Customer Reviews

Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power

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

 

 

At first i wasnt that impressed with the title but i ordered anyway because i wanted to learn about the zars of Russia as much as possible.I am glad to say that this book is fantastic.It is well written and well documented.I love the no non-sense approach of the author when telling the story.The way he describes the characters and the intrigues during that difficult time is excellent.He uses his sources very well and he always explains every necessary detail without fancy or difficult terms.I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in how was Russia under the tsars.

Overall an interesting book. Not terribly in-depth but a nice size for an easy read and it is written in a way that makes you want to keep reading. The problem is that it really needs an editor! Whoever translated it from the French to English made lots of errors. Sometimes there are double words; other times words are missing and then there are times when the syntax is a bit strange. Still it was a good book and I recommend it to anyone who would like to know a bit about each of these ladies who ruled Russia during its glory days.

I have read a few Henri Troyat Russian biographies and they all have been excellent. It was hard to find a biography of the Czarina's. Troyat did a great job of presenting their story.

John Navarra
Daytona Beach, Florida

For those whose interest is piqued by our November/December 2009 issues' story on Elizabeth, there is Henri Troyat's excellent <em>Terrible Tsarinas</em>, a nicely translated multi-biography of the five women who led Russia after Peter the Great's death. Wonder­fully written, it pulses with court intrigues, diplomatic con­spi­ra­cies and vivid de­scriptions of court life.

As reviewed in Russian Life

I'm an avid student of Russian history so I was excited to pick up this book since it covered an often overlooked period of Russian history.

I have to second a previous reviewer, wondering where the editor was. Not only were there various syntax errors, which I can get past, but there were several instances of outright mistakes. In describing family relations, the author gets some things wrong. Describing characters for example, as siblings on one page, but cousins just a few pages later. Or referring to someone as an aunt or uncle, when just pages earlier they were described as cousins. I read and re-read the pages over and over to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and I wasn't. Maybe this was a translation issue?

The book was well-written and entertaining otherwise,it really filled in some of the lesser known gaps between Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. So I hate to give it a bad review. It is just that these simple factual errors really turned me off, and they were just some of things that I picked up on as a reader. It cast doubt on the whole book because of it.

Not quite as in depth as I'd hoped. It's very easy reading and definitely slanted to the authors thoughts. Really basically about Elizabeth. Couldn't wait to read more about the other Tzarinas and it never really got into them. Somewhat disappointing.