeth Staveley is our modern day heroine who stumbles across part of a letter detailing the story of Celia Lamprey, a young woman who was captured and sold into slavery. The story alternates between Elizabeth's trip to Istanbul (taken to further research Celia's story), and Celia's adventures in the sultan's harem in Constantinople. Overall I found both stories very interesting and entertaining.

Elizabeth Staveley is a graduate student working on escape narratives when she comes across mention of Celia Lamprey, who may have been the first known English girl to be sold into a Turkish harem. After her discovery, the story intertwines the narrative of Elizabeth, who struggles with modern day love, with Celia's, who longs to escape the harem and be reunited with her love, Paul Pindar.

I really enjoyed Celia's story. I found the environment of the harem fascinating and the political machinations inside of it were intriguing and added to the mystery. I didn't expect at all what would happen and remained just as clueless as Celia, if not more so, which I always like. It was clear that this was an intricate, self-contained world; I even more enjoyed the backstory of some of the girls, particulary the Valide Sultan's. I found it to be very good historical fiction.

I did not enjoy Elizabeth's story as much. I think the author, Katie Hickman, was going for something like The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, but it doesn't work here. For one thing, Elizabeth's life is too melodramatic and that takes away from the story. She seems barely interested in Celia and makes discoveries only after the reader has encountered them, so as a result her chapters drag as we wait for her to make some discovery or feel sensual or sleep with someone (although having a romantic interest named Mehmet made the crusades historian inside me very happy for purely silly reasons). I don't think they added to the book, and in all honesty it would have worked a lot better without them at all. I liked Hickman's message, that history speaks to us even now, but overall, not worth it.

I'd wait for this one in paperback. I enjoyed it, but there is better out there.

The Aviary Gate is the duel story of Celia Lamprey and Elizabeth Staveley. Elizabeth is a modern day scholar researching the story of Celia, a young English woman who is kidnapped following a shipwreck and forced into the harem of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Lost and presumed dead to her family and friends, Celia must learn to survive in a forbidding and strange place. As Elizabeth hunts for clues about this missing girl that time and history forgot, the story of Celia is told in all it's bewitching detail. The Sultan's mother, the Valide, has plans for Celia which will put her at the very top of the harem and directly in the path of certain danger. Plots and enemies lurk around every corner, and everyone, it seems, has a hidden agenda and harbors dangerous ambitions. After a murderous plot is unveiled, Celia realizes that no one's place in the harem is secure. Although she thinks that she must languish here forever, she is not forgotten. Someone from her past is searching for her, and he's gotten closer than she can imagine. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has more than a scholarly puzzle on her plate. She is having problems with her lover, Marius. After numerous disappointments and heartbreaks, Elizabeth must decide what is most important to her, and what must be cleared away. In an effort to gain perspective, Elizabeth travels to Istanbul, where new opportunities arise for herself and for her studies of Celia.

With the clever use of the two story lines, the author is able to expound on detail and back story that the straightforward narrative of Celia's story lacks, while introducing another heroine. This dual story also had the effect of heightening the suspense of both stories, and creating a palpable anticipation in the reader. Without Elizabeth's analysis of the past, the story of Celia would have sacrificed its depth and importance.

The characters of Celia and Elizabeth were very different, yet somehow reminiscent of each other. Though both lived in different times, with different political and social customs, both struggled with the unfulfilling realities of love. Both women took control of their lives, albeit in different ways, and made their own destinies. Each examined her situation and courageously fought for happiness. These shared emotions of fear, discovery and heartache spurred them onwards in their emotional growth.

I particularly liked the author's description of the harem life. The clothes, jewels, and other facets of the foreign lifestyle were described with elegant confidence. It was entrancing to read about the ritual bathing and grooming, the intricate social hierarchies, and formal restrictions of behavior. The rivalries and jealousies of the women of the harem were startling in their fierceness and their resolution, and even the most docile of the women held secrets and alliances. It was often hard to gauge just who was targeting whom, and for what reason, which made this story unpredictable and satisfying.

The cast of characters were rendered in very exacting detail; they were multi-dimensional and vivid, each having their own motivations and concerns. The morally dubious characters still had moments of humility and compassion, while the villains were singularly unscrupulous, yet shrewd enough to mimic sincere behavior. Even the heroes and heroines had unappealing aspects that weren't glossed over.

Ultimately, I was impressed by the range of this book. It was once a mystery, love story, and historical novel. The plot was engaging, and the characters interesting. The book did not suffer long-windiness or become tedious. Though the ending wasn't what I was expecting; it was haunting and evocative. Reading this novel was a rare pleasure.

I ended up reading this book after reading the sequel, The Pindar Diamond. As it turns out, I enjoyed the second book a bit more. In this story, we get the start of Celia and Annetta's lives in the harem of the Sultan after their shipwreck, as well as a peek into the life of Elizabeth, an English philosophy student in modern times who is researching the life of Celia. When the story was following Celia and Annetta and their lives in the harem, it was compelling, interesting, and fast paced. I couldn't get enough about their exotic lives and the inner workings of the harem women. However, the chapters about Elizabeth were an annoying interruption. I didn't care about her character, in fact, she annoyed me. Mostly she was around to give us historical clues about what may have happened to Celia, and then there was some boring story about Elizabeth's love life. I'm glad that Elizabeth's narrative didn't continue into the second book. Overall, it was a good read, if you ignore the few chapters that focus on Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Staveley discovers a mysterious fragment of manuscript, the first page of an account of a woman kidnapped at sea. She has been researching captivity accounts, and is fascinated and sets off on a quest to determine what happened to this Celia Lamprey.

As Elizabeth searches for Celia in our modern era, the book flies to the harem of the Sultan in Constantinople, 1599. A poison attempt has killed one of the concubines and nearly offed the chief of the eunuchs. The power struggles between the Sultan's mother and his favored concubine lead to intrigues and cover-ups, a furious secret activity that Celia Lamprey is thrust into when she is brought forward by the Sultan's mother to be a new favorite for the Sultan (fat and flairless and seemingly oblivious to the furious rivalries and backstabbing surrounding the women of his palace.)

Paul Pindar, a merchant bringing a fancy clock to the Sultan, was once engaged to Celia. When one of his staff members sees her in the Sultan's palace, will Pindar be able to free the woman he loves?

Confused yet?

Katie Hickman's novel is beautifully rendered and lush with life. As she describes the pleasure garden of the Sultan Valide, you can hear the breeze whispering in the trees and smell the heavy perfume of the roses. The exquisite instruments of the Valide's favored astronomer/alchemist are as easy to imagine as the sumptuous sweetmeats and silks the concubines delight in. The ancient world of Constantinople is exquisitely imagined and it's clear that a lot of research went into this work.

In comparison, Hickman's renderings of modern-day Turkey and Elizabeth's quest to forget her lover in England and find Celia are intrusive and vague. Her "research" of Celia relies heavily on intuition and little psychic visions; her constant longing for her lover (who doesn't notice she's gone for weeks) is distracting, and detracts from the main story in the past. Had Hickman abandoned this Mary-Sue-esque character and kept her account solely in 1599, the story would have been much stronger. As it is presented, The Aviary Gate simply has too much going on in too few pages. The many, many different story-lines make it difficult to fully realize several of the main characters, and the flurry of activity can get confusing at times.

That said, Hickman does a wonderful job immersing the reader into the past. The richness of Hickman's descriptions will transport you to the world of the Sultan's harem.

I loved this book. I read it in 3 evenings. I really hated for it to end. It is beautifully written. It is a very unusual subject. I really knew nothing of this part of the world. I took out the national geographic to find the area described in the book. We may be appalled by the slavery mentioned in the book. But, there is more slavery today than in any part of history. What is wrong with this picture???..... I rated this book 5 stars. I am reading the sequel. I will let you know. Linda Cormier