Review: Entertaining and Surprising
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 23, 2013
This is an absolutely brilliant evocation of Revolutionary Russia. The period detail is first class and the atmosphere terrifying. The story is told in the form of a diary written by a disreputable Englishman whose main concern is seducing Lenin's ex-mistress and stealing a Faberge Egg.The ongoing revolution thwarts his plans and he gets caught up in the mischief of the day. The quality of the writing is such that you start to think all this actually happened. The narrator is often hilarious though the more subtle humor springs from the fact that the joke is usually on him. He predicates his actions on what he quite reasonably thinks will happen, but it never does. It's constantly entertaining and surprising, highly intelligent without being showy.