The Winter Queen : A Novel (Erast Fandorin Mysteries) | Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield

The Winter Queen : A Novel (Erast Fandorin Mysteries) | Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield | A+

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The Winter Queen :...

	The Winter Queen : A Novel (Erast Fandorin Mysteries) Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield, 2003 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 78 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I LOVE this series!!!!

This is the first of the Erast Fandorin novels by Russian novelist Boris Akunin, which has quickly become my favorite mystery series ever. That is not an easy thing to accomplish when there are so many excellent series out there from authors including Owen Parry, Robert Crais, James Lee Burke and so many others. What Akunin does so well is transport you to a time and place that is different; very, very different and extremely interesting. A mystery set in imperial Russia in the time of the Tzars reveals a Russia that many of us have never imagined before. The language is beautiful, the stories exciting, the plots are magnificent, and the characterization is superb. The only bad thing about Akunin is that only four of his Erast Fandorin novels have been translated so far. It's just an awful feeling when you have finished those four when you realize that although there are more available....you can't read Cyrillic.

In this first novel, Erast Fandorin is an 18 year old newly minted bureacrat attached to the municipal police department in Moscow. Several hard to explain suicides catch his eye and he begins an investigation that uncovers a world-spanning plot and secret organizations. This young Fandorin has not developed the physical or mental prowess that we'll see later and he possesses a certain naivete that is both charming and sincere. He crashes through first love and attraction, travels to England, discovers his knack for winning all bets, foils the villains (but were they really villainous?), and must contest with unforeseeable triumph and sorrow. This novel is a wonderful read; yet it is also the weakest of the four stories thus far translated. As Erast matures so do the stories and the action. I cannot highly recommend this series enough. It is simply wonderful.

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A+

I actually read this novel, as well as all the other novels by Boris Akunin featuring Fandorin, in Russian because it is my native language. I loved tham all. This book (in English translation) I bought as a gift for my English-speaking friends. They read it already and said they were impressed by this story and would read all sequences, which made me very happy.

Hurrah for Boris Akunin!

Boris Akunin introduces Erast Fandorin in 'The Winter Queen', a murder mystery, yes, but much more, 'The Winter Queen sprawls across Europe from Moscow to London and back to St. Petersburg. Set in 1876, the book starts with a 'bang!' - literally, a university student blows his own brains out in the Alexander Garden.

This apparent suicide is the string upon which Fandorin begins to tug and an international conspiracy unravels revealing layer-upon-layer of delicious characters mostly of evil intent. Akunin's characters rarely are quite whom they seem to be at first.

The book also ends with another 'bang!' to fortunately spoil what looked to be an all-too-happy ending.

Hurrah for Boris Akunin! He has now produced something like 11 Fandorin mysteries as well as the Sister Pelagia series and other novels. Akunin's fame has finally spread from Russia to the US. Very highly recommended.

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A Russian Flashman without the self-deprecating wit

Boris Akunin is considered one of modern Russia's greatest authors in line with Gogol and Gorky. His mysteries are set in the late nineteenth century with all the pomp and circumstance that this era evokes. In this novel he begins at the fourteenth (and lowest) level of the elite and by the end has moved up to the ninth level, been awarded the medal of St.Vladimir, and married the daughter of a Full Privy Conselor (second level).

His rise to fame is as startling as anything that happens to someone in Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, but it does come with a certain amount of assistance from some interesting side characters; as well as some timing right out of the 'perils of pauline'. In fact about the only thing that doesn't happen to him in this novel, is getting tied to a railroad track. He does though get tied up in a sack and thrown into the Thames River as well as being clamped into a chair and chloroformed. Bad guys are constantly letting him get away in some very imaginative ways.

Akunin has some fun poking at the state of the Russian Empire at this time as well as how the aristocracy looked at themselves as well as the world. The description of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans and Russians leave you wondering how much is 'supposed' to be tongue in cheek and how much is opinion.

Lastly, it has a very "Russian" ending.

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Let's Make This Russian Import Welcome

"The Winter Queen," penned by Boris Akunin, translated by Andrew Bromfield, is part of the author's hugely popular, in its Russian homeland, Erast Fandorin mystery series, that is just now gaining some exposure in the West. It's well-written, light on its feet, quick-moving, reasonably original and pleasant reading. Let's make it welcome.

The series is set in the Russia of 1876-- to this reader, the ambiance of both time and place are excellently done, and indicate a lot of research. This entry also travels to London, where, once again, time and place were excellently done.

The plot concerns one Erast Fandorin, young Russian cop, born to a wealthier life but, unfortunately for him, son of an inconsiderate Dad, who's taking on his first case. A young Russian university student-- and our boy cop sure wishes he could afford to be a student-- of great means commits suicide, by a method our author is pleased to call American Roulette, and we know as Russian Roulette, before a pretty girl in a busy public park. Soon, the young student's university student friend, of even greater means, is murdered. Fandingo is off and running, sometimes literally. He'll meet swashbuckling Russian nobility, and villainesses beautiful, and noble, before he gets done wrapping up the anarchist, nihilist plot.

The surprise ending will involve one last nihilist blow: surprise endings are great, but some American readers may not be thrilled with this one, nihilism being much more to European tastes than ours. And here's a last silly complaint: the hero's name is quite a mouthful. Fandingo, of course, became Fandango to me, but what can you make of Erast, apparently Russian for Erasmus? What's wrong with Nicholai or Peter? Still, a nice read.

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