![]() ![]() ![]() Petersburg, he locks eyes with the 15-year-old Anastasia, feeling an immediate connection to her glimpses Alexandra, the czar’s wife, privately conferring with her evil mentor, Rasputin and enjoys an intimate chat with Nicholas II himself, who chooses to tell an uneducated 16-year-old country boy about his heavy responsibilities. ![]() Early chapters involving narrator Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev’s boyhood in a tiny Russian village are convincing, but when he’s unexpectedly chosen as a companion for the imperial heir, Alexei, the plot veers into highly improbable territory. Boyne reworks perennial rumors that Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Russia’s last czar, escaped the Bolshevik firing squad that killed her family, in an overstuffed romantic novel elevated by the author’s prose gifts but fatally lacking in credibility. ![]()
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