The Witches Of St Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones

1.5 Stars

This sounded so enticing from the blurb - 2 mysterious beauties married in to Russian Aristocracy from a small land who bring their magical talents with them.  Throw in a little Rasputin and you can almost feel the icy winds of St Petersburg caress your cheek.  I couldn't wait to get started on this one as it looked to have everything you could want in a book.

Unfortunately, it turned out to have everything you don't want in a book.  Rambling and repetitive prose, dialogue that feels forced, a plotline that is so loose it is almost non-existent and characters that are strangely character-less.  This is all the more confusing as the notes from the Author at the end tell us that Anastasia and Militza were real people.  I was convinced that Stana and Milly were fabricated heroines (of a sort) thrown in to a mixing bowl with a bunch of real life people and situations.

Even worse, virtually everything takes place at some party or ball or get together at someone's house.  Laudanum and Cocaine taking is rife and nobody seems to do anything apart from get stoned and then very, very drunk.  Doesn't matter who the character is - the Tsar, the Tsarina, a Doctor, one of the Goat Sisters - this is all they do day in and day out.  Now, I am sure there is a sound basis for the levels of reliance on opiates in the Russian Court prior to the Revolution but this book makes it sound like this is all they did - that and gossip.  Gossip that the reader is never privy to, the sisters just moan about all the gossips in the Court Circle.

I genuinely disliked this book and struggled to finish it.  The only reason I kept reading was I had a sort of car crash mentality towards it after the first 25% - I kept hoping it could and would improve and couldn't believe that it was continuing in the same vein page after interminable page.  Some of the court intrigue stuff seemed promising in the beginning but every flame of interest gets snuffed out without a resolution as we move on to another banal situation.