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A review by tessisreading2
Heart of Iron by Ekaterina Sedia
3.0
I enjoyed this but not as much as I thought I would; it had a very YA feel to it, in which none of the peril felt terribly perilous and Sasha's journey was smoothed by innumerable friends and allies. No sooner did she find herself in difficult straits than someone swept in and helped her out. On the one hand, it's nice to think that people are fundamentally good; on the other hand, for a book that deals with the fate of nations and wars, it's too bloodless, too free of actual trauma. Similarly, there's a love triangle which doesn't really register as a love triangle - not enough romance in any direction to make Sasha's pining make sense.
The historical background is also kind of sketchy - the key point, I guess, is that the Decembrists won, but (a) they weren't actually pushing for Konstantin to take the throne and (b) Konstantin wasn't actually that progressive - and the choice to make Florence Nightingale the villainous spymistress, a sexist, chauvinist jerk who is obsessively in love with Sidney Herbert despite the fact that he's married to someone else, and willing to burn the world in part because of her sexual frustration and anger, doesn't sit quite well with me. Sure, it's cool to be like "oh, Florence Nightingale, I know her!" and my knowledge of the historical FN's character and personality is nonexistent, but it's discomfiting in a way: she definitely wasn't, historically, this lady, so the choice to give a fictional villain a historical figure's name feels icky.
The historical background is also kind of sketchy - the key point, I guess, is that the Decembrists won, but (a) they weren't actually pushing for Konstantin to take the throne and (b) Konstantin wasn't actually that progressive - and the choice to make Florence Nightingale the villainous spymistress, a sexist, chauvinist jerk who is obsessively in love with Sidney Herbert despite the fact that he's married to someone else, and willing to burn the world in part because of her sexual frustration and anger, doesn't sit quite well with me. Sure, it's cool to be like "oh, Florence Nightingale, I know her!" and my knowledge of the historical FN's character and personality is nonexistent, but it's discomfiting in a way: she definitely wasn't, historically, this lady, so the choice to give a fictional villain a historical figure's name feels icky.