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To Kill a Tsar

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To Kill a Tsar

By: Andrew Williams
Narrated by: Peter Wickham
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About this listen

St Petersburg, 1879. A shot rings out in Palace Square. Cossack guards tackle the would-be assassin to the ground. In the mêlée no one notices a striking dark haired young woman in a heavy coat slip away from the scene. Russia is alive with revolutionaries. While Tsar Alexander II remains a virtual prisoner in his own palaces, his ruthless secret police will stop at nothing to unmask those who plot his assassination and the overthrow of the Imperial regime. For Dr Frederick Hadfield, whose medical practice is dependent on the Anglo-Russian gentry, these are dangerous times. Drawn into a desperate cat-and-mouse game of undercover assignations, plot and counter-plot, he risks all in a perilous double life.

©2010 Andrew Williams (P)2010 Soundings Historical Fiction Russia Fiction
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I really wanted to like this but found it rather dry and slow. The two main characters are fine I suppose. The revolutionaries are naïve but ruthless and the monarchists aren’t clearly defined. Maybe I’d enjoy it more another time.

Doesn’t really live up to its premise

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... one thing to watch out for in the audio version is that the author's final section - explaining the genuine history which the book is based on - is missing.

As for the novel itself, I have greatly enjoyed two of his later novels. This one shows how his skill has improved across his novels. His historical detail and immersion is here in this one too, but the dramatic tension and characters get better with his later books. The ending is also a brave choice - not a neat wrapping up of events, nor the setup for a sequel, and so likely to be a bit Marmite for readers. While it didn't quite work for me, that does not take away from the enjoyable canter through an important part of Russian history in the rest of the book.

Enjoyable story but...

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