Customer Reviews

Valide

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

 

 

An excellent interpretation of the fascinating story of Aimee Dubuc de Rivery. I'm a believer. This is one of the four books I have read and enjoyed that mentioned this fleeting mystery figure in history. Three of the four were primarily about this character, and one made her a supporting character. This book is my favorite of the four. It's very vivid, inspiring, romantic, wonderful, and sexy. Through this novel I was transported to the Turkish Ottoman Empire and behind the forbidden walls of the harem. I was caught up in the intrigue and struggles for power and survival, the opulence, the danger, and the idea of a fate that is not entirely your own to choose. I highly, highly recommend this book. If you love historical fiction with strong women characters, intrigue, luxury, inspiration... read this book. I love it. One of my new favorites.

Love, sex, intrigue, friendship...and all of it happening in a far, far away land! What else could a person ask for in a book? This is an incredibly detail-rich tale that alllows one's imagination to run wild. While there's no way to actually verify the most minute details of the working of a real harem (no one I know has been to one), it's easy to allow the book to create powerful imagery in one's mind. I loved this book, and read it quite a few times. A great read, a good addition for your fiction library, and TOTALLY engrossing!

A wonderful book about the inner-workings of the Harem. Ms.Chase-Riboud must have put an incredible amount of time and effort into her research. The story flows like water and keeps your attention from begining to end. I highly recommend the book!

Not just an historical tale, but a meditation on the contradictions of privilege and power within oppression. Powerfully written, erotic in places, and always capable of putting the reader into the time and place. Chase-Riboud also wrote the novel _Sally Hemmings_ which was much better than the made-for-TV movie (for which she got no credit).

I read this book wanting more information on the Middle Eastern "white slave" trade: was it the same or was it vastly different from African-American slavery in the U.S.? Why romance novelists want to continuously romanticize it by placing every other heroine in a harem or zenanna is beyond me! Life was NOT the pampered, love-your-captivating master illusion often pedalled by publishers out to make a fast buck - it was often brutish, ugly, and nasty, punctuated most often by ineffable boredom, fear, and ruthless (sometimes murderous) competition to stay on top of the heap. Ms. Chase-Riboud writes with such incredible historical detail; I think I learned more about history during the timeperiod she was writing about than I ever learned in school! I understood some of the underlying causes of the fall of the Ottoman empire before reading this wonderful work but will supplement (by reading non-fiction works about that period/region) what I've picked up from her incredible story of a white Creole woman, whose name was forever lost to history, who became Valide - mother of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the most powerful woman in the Empire, whose word was law -- from slave to mistress & co-ruler of an illustrious culture. I also highly recommend 2 of Ms. Chase-Riboud's other books (for a greater insight to the abomination that was African-American slavery here in the U.S.), 'Sally Hemings' and 'The President's Daughter'.

Happy reading!!

I found this book invalueable in delving into the much hidden world of the middle east, harems and the practice of capturing "white slaves" for the sultans. This book tells the story of an actual woman in history who became the favorite of the harem and her trials and victories.

This book is full of things that would never have happened in the Sultan's Harem in Istanbul. 1.) No woman would be presented to the Sultan without being trained. She would usually catch his eye first before being presented. 2.) No woman in the Harem would be seen by the Sultan holding her Rosary. The author says that Nakshidil is not Aimee duBuq de Rivery, but the women in the Harem lost their identity when they entered and they were given new names and the new names were the names they were known by. I read parts to my sister who lived in Istanbul for 10 years and she said it would not have happened that way.