Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an advanced copy of Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten.

I love history, but my Russian history is lacking. One of my favorite college professors specialty was Russian history, but I was abroad and student teaching the semesters he taught the class. While parts of it were covered in the greater 20th century European courses I took, I didn't get some of the earlier Russian history. So I was excited to read this since I knew nothing about Catherine I of Russia.

Tsarina is a historical fiction on Catherine I of Russia, who was the second wife of Peter the Great and the first woman to rule Russia in her own right. The book starts out in 1725 when Peter the Great is dying and you meet Catherine as she ruthlessly figures out how to retain power. The book then goes back to her growing up to see her rise to power. Her past is fascinating (and while a lot of the fiction comes from this time) it is based on the little actual history of her life. The one constant was her resourcefulness and creative ways she managed to not just survive but rise from serfdom to rule Russia. This book is quite graphic with the rape, violence and torture throughout that was common during this time.

If you're into history or Russian history this book is for you!

Historical fiction, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs are genres I started reading when I was in elementary school and, when one grabs me, still read today. I enjoy learning about people, events, or cultures. Now, my interests are more in the ancient worlds or cultures that predates the 20th century, I will still read 20th century stories. Tsarina was a fascinating read.

I do not know a lot about Russian history, but I did learn a lot reading this story. I have only heard a hand full of Romanovs Catherine the Great and of course the last Romanov family. It was interesting seeing the history through the eyes of someone not noble or born in Russia. The journey of the build of Saint Petersburg and tragedy of the war going on during the time. 

The story of Marta Helena Skowrońska formally known as Catherine I was a true rag to riches/ Cinderella story. She was born a serf and died as a Tsarina/ Empress of Russia. What is sad, was I was not all surprised how her story was, knowing how women were treated in pre-20th century. I would say she was a fighter, strong willed, and remarkable given what she went through. But she was also careful knowing her position of being Peter the Great’s lover and later wife.

The author did an amazing job writing this story. I believe the author imagined some of what they wrote since records do not have personal information like that, but with the time era, it makes sense. People back in those times were vicious. I can see nobles being partiers and recklessly spend their money. Women and girls being treated as property. Life does not seem all that different in today’s world (with many exceptions for us women!)

I recommend reading this if you want to learn about a strong woman. Yes, there is a lot of rape, sex, murder, and drunken parties, but given the time era, what do you expect? It was still a great read with an interesting story.

This was just not for me. I did not enjoy it like I thought I would, and I was not able to finish it.

Wow, this was an epic historical fiction read! Russian history feels really complicated and I've never really tackled any historical fiction set in Russia but this story of Catherine I was a great escape during the 2020 election week and whisked me away to 1700s St. Petersburg. Catherine was a great character to follow. The author takes a part of Catherine's past that is not well known and really brought it to life. Again, my background in Russian history is so little that I just took in everything in the vivid and atmospheric description and it seemed very well researched. Definitely felt like a very dark fairy tale where there is a rags to riches romance at the heart of it but an epic journey to get to that point. Tsarina shows the strength and grit of a woman from that time and place in history who was an influencer in Peter the Great's life and an ultimate survivor.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an ARC of this title.

Fascinating, insightful, and engaging!

Tsarina is an intriguing interpretation of the rags-to-riches, extraordinary life of Marta Helena Skowrońska (Catherine I of Russia), who started life as the illegitimate child of a peasant and was subsequently sold into slavery, widowed, and sexually violated before becoming the mistress of Peter the Great, and later his wife and successor to the Russian throne, holding the title of Empress of Russia until her untimely death in 1727.

The prose is vivid and rich. The characters are bold, remorseless, and well-drawn. And the plot is an absorbing, sweeping saga of all the hopes, fears, sacrifices, struggles, treachery and entangled relationships found in one of the most powerful families to ever rule the Russian Empire.

Tsarina is, ultimately, a story about life, loss, love, politics, power, war, corruption, greed, riches, fervour, desires, sacrifice, savagery, violence, and murder. It’s a perceptive, alluring, compelling tale by Alpsten that does a beautiful job of highlighting her impressive research and considerable knowledge into the infamous Romanov family, especially those who reigned in the late seventeenth, early eighteenth century and their undeniable influence on Russian history.

Courtesy of NetGalley, I received this remarkable debut novel by Ellen Alpsten, which documents the story of Tsarina Catherine, wife of Peter the Great, as she becomes Empress of Russia. Rising above poverty and degrading circumstances, Marta survives to become Catherine, consort, mother, wife, and tsarina. While describing the horrors of war, the ruthlessness and opulence of Peter's court, Alpsten captures the creation and majesty of Russia's cities, Peter's legacies, and his love for his country and Catherine.

I'm going to start out by saying that this is a work of historical fiction based on true events of the life of Catherine Alexeyevna, Peter the Great's second wife. This story is an incredibly amazing and sometimes unbelievable rags-to-riches story! What this poor woman had to endure throughout her entire life starting from birth, all the ups and downs she endured, taking each one in stride and never giving up, proving to herself and everyone around her just how strong a woman she was lead her to eventually be the ruler of Russia! Honestly, looking back over her journey, it is amazing how strong-willed and determined Catherine was to make her point, show people who she was, and never give up. I don't know if I were in her position if I could have done it. She really had a hard life, got knocked down more times than you could count, and just got up and kept on going. To give you a taste of what I'm talking about - slavery, rape, murder, brothels, love, broken hearts, miscarriages, loss of children, adultery, incest, and that is just to name a few.

Now, as far as the actual storytelling. Unfortunately, for me, this book was very difficult to get through. I am a very quick reader and it took me well over a month to finish it. Again, the story is fantastic but at times it really just drags on. There are a lot of details on war, and plotting of war, and getting to war, and packing for the war, and setting up for war, or whatever, so those parts were very hard for me to get through. Also, for those weak at heart or stomach, or that may be triggered by certain things, this book does contain some explicit sex and abuse scenes. It definitely goes along with the perils of Catherine's life and tells you what kind of person Peter was but I just wanted to mention that in case you have any of those kinds of triggers.

Overall, I did enjoy the storyline, Catherine's life was very intriguing and interesting and I truly did enjoy reading about that. The book itself had a lot of fluff and/or filler that maybe it could have done without. If you like reading about war and all the details of war then this is a gem for you. I am still amazed at where Catherine came from and where she landed, and all that she had to go through in between. It is one of those stories that kind of sticks with you even though you are finished reading it.

Growing up, I heard some stories about Peter the Great, his epic efforts to reform Moscovy into the global player Russia became during his reign, his formidable spirit and thirst for knowledge as well as his volatile character. I also heard about his wife Catherine who came from humble origins and 'clawed' her way to the most elevated position of the Empress of Russia. Although she passed away very soon after her husband's death and reigned just for two short years, Catherine I was a remarkable woman.
I often wondered what it was like to be a life companion of somebody like Henry VIII or Peter the Great. Historically, royal marriages seal geopolitical alliances. Rarely do they have anything to do with romantic feelings or personal happiness. So what kind of ambition or political intelligence does it take to play this game? or perhaps this story is an exception and it is possible to love and care for the real, necessarily flawed person behind the titles and almost limitless power? This is the question Ellen Alpsten sets out to answer in her historical novel Tsarina and I must say I was riveted by the book from the beginning to the end.
Tsarina begins with a bang. Peter the Great has just passed away and Tsarina Catherine knows she cannot permit herself a moment of weakness or grief: her survival depends on outsmarting other possible heirs and political forces. We do get a glimpse of how mixed her feelings are and then we go back to the beginning of her life (when she still went by name of Marta) to see what she has been through up until this moment. Extreme poverty, serfdom, rape (graphic scenes), powerlessness, hard work, wars and men's power games, pregnancies, child births and child loss, scandals and intrigues- all until Catherine's death in 1727. The narrative is extremely detailed and obviously very well-researched. You will live and breath history and find yourself immersed in this dangerous period of time. Chapter after chapter I felt compelled to read on and discover more details of Catherine's dramatic life.In her afterword, the author says that the historical period Tsarina is set in is well-documented (although little is known of Marta /Catherine's life before she became Pastor Gluck's housemaid, so here we definitely have some artistic licence). However, it does take a lot of skill to turn dry historical accounts into such a vivid story.
Recommended to all lovers of historical fiction who would like to learn more about life in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century.

Thank you to NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

Book Review for Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

⭐⭐⭐💫

Firstly, I'd like to thank @stmartinspress and @netgalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tsarina first caught my attention with it's cover. I saw murderer and it piqued my interest. Then, I saw a few people compare it to Game of Thrones and that was enough to send me over to Netgalley to request it and hope for the best.

This book was more dense than I expected coming in, so it took me quite some time to get through. However, I have been in a more thriller/mystery type mood, so it has taken me longer to read other genres. While it was a book I really had to pace myself to get through, the writing is impressive. It is rich in historical details, and @ellenalpsten_author does not shy away from the darker, more brutal details either, which I never mind! An absolutely gripping read that I would highly suggest for anyone in a historical fiction mood! This book comes out November 10, 2020- so if you've been eyeing it, go grab it soon!

A historical fiction based on the real life second wife of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia in the early 1700's. Remember as you read this that women were not contributing members of society in this era. As this young woman moves from a life of poverty and servitude to become the ruler of Russia during an era when the country ruled a huge empire, she had to endure many hardships and indignities that were common place for women. It is a very compelling story, readers get a vision of a life lived for the moment, indulging appetites with no care for the consequences.

Ellen Alpsten has written an excellent story of a woman who has vanished from most Russian history books, over shadowed by Catherine the Great, Catherine Alexeyevna is a fascinating character.

Ellen Alpsten's TSARINA is the story of Catherine the First of Russia, a girl born as Marta into utter poverty who ultimately rose to rule Russia after the death of the tsar Peter the Great. The story had its moments, powerful scenes that gripped my imagination and taught me about a time and place that I knew nothing about, but the moments were all too few, scattered in a torturous slog through ever-present cold, privation, manipulation, cruelty, never-ending focus on power and money, conquering, hierarchy, and savage gamesmanship. The novel felt overlong, that huge swaths of it could have been dropped and others trimmed to a sentence or two. For all the inner dialogue and supposed inner thinking and feeling of Marta, I never felt like I really understood her -- or ultimately cared. Alpsten crafts a believable reality for the reader to experience an unknown and unknowable time in a foreign world that might have done better with more sympathetic, fully developed characters -- without the people, the story felt more contrived set piece than story about real people. I received an advance reader copy of the novel from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my unbiased review.

Tsarina
By Ellen Alpsten
3.75 ⭐
#NetGalley #ARC
Decades long epic story of the Tsarina written as a really long flash back. Book starts near the end and shifts all the way back to the beginning of the Marta/Catherine story. Story all told in first person from the Tsarina's POV. Loved most of the descriptions. Very creative. I learned a lot about that time in history that I knew very little about. I previously knew nothing about Peter I or his reign.

But, unfortunately, I felt that the writing just didn't flow easily, smoothly as I would have liked/expected for such great descriptive details. I also felt like the medical happenings in the book were too 20 century. They had different names back then for most of what the author presented.

It also bothered me that there was no separation within the chapters. This would not have bothered me if there weren't jumps in time. Occasionally, there was jump of many months or years in a sentence, in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a chapter, with no shown break in the chapter itself.

I would try something else by this author in the future, preferably if the book was shorter.

I don't know much about Russian history, so I immediately scoured Wikipedia for details of Catherine I. It appears that Alpsten did her research (at least, according to my cursory glance at the info) when describing how Catherine rose from serf to maid to tsarina of Russia and Peter I's wife. She also stuck to the stereotype of Russian (or, in this case, Russian-themed) literature being nasty, brutish, and long; there's tons of horrifying events packed into this book. It wasn't easy to read, but I felt compelled to keep going.

This is a great pic for fans of historical fiction who can stomach more than the gentler Tudor novels.

What an amazing story.
I was a bit hesitant to start the 480 pages thinking it might be hard to finish but I flew through the pages.
The book is listed as a Novel which gives some wiggle room on the facts but after looking up some items because I wanted to know more it looked like Ellen Alspen whenever possible tried to accurate portray the facts. I love to read historical books because I always learn something new and it is fascinating to get a better understanding of what live was like. That said if you are a person that disliked a book because of the treatment of woman or can’t have an objective view of the cruelty described then do not read this book.
Not having read many historical books on Russia of that time period about the only items I knew about Peter the Great was his obsession with Western Europe, construction of St. Petersburg and the constant wars.
The one thing that surprise me that Catherine never learned to read or write because she was an intelligent woman and must have realized that it could be important for her to be able to do so. Too bad she only had two years of ruling Russia after Peter’s dead before she died herself.

I've been reading horror novels for forty years or more and have never read anything quite as horrifying as this historic tale of Russia. I have always found that historical fiction does a far better job of putting past events into context than any textbook. Books about Russia, fiction, non-fiction or historical fiction, are not easy to read. The first hurdle is figuring out just who's who. In TSARINA, not only must one deal with the names themselves but also keep track of the multiple names for a single person.

Peter, tsar of all the Russias, was a sadist and syphilitic whoremonger and Marta loved him. TSARINA tells of the meteoric rise of a poor girl named Marta to become the consort of the tsar, then his wife, and upon his death the ruler of all the Russias. It was Peter that gave her the name Catherine. It would seem that names were fleeting and could be changed on a whim.

It is difficult to say that I enjoyed reading TSARINA, and it is equally difficult to say that I did not. I definitely learned things about Russian history previously unknown to me. In addition, the book provides insight not only to Russian attitudes toward women from an historical perspective, it shows that today's attitudes have not changed all that much. Feminists, no matter their gender, will have a hard time reading parts of this book.

Fans of big sweeping historical fiction should pick this up and settle in for a good read. Alpstein has written the unlikely story of Catherine I, who was born a serf and ultimately rules Russia. There's so much drama here that you might forget that it is based on reality= that these things, these people were real. Catherine leaps to life in a way that actually surprised me; I found myself caught up in her world from the start, which is a tribute to the writing. You, like me, might find yourself doing a bit of additional research on some of those you will meet and I appreciated the chance to learn more. Thanks to the publisher for reissuing this and for the ARC. It's a terrific one.

Historical novels give the reader a glimpse into how life was like in another time. And during the period that the novel Tsarina, by Ellen Alpsten, takes place, life is brutal for women. This book is filled with all the historical details that brings this book to life. I really enjoyed that. But this book is also hyper-focused on how men brutally prey on women. There are MANY scenes of rape, incest, and other brutality in this book. While I know that it is probably a realistic scenario, it was tough to read through.


What I Liked:

Historical Details:

The author clearly did a ton of research on life in the late 1600's. As Marta moves up the social ladder, from serf, to servant, to mistress, and finally to Tsarina, the reader sees how each level of society lives. The serf's life is one of hard work and servitude. Marta and her family have a very basic existence. But everything depends on the whims of the rich landlords. As Marta moves up the social ladder, she is able to eat, and dress better. Yet each situation she is in reveals a new brutality, a new humiliation that she must endure.

Story Structure:

I liked the structure of the book. We see two timelines. In one, we see the critical moments after Marta's husband, Peter The Great, has died. Will she be executed? Sent to a nunnery? Or will she be able to remain the Tsarina.

We find out more about Marta in a series of flashbacks. Starting from her childhood, and moving from her time as a servant, to a young wife, to becoming a mistress to the Tsar, we see how Marta has become the cunning, ruthless woman who just may be able to finally seize her own destiny.



What I Didn't Like:



Main Character:

Although I could feel sympathy for Marta being used and abused by men, I found her to be an extremely unlikable character. She is a survivor. But the way she survives is by conveniently overlooking Peter's cruelty, and actively abusing others. And when a woman tries to come between her and Peter, she has no problem ruining her rival's life. This made it impossible to root for her.

Hyper-Focus on Sexual Assault:

I know that Marta lived a life where rape and control was how men operated, but this was very hard to read. Again and again, Marta is raped, beaten, and brutalized. I didn't like the implied notion that this was happening to due to her astounding beauty. Rape is about power and control. It can happen to anyone. At one point there is another girl who is being raped, as well. She was probably beautiful at one point, but due to the repeated sexual assaults, she has become sickly and dangerously thin. But the overall implication was that Marta's beauty was a curse. It's only when she learns to "use" her beauty to manipulate others, that she gains any power. What a lesson, huh?

Ending:

The whole book with it's two timelines (her rise to become the consort of the Tsar of Russia, and her rise even further to become the Tsarina) is a build up to when Marta becomes the sole ruler of Russia. But the book abruptly ends just as Marta gains control and becomes the Tsarina. With so much buildup, I wanted to see how she would rule, would she become a more benevolent ruler than Peter? Will there be treachery? Will others conspire against her? There were many unanswered questions that I really wanted answers to. It made for a very unsatisfying ending.

Trigger Warning for extreme violence against women

An epic story about a fascinating woman. History unfolds in a vivid and colorful way in this book about the life of Catherine and Peter the Great. Not a book for the squeamish as it is filled with blood and gore, torture and desolation, intrigue and betrayal and an overwhelming bond that this couple shared. The writing at times was a little heavy, but I couldn’t put this book down!

This book was not what I was expecting. I was too long and a little heavy on the bodice-ripping for me. I couldn't finish it.