👑Book Review👑
Empty Theatre by Jac Jenc

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for the Advanced Reader Copy of this fun look at two unique historical characters!

Empty Theatre focuses on the lives of two cousins: King Ludwig of Bavaria and Empress Sisi of Austria. Both lived a life of exorbitant luxury and extreme neglect and loneliness. Their relationship was interesting: both loving and at times contentious; at times both close and distant. The way Janc weaves their stories as they come in and out of each other's lives at pivotal moments was enjoyable.

I was a little thrown by the marketing of this book. "A wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures" it was not. I was expecting "The Great" vibes, and instead got "Succession" vibes. (If you haven't seen either of those shows, highly recommend!) This was a more tragicomic view of two very neglected people who live sad, empty lives. All the money and power in the world, but they can't enjoy it because of their circumstances. For Ludwig it's a looming familial history of mental illness and his sexuality. For Sisi it's the constraints of motherhood, femininity, beauty, an uninterested husband and an overbearing Mother in Law.

I enjoyed the format of the narrative: alternating short bursts of the lives of Ludwig and Sisi. I also liked that the very first thing we learn is that they both die public, tragic deaths. It sets the stage for a very melancholy retelling of these two lives.

I also need to add that I totally judged this book by its cover. Isn't it gorgeous?! I'd recommend this one if you're looking for a unique take on historical fiction.

I found Empty Theatre to be a very interesting historical fiction about King Ludwig II and Empress Elizabeth of Austria. I liked the insight into their day-to-day lives.

I would normally not request historical fiction but combine Jac Jemc with Ludwig II (a historical figure I have always been fascinated with) I couldn't resist.

It was fun, fast paced, and entertaining. A little nuts, but in all the right ways. Weird with being pretentious or nonsensical. Heartbreaking. Frustrating.

I really enjoyed the format, the narrowness if the chapters giving enough but moving the story forward at a brisk pace.

I'll admit to feeling a little miffed by the alternate ending to Ludwig's life, but that's the joy of literature, you can have it end however you please.

4 stars

When I visited Austria and Hungary last year, I started a deep dive into the Austro-Hungarian empire and fell in love with Sisi's story that tied the history of these two countries together. So when I saw this book being released, I knew I needed to read it to learn more about her and her equally eccentric and famous cousin, Ludwig II.

When you picture a castle, you probably picture the one in Germany, high up on a hill, that seems so whimsical and impossible to exist. That castle (Neuschwanstein) is the brain child of Ludwig. He lived a truly wild life and there were many parallels between his and Sisi's as they navigated the changing landscape of Austria/Germany/Hungary, and their own desires to be free and live how they wished vs how they were expected to within the roles they were born into.

Love, freedom, mental illness, depression, passion and a sense of self are the main themes throughout this somewhat fictionalized account of their lives.

I found the audiobook highly enjoyable and learned new things about both Sisi and Ludi.

If you watched The Empress on Netflix, this is a super fun read! I loved the tongue and cheek take on the story of cousins Ludwig and Sisi.

It’s said to be satire but I expected more embellishment to the historical accounts and more drama I suppose. The writing is so blunt and direct that it seems more like nonfiction. I just felt bored by the lack of plot and it didn’t feel like satire so I ended up DNFing after 4 hours (~30%)

Joy, silliness and pathos propel this page-turner. For all its satirical touches, the author remains sympathetic to her flawed protagonists – a depth that I do not take for granted.
Thank you Macmillan, RB Media and Netgalley for early access to this book!
Note: I recommend the audiobook for those so inclined because the reader is great.

I have a huge fondness for Sissi. Although she was a real person with a real life, the story is so heavily romanticized and mythologized at this point that even a fictional accounting comes with certain expectations. There was a lot of ground covered here, far beyond the point where the fairytale usually ends, which is difficult subject matter to handle. I think mixing her story with Ludwig's was an interesting and entertaining choice that added new dimensions to both and gives some reconciliation to the image of Sissi as a girl who loved her family deeply, but also a grown woman who grew estranged from her spouse and children. The structure and perspective of Empty Theater felt a little bit abstract at times, but overall I thought the more tragic aspects were well handled. Sissi comes with so much cultural baggage it's easy to "ruin" but Empty Theater, thankfully, is not one of those renditions that tries to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. My intrinsic bias aside, I highly recommend it.

This was odd. Not in a bad way. But odd in that it felt like a series of related but not really narrative excerpts about real people in a mix of real and not real situations... I didn't really know how to explain this one and so looked through some other reviews to see how others described it. I saw someone reference this as a dinner of mini cupcakes - which is a perfect description. In small doses this is fantastic - snarky and interesting and engaging, and absolutely fun. But in large doses and on the whole, it left me unsatisfied and looking for something more...

I don't know if it's the style, being comprised as I said of what felt like a series of anecdotes - some of which are fairly short - or if it's the characters themselves. These two are a hot mess, and while I found their antics and responses to them to be engaging and entertaining at first, they quickly wore on me and I realized I didn't actually like either of them or find myself able to gin up much sympathy despite the ridiculous nature of so much of what they went through - and were subjected to - as royals.

So I'm left on the fence about this one as a whole...

This book is brilliant! I love it! I have always been. a fan of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and the stories surrounding his life and death. Now I learn about Empress Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria. This reimaging of the lives of these two prominent figures of history is historical fiction at its best.! The audio brings the story to life. The narration is so good I actually feel transported to another time and place. I really enjoy listening to this story and learning about the unique personalities of these two and the challenges and obstacles they face. It is so good!

A wonderful performance by the narrator and the author has a way of keeping the readers interest from scandal to scandal.

This read has made me want to not only research the people this book is based on but to find more of their work to see what other scandalous history they uncover.

Every once in a while I come across a book that manages to successfully tell a story that is somehow completely bonkers yet also makes perfect sense. I always want to ask the author, how on earth did you come up with this? And I find myself wondering just that now. How did Jac Jemc dream up the idea to imagine this wonderfully hilarious yet heartbreaking story based on the lives of Empress Sisi and Ludwig II?

The best Historical Fiction, in my opinion, is that which reimagines the truth in a way that both enhances it as a story and also does better justice to its principal subjects than perhaps they received in real life.

Though the tone is upbeat and the pacing excellent, the story is a tough read at times (and I mean this in a good way) because it so profoundly captures the spirit of loneliness. That the subjects are royalty makes them no less relatable in this regard, and while the rest of us can’t say we were in a one-sided friendship with Richard Wagner and a literal prisoner of our own fantasy inside a fairy tale castle like Ludwig, we all know what a sense of emotional isolation can do to the mind.

Jemc did a terrific job of taking the facts of both Ludwig’s and Sisi’s lives and weaving them into a tale that brings them to life in a manner that, in a way, they weren’t permitted in their actual existence.

The audiobook version of this is fantastic, well-paced and read by a lovely narrator who did an excellent job in vocally differentiating the characters without ever resorting to the dreaded “doing voices.”

Between its sharp, clever wit and its fantastical, rich storytelling, I imagine both Sisi and Ludwig would have loved this book. I did too.

2.5/5.

i read another review referring to this book as “aggressively average”, and i honestly couldn’t agree more. there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but i didn’t really . . . feel it, either? the bits focusing on ludwig were a bit more interesting, simply because i feel like we’ve been bombarded with highly romanticised fictional portrayals of sissi’s life a million times already, particularly as of lately (re: corsage, sissi on disney+ & netflix, etc); her cousin was by far a much more interesting figure, even though i can hardly say that i /liked/ him as a character. which was to be expected, i suppose, as i can hardly name a single royal that makes me feel even remotely sympathetic, regardless of their circumstances (i do love seeing them roasted in fiction, though!). i expected both of their portrayals to be a little more nuanced & a little less romanticised; i’m honestly a little tired of european empresses being girlbossified by contemporary fiction & of the way we’re constantly being asked to sympathise with royals time and time again.

the narrator was lovely and it was definitely a very dynamic read/listen in spite of being over 12 hours long, due to its short chapters and the writing style being very fluid, hence my rounding it up to 3 stars.