Dmitri, a close friend to Tsar Nicholas, is slowly becoming aware of the travesty of this regime. When a Jewish Pogrom happens in front of his eyes, he is devastated by the loss of life and the destruction. He vows to stop this even if he has to betray his best friend.

If you are familiar with Charles Belefore, you know his stories are a slow burn but worth every minute. And this is the first one I have listened to. I was afraid I would “zone out”. Well, that did not happen! This is a unique story and I was tuned in! I enjoyed the history. Plus, I was captivated by Doctor Katya Golitsyn. She is a strong female character during terrible time.

I also enjoyed reading about how “out of his element” the Tsar actually was. Tsar Nicholas was a very good father and husband but he was not a ruler. He was very out of touch about his country and it lead to his downfall. Also, the Russian aristocracy rules are fascinating indeed!

The narrator, Nancy Peterson, did a fabulous job with the accents and the characters, including the southern accent. I was impressed with her ability. Sometimes a narrator can hinder a story if there are accents. But Nancy definitely nailed it!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review. ( )

I read Charles Belfoure’s first novel and loved it. I read his second novel and thought it was okay. I skipped his third novel because I thought it was too similar to his previous ones. When I saw that he transferred his focus to Imperial Russia, I knew I had to read The Fabergé Secret. Except, now I wish I had avoided it.

Simply, The Fabergé Secret is not good. The first thing that strikes you is the writing. Not only is it pedantic, but it is also incredibly childish. His descriptions are clinical, while any dialogue transitions ruin any narrative flow.

To make matters worse, it feels as if Mr. Belfoure cannot make up his mind just who the bad guys are in his novel. He tends to fawn over the wealth and pomp of the Imperial Court, but then two paragraphs later will rant about how mindless and shallow it all is. He tries to garner sympathy for the Tsar and his family but then condemns them for their ignorance regarding the plight of the poor and the Jews.

To that extent, it is difficult to define what type of novel Mr. Belfoure means The Fabergé Secret to be. The story shifts from Marxist revolutionaries to the Jews to the royals to one member of the elite opening his eyes and learning about all of it. Except, we switch so often to other points of view that it seems that Dmitri’s growing social justice awareness becomes less the main plot and more of a subsidiary one.

The Fabergé Secret feels, to me, like one long, drawn-out lecture by a professor who feels his own superiority to everyone else in the room. Except in this instance, the professor does not have a clear agenda for his lecture and rambles about whatever topic strikes his fancy. His connections between the Russian Jews, Marxist revolutionaries, the Russian elite, and the last Russian Tsar make sense on the surface but lose coherency upon reflection. Combine that with the extremely basic writing style and you have a novel best avoided. There are plenty of other novels that explore the end of the Russian monarchy, the Jewish plight in Russia, and the Marxist revolution and do so with much more clarity, cohesion, and better writing. ( )

With this second book that I've read written by Charles Belfoure, I am now convinced that he's not the writer for me. As in The Paris Architect, a self-absorbed man suddenly becomes a staunch defender of the oppressed. Belfoure, who is an architect himself, has a knack for choosing architecture and historic periods that fascinate me. In The Fabergé Secret, it's the reign of Nicholas II and Alexandra. This is a period in Russia filled with incredible beauty and indescribable brutality, and Belfoure does well in depicting the pogroms that were rife in the country at the time. But then... there's the rest of the story.

In reading The Fabergé Secret, it felt as though Belfoure fell so deeply in love with his setting that he forgot all about including any action or real movement in the plot until well past the halfway point in the book. I was left wondering if anything was ever going to happen. The author also felt comfortable in sacrificing well-known historical facts to his fictional tale.

At the end of the day, I found The Fabergé Secret to be a predictable, standard, historical romance laced with a bit of architecture. A pleasant diversion that could have been so much more.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley) ( )

historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-romance, history-and-culture, ridiculous-expense, early-19th-century, political-intrigue, tsarist Russia, cultural-exploration*****

Some things were meticulously researched, others were creative/poetic license. But it made for a beautifully imaged historical romance full of political intrigue and visions of horror (pogroms). The beliefs about Tsar Nickolas by their church and people were quite interesting, the parts regarding their small family were heart rending because we know how that part ended, and the idiocy of the aristocracy was appalling (not only Russian, but they had more money). One thing that made me nutz was the repeated reference to Russia as Fatherland when everyone I know refers to Mother Russia. The love story and early political rumblings are covered in the publisher's blurb so there is no need to repeat or do the spoiler thing. But I did love the imagery of clothing, places, and the incredible artistry of the jeweler Faberge. It is a story well worth reading whether you believe everything you read or double check a lot of facts (me). The characters are made very real, even the awful ones. I really enjoyed it!
The narrator is Nancy Peterson who is an accomplished voice actor despite some awful mispronunciations.
I requested and received a free audio copy from Dreamscape Media via NetGalley. Thank you! ( )