72 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too much of a departure from previous writings for me., February 15, 2010
This review is from: The Sheen on the Silk (Hardcover)
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I've been a fan of the writings of Anne Perry for a long time now. I enjoy her Victorian mystery series, especially the Thomas Pitt books, because she has so much talent for taking me into another time period and making me see the lives of her characters. Even though this particular book was set in a completely different time and place I had expected to enjoy it just as much. Sadly for me, that was not the case. This was a book that I struggled to read, in fact I pushed myself to finish it because I kept hoping I would find that Anne Perry spark that I recognized.
Anna Zarides has made her way to Constantinople to find her twin brother Justinian. Once there she discovered that Justinian had been involved in a plot to kill the emperor and has been banished to the Sinai desert. Was he guilty of the crime? If so, why banishment instead of death? Is he still alive? Sound like a good mystery? Well, it might have been if this book could have decided that it wanted to be a mystery. Instead it wavered back and forth between mystery and historical fiction epic with the fate of her brother definitely taking a back seat for most of the novel. In order to investigate his whereabouts it was necessary for Anna to disguise herself as the eunuch Anastasius. It seems Anna could use her skills as a physician only if she were a eunuch, not a female. I thought that the author set herself up for some very difficult storytelling by using that device, but maybe it would have worked if I had ever felt really passionate about Anna or Anastasius. Frankly, I didn't care for either of them because they seemed almost bland, as if they were the background and the story was taking place in spite of them being there. Anna had the most incredible luck to settle in a city where she knew absolutely no other person and yet become personal physician to every important personage in that city. Quite an accomplishment. And months and months pass while Anna/Anastasius is establishing her medical practice and becoming embroiled with religious politics with no progress being made on finding out anything about her brother. There are plots within plots and sub-plots within those plots also. And many, many characters.
The novel probably will be enjoyed more by readers of historical fiction because the main emphasis of the story is always centered on the political wranglings between the rulers of Constantinople and Rome. Between the Roman Catholic Church represented by the Pope then in power and the emperor of the Byzantine empire. Between the different factions in Constantinople who all have their own agendas and are willing to do any kind of malicious act to arrive at their hoped for result. It was just too much of a departure from previous books I've read by this author for me to enjoy it. Plus I honestly found it dull.
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too broad in scope, March 16, 2010
This review is from: The Sheen on the Silk (Hardcover)
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The Sheen on the Silk is a very ambitious novel. It tells the dramatic tale of Constantinople in the 1200's, which is on the brink of being invaded once again by Crusaders. When done well, historical fiction is perhaps my favorite genre to read, because it gives me the sense that I've got a window into the events of the past. However, historical fiction is also a genre that can be something of a minefield because there is a delicate balance that must be struck. Unfortunately, I don't think that Anne Perry was able to strike that balance.
The first thing I notice about a book of this genre is whether the author is able to capture what life was like during the particular time period in which events take place. I felt that Perry did a nice job in this respect. I could imagine what the city must have looked like, what the Hagia Sophia was like, the scents and sounds of the markets, etc. This was one strong point of the novel for me, my sense that Perry enabled me to really step into the shoes of a 13th century Byzantine citizen.
The events of the novel are fairly epic, spanning everything from a woman's quest for revenge to crises of faith on both the parts of the Byzantine Orthodox and Roman Catholic characters. It seemed to me that Perry was trying to capture a pivotal period in time, when the once flourishing culture of Byzantium was beginning to die out, the unfortunate victim of a jealous and avaricious Europe. However, I found the broad scope working to the detriment of the novel. Perry leaps over significant chunks of time with transitions that are quite awkward. Because of this, I occasionally found the novel hard to follow.
However, the biggest disappointment of the book was, for me, the use of the characters. The novel is told from multiple points of view--too many points of view, in my opinion. I felt that too much time was devoted to characters who were less interesting or about whom the reader could have learned just as much through the observations of other characters. This meant that less time was given to the more interesting characters. There were long passages told from Constantine's point of view that seemed as though they could have been cut without sacrificing anything of the narrative thread. Anna makes many observations about him that would have given the reader just as good a sense of his character.
The most underdeveloped character of all was that of Anna. By the end of the book, I felt as if I knew barely anything about her. The book seems to define her mostly within the confines of her determination to bring about justice for her brother, but it never really tells us anything about Anna, herself. The author alludes to Anna's past without giving the reader any real detail about it at all. When Anna's big secret finally is revealed, it is almost anticlimactic, and I felt that the author could have done more with Anna by revealing her secret earlier in the novel and using this to really flesh out the character. Out of all the characters, Anna just didn't ring true for me. The reader is never really given enough information about what makes Anna who she is, and this makes her seem a little too perfect in her reactions to other characters.
On the other hand, I felt Perry did an excellent job of fleshing out the character of Giuliano. He is given a lot of internal dialog and I found his to be the best-drawn character arc. He grows a lot during the course of the novel, and I found him to be very sympathetic. Out of all the characters he was, by far, my favorite.
This is a very uneven novel that I feel would have benefited from some additional editing. The beginning was particularly repetitive at times, with the metaphor of silk being stated so explicitly over and over, it was nearly being pounded into the reader's head. There were passages that simply didn't need to be in the novel, because they didn't advance the plot and provided the reader with no real insight into the characters. I simply couldn't understand why passages like these were included at the expense of some further insight into a character as central to the novel as Anna was.
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47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written historical mystery, January 29, 2010
This review is from: The Sheen on the Silk (Hardcover)
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This is a quite good book of its type. If you enjoy well-written historical mysteries with characters developed as human beings (in addition to their plot roles), you will enjoy this. The historical setting seemed realistic, although I don't know enough about Byzantium to be sure -- let's just say that I didn't see any obvious anachronisms. The city itself is almost as well-developed a character as any of the people in the story. The bibliography suggests that it's at least well-grounded fiction.
The plot is satisfyingly twisty and turny, with alliances shifting in ways that create an almost kaleidoscope effect. The shifting alliances (and seeming alliances) are handled quite deftly. The author sometimes slips in amongst all the action a haunting scene that evokes this very different time and place.
The mystery is sufficiently, uh, mysterious not to be obviously solvable in the first 100 pages. There's a faint religious overtone to the novel that I found both interesting and bit off-putting. The book is by no means a religious tract, or even a philosophical one, but there is something there that tugged at the back of my mind and distracted me a bit. On the whole, I call this a very good novel and a decent mystery.
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