About the Book:

“An incredibly original, intelligent novel-a love story set against New York City at the dawn of the mechanical age, featuring Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and J. P. Morgan.

After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is Peter Force, a young frontier adventurer who comes to New York City in 1901 and quickly lands a job digging the first subway tunnels beneath the metropolis. The woman is Cheri- Anne Toledo, a beautiful mathematical prodigy whose memories appear to come from another world. They meet seemingly by chance, and initially Peter dismisses her as crazy. But as they are drawn into a tangle of overlapping intrigues, Peter must reexamine Cheri-Anne’s fantastic story. Could it be that she is telling the truth and that she has stumbled onto the most dangerous secret imaginable: the key to traveling through time?

Set against the mazelike streets of New York at the dawn of the mechanical age, Peter and Cheri-Anne find themselves wrestling with the nature of history, technology, and the unfolding of time itself.”

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is a book that I picked up primarily because the title and the cover caught my eye.  In fact, I didn’t even read the back to see what the book was about.  (So unlike me.)  It was just one of those last minute impulse grabs on the way out of the library.  And it is one of the better ones that I have come across through this method.

It should come as no surprise that what I enjoyed most about this book was the historical presentation of New York — since my favorite types of reads are historical fiction.  But this one is particularly well done.  Set at the beginnings of the industrial age, this book gives us a great feel for the dramatic changes that took place in this rapidly developing city.  As modernization sets in, and people became more accustomed to faster paced lives, and rapidly developing technology — we begin to see the world we know today, taking shape in Flaming’s writing.  Add to this, the plot twist of one of the greatest technological battles that ever occurred, between Tesla and Edison, in the race for the development of electricity — and the story becomes enthralling.  This story encompasses the development of electrical technology, the amazing feat of the digging of the New York Subway — and all the other growth spurts that would eventually make New York the city of life that it has become.  Flaming’s writings brings this city to life in a very real way, and gives the reader the chance to step back in time, and come to know a New York that was vastly different, but also growing at an exponential rate.

The love story, with the science fiction twist of time travel was just enough to set this book apart from other stories I have read about time travel, while at the same time maintaining the authentic feel of the time period that the book is set in.  Peter and Cheri-Ann are both sympathetic characters, but in a very idiosyncratic way.  Peter, one of the millions that flooded into New York for a chance to find themselves, and rewrite the course of their lives, is the typical immigrant found throughout the early years of New York.  This hub for immigration was never a stranger to new arrivals in this country.  And Peter helps us to actually view the city through the eyes of a newcomer.  Cheri-Ann, however, is the character that makes this story.  She is quirky, and the reader is always aware that there is something going on with her, from the very beginning of the story.  You just have to keep reading, if only for the chance to figure out what is really up with her.

Tags: America, Clean Reads, Fantasy, Friendship, Historical Fiction, Love, New York, Romance, Young Adult

Category: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Young Adult Fiction

About the Book:

The truth is, none of us are innocent. We all have sins to confess.

So reveals Catherine de Medici in this brilliantly imagined novel about one of history’s most powerful and controversial women. To some she was the ruthless queen who led France into an era of savage violence. To others she was the passionate savior of the French monarchy. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter into the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power.

The last legitimate descendant of the illustrious Medici line, Catherine suffers the expulsion of her family from her native Florence and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an enraged mob. While still a teenager, she is betrothed to Henri, son of François I of France, and sent from Italy to an unfamiliar realm where she is overshadowed and humiliated by her husband’s lifelong mistress. Ever resilient, Catherine strives to create a role for herself through her patronage of the famous clairvoyant Nostradamus and her own innate gift as a seer. But in her fortieth year, Catherine is widowed, left alone with six young children as regent of a kingdom torn apart by religious discord and the ambitions of a treacherous nobility.

Relying on her tenacity, wit, and uncanny gift for compromise, Catherine seizes power, intent on securing the throne for her sons. She allies herself with the enigmatic Protestant leader Coligny, with whom she shares an intimate secret, and implacably carves a path toward peace, unaware that her own dark fate looms before her—a fate that, if she is to save France, will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and the passion of her embattled heart.

From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

I believe that some people are simply born larger than life.  They came into this world with a destiny aimed at changing the world with dramatic effect, and cannot leave it until they have left their mark.  Sometimes this is the result of the individual and the magnitude of their spirit/personality, and sometimes it is through the inherent nature of the family they were born into.  In the case of Catherine de Medici I believe both of these reason apply.  This is a life that simply invites books and stories to be written about her — and is the subject of a great deal of speculation.  And in the hands of a the right author I believe that this is a book that would dramatically influence everyone that reads it.  Unfortunately, this book didn’t quite rise to the challenge.

What I did like about this book was the presentation of the challenges that women faced in past generations.  The view of women as chattel; good for nothing more than running the house hold, giving birth to children (preferably male children), and being used as political mergers between nations, families and kings is an image that makes almost all modern women shudder in horror.  And yet — with this role came a great deal of power when a particularly intelligent woman found the ways to exercise her influence over the men around her — to her own designs.  Gortner has done an excellent job of presenting Catherine de Medici as a woman of intelligence, cunning, insight, and fortitude.  (Weather right or wrong, I leave that judgment call to others).  Gortner presents her as a woman that had a personality sufficient to the task to overcome her background, and stop the cycle of her being used as a pawn in the international power struggle between church and state — not to mention the vying for power between nations.  I just wish that the other characters in the book had been as well developed.

What really frustrated me about the book was enough to break it, at least from my perception.  There is an over-all feeling of rushing the story, which I, as a reader, found very distracting.  I constantly felt like Gortner was telling me the story of the people without explaining the setting, or other elements that went into motivating the characters as a whole.  Overall, I felt that Gortner was simply rushing to get the book written, and not really taking the time to tell the story. I understand that the balancing between character development, setting, and plot is challenging, if not impossible in certain books.  But this book just seemed to neglect most of it, which in the end left the story feeling flat, and without personality.

Tags: Catherine de Medici, Family, France, Government, Historical Fiction, Medici, Politics

Category: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Politics