Customer Reviews

The Coronation

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4 star:		(3)
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The layers, allusions and historical winks and nods Akunin includes in his latest Erast Fandorin novel make for a richly textured mystery. On the eve of the coronation of Nicholas II as Tsar, his nephew Michael Gregorevich is kidnapped and held for an imperial ransom. Erast Fandorin is called to save the child, the crown jewels, and to prevent the international scandal that would surely result were the kidnapping made public.

Told through the voice of an imperial butler, the mystery takes time to build steam - primarily because the narrator is a classist snob who revels in his position as servant to the powerful. As the story unfolds, we learn the mastermind behind the kidnapping - "Dr. Lind" - is the arch-enemy of Fandorin, akin to Holmes' Dr. Moriarity.

The similarities between Fandorin and Holmes (and Moriarity and Lind) in this story are legion, and were fun to watch for, (the butler playing a Watson of sorts). The number and variety of historical allusions to the fate of the Romanovs, the geographical landmarks of Moscow and the playful references to the rivalry between the "two capitals" of St. Petersburg and Moscow were also enjoyable to read for.

Like a freight train, _The Cornonation_ takes time to build up steam, but once its momentum gets going, it is difficult to stop. _The Coronation_, in its time quickly becomes a real page turner. Akunin has always been an entertaining writer, _The Coronation_ is another example of his skill. As with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Akunin provides all the clues necessary to solve the mystery, which close readers can figure out; this is the real fun in reading his work. Highly recommended.

Took a long time to finish this book. Told from a Butler/valet's viewpoint. Deftly written with good pace towards the end, with few funny incidents in between. However, I do think it would be funnier if read in Russian. Something is missing in the book, don't think the translation was spot-on.

I imagine: this story was conceived when Boris Akunin, the author of this book, sat in a dimly lit corner of an old style café in Moscow and listened to a conversation between Conan Doyle and Kasuo Ishiguro's while the two men exchanged ideas about their recent novels.. The hero in this story makes interferences like Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: the newspaper boy is a real newspaper seller for his "fingers are black from ink" (p. 118). A crime story always starts with a shock - and in this case it is the abduction of the little highness Mikahail Georggievitsj and the subsequent demand for a ransom just days before the crowning of Tsar Nicholas II. Shocks make grand openings for novels: how do the single characters behave, what is the aggregate of all these single behaviors? (By the way, the Nobel Prize in economics for 2011 went to economists that studied economic shocks and their effects on the society).

A shock that has societal implications lends itself very well for a crime story that wants to be more than a story about a crime. I think this is the case for Boris Akunin's detective novel:" Coronation" Like the novel "The remains of the day" by Ishiguro it is a butler that tells the story. And in that position the story teller is both interfacing closely with the social strata he is describing, still strongly separated from it. Both included and distant. Between the butlers there is intimacy: "We were beautifully silent together" p. 166. However, for the butler there is contrasting feelings towards the social class he serves: the butler is critical about a man from this class: «... A man in few words with good prospects for the future, and a very shallow emotional depth" p. 50. But in contrast he is enchanted by the nobility: "with music in every word, in the tone of every rank and every title" p. 218

This setting gives an excellent angle for adding seriousness to the crime story. Akunin adds irony. I am not sure he thinks the Tsar family is worth seriousness. I am not sure he thinks the butler's agony is worth dissecting. The story is reminiscent of both Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and Kasuo Ishiguro's «The remains of the day". However, since I imagine that the conversation between Mr Doyle and Mr. Ishiguro took place in a Moscow café I feel that Mr. Akunin added so much Russian culture and so many Russian emotions to the conversation that the story he tells becomes quite its own. However, somehow I feel that this story is excellent as a crime novel, but still could have offered more as a "philosophical" text without jeopardizing the flow of the crime story.

Citations: "As well known, wrinkles can appear wise or dumb, good or evil, glad or sad" p. 292; "Here in Russia, it is easiest to hide in uniform" p. 293; "The magic formula is simple and short: with all efforts avoid surprises, not only the sad ones, but also those that make you merry" p. 282; " all this glitter (jewels) got the little room to look like a storage room for Christmas tree decorations "p.129

In this volume, Fandorin's life has moved along quite a bit, and he's not quite the arrogant and brash young man he was. Otherwise, it's typical of the series--in other words, very good. This one is set at the time of the coronation of the last Tsar, and members of the imperial family are central characters. Akunin takes some liberties with history, including (I think) creating members of that family who did not exist. But, for a non-Russian who is not highly conversant with Russian history, I learned several interesting things about the period and the dramatic (and tragic) events surrounding the coronation. If you've read the other Fandorin books and liked them, then you already know you want this book. If not, you should start at the beginning of the series.