Reviews with content warning for Sexism - Zarina

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Zarina by Ellen Alpsten

5 reviews

constantinareads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

If you have doubts, try it. It really deserves more attention!

Content Warnings

ravensandlace's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Find this review and others like it at https://aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

A special thank you goes out to St Martin's Press (my favorite publishing company) and Netgalley for allowing me to read this eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I was a bit misled by the synopsis. I had thought it was going to be about how Catherine I came to power after her husband’s death. I thought I was going to see a struggle with her daughter, Elizabeth. But what I got was the entire life of Catherine up until the point of her husband’s death with a few pages of what happened afterwards. Which wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong but it wasn’t what I expected. This was a bit of a miss for me which is sad because I love St. Martin’s Press so much.

It also didn’t help that was very confused as to who Catherine was. I had thought for the longest time that it was about Catherine the Great but come to find out, there was more than one Catherine. Monarchs really need to switch up their names. I had to do a google search in order to understand. Because Catherine the Great’s husband was also named Peter. I was just a big mess. So it was a very confusing 50 pages or so.

I think one of the reasons why I didn’t completely love this was the formatting. I got an eARC from Netgalley which I know is bound to lead to some formatting issues. However, I found out that this was a re release so I thought the formatting would be a lot better. There were huge walls of texts.I’m talking just pages and pages of text with no paragraph breaks. It was hard to read at times. I had to turn on Netgalley night mode just so my eyes wouldn’t burn to death. I also had to read it on my phone because when I brought it up on my iPad, the formatting didn’t take into account the bigger screen so it was absolutely miniscule on my iPad.

Beside the formatting issues, I actually enjoyed this book despite the rather less than rave review up until this point. Of course, that was after I figured out who it was about. It’s nice learning about different tsars than the usual ones like the Romanovs, which is what I usually gravitate towards. I admired Catherine for her strength and her cunning. She truly did whatever she could to make sure she would survive. Which I know can be rough considering what she was up against.

One last thing before I wrap this review up. I know I posted my trigger warnings at the top of this review but I wanted to make a separate paragraph especially for this. This book was rough to read in terms of the content. There are a lot of places where Catherine is raped and it’s described pretty graphically. It was hard to read at times because your heart just bled for her. She didn’t deserve that. Not one bit. There is also so much misogyny and it’s often unchallenged as it usually is where historical books are involved. So take care while reading this book because it gets pretty rough.

Overall, this was a good book hence the 3.5 star rating. I think I would have it rated it higher if the formatting hadn’t been such an issue. Also I think the synopsis needs to be changed. It’s kind of misleading. But other than that, I did enjoy this book but it just wasn’t one of my favorites. I’m not discouraged though. I’m sure St Martin’s Press has many more books for me and just waiting to be discovered.

Content Warnings

gracew's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This is a hard one to really write a review for because, after awhile, it became a real struggle to keep reading. There is a lot of sexual violence in this book and it is explicit. So much so that I skipped a good chunk of the scenes because I couldn't cope. I'm a sucker for Russian historical fiction and I'm not saying this book isn't true to life, but I could have done with less graphic sexual violence. I really can't stand reading super x rated depictions of rape and this book has it in spades. whatever joy or enjoyment I might have otherwise gotten out of it is completely overshadowed for me by this. Was it an interesting story? Sure. Would I ever recommend it to anyone? Not at all.

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tonstantweader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Tsarinais a historical novel that tells the story of Catherine I of Russia. The arc of her life is amazing. She was born a serf and became the Tsarina of Russia, ruling in her own name for two years following the death of her husband, Peter the Great.

Ellen Alpsten takes the outline of her life and fills it with the kind of details that bring a character to life. She also adds a touch of erotica that probably explains a lot of Catherine’s rise from poverty to power. During her many years as Peter’s favorite, then as his wife, she had to not only keep his love and loyalty, she had to maneuver like a Machiavelli to keep others from taking her down. She also seems to have tempered Peter’s worst excesses as best she could.

I like Tsarina well enough. Catherine I’s life story is a fascinating one and important. She did not just serve as the Tsarina for a few years, she also was the mother of one of Russia’s better rulers, Elizabeth I. However, this story was weakened by a few of the author’s choices towards the end of the book. She fleshed out gossip for a love affair that the consensus of historians did not happen. Catherine seized power after Peter’s death, but the mechanisms of that were absent. No time was spent on her two years as tsarina. This left me feeling so disappointed because she went through so much, was in such jeopardy, it would have been nice to see what she did with power when she had it.

I received a copy of Tsarina from the publisher through Shelf Awareness. It will be published on November 10th

Tsarina at St. Martin’s Press | Macmillan
Ellen Alpsten author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2020/10/25/tsarina-by-ellen-alpsten/

Content Warnings

ayten's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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