Like many people, I'm fascinated by the Romanovs - their lives, the modern mythology that has sprung up around their bloody demise, and of course, the conspiracy theories concerning the possible survival of the Tsar's youngest daughter Anastasia. This novel for young adults weaves all of these things together in an exciting and unusual twist on the Romanov story.
Anne is at a ballet performance with her friend Tess when she first sees him: the young man with the piercing blue eyes who can't seem to take his eyes off her. To Tess's delight, the next day he turns up at her school. But Anne has more important things to think about - like the terrible dreams of a witch with huge hands and iron teeth, and of a family being massacred, that are haunting her sleep. Everything starts to fall into place when Ethan reveals that she has been watching the fall of the Romanovs, that Anastasia was indeed saved from her family's massacre, swept up by the witch Baba Yaga and kept safe in a magical hut ever since, and that Anne is the girl he has been looking for, the one person who can rescue the Grand Duchess and set her free. Of course Anne thinks he's crazy, but as strange things start happening they must join together in a dangerous race in which more than one life hangs in the balance.
Sound complicated? Well, yes, it is a bit. There's a lot of detail to take in as the novel goes on, from the Russian fairytale of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave to the complex dynamics of the tsar's family. The novel is told from three perspectives, which helps a little, as each contributes their own knowledge and understanding to help the reader piece things together. Anne is the modern girl learning about the Romanov history and the Baba Yaga folklore. Ethan is the young man who was there when the Romanovs were slaughtered and has been searching for the key to Anastasia's freedom ever since. And Anastasia herself is given a voice in the form of three letters to her family, almost like journal entries questioning their choices and straightening her own experiences in her mind. To begin with I found the quick changes between Anne and Ethan a little jarring - and the 'handwritten' script of Anastasia's letters was quite hard to decipher at times - but I soon adjusted to the point where I hardly noticed the switch.
All in all, I enjoyed it. Once or twice I figured out what was going on before the characters did - including the main motivation behind everything that was happening - which may have dampened my excitement somewhat. Occasionally it felt like too much had been crammed into one story, with things going too fast for the reader to really keep up and process what was happening. But I thought the premise was very original, and I enjoyed the glimpse into an aspect of Russian folklore that I'd never come across before. It was surprisingly moving by the end, and the characters were engaging and likeable, if a little flat sometimes. Recommended to Romanov geeks and anyone who likes their YA fiction flavoured with something a little out of the ordinary...
