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Blood & Beauty: The Borgias (2013)

by Sarah Dunant(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1400069297 (ISBN13: 9781400069293)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Random House

review 1: I loved this to the extent that I should not have had time to read this, but I made time. In my wild little world, that's a big deal. The characterisation was incredibly intricate, and I found myself personally affected by the trials of different characters. Even though it was picked up and put down randomly over 2 months, I was able to follow the plot without too much struggle, and regained a fascination in Italian families dynasties I last experienced as a teen reading about the da Medicis. My only reason for not giving a 5/5 was the ending. It felt like a cop-out, a response to a hurrying publisher, and that was a shame. I look forward to the sequel she mentions at the end though.
review 2: I enjoyed this book but not quite as much as I enjoyed the excellent... more Sarah Dunant’s previous novels, In the Company of the Courtesan, Sacred Hearts and The Birth of Venus. I think the main reason for this is that this is more of a ‘historical’ novel about a real family of the late 15/early 16th century, while the others were works of fiction albeit set in a specific period of history. The author clearly likes the Borgia family and is keen to redeem them from their monstrous reputation. Instead, they come across largely as a product of their times; they are no better and no worse than other powerful families who are trying to build themselves a dynasty in pre-unification Italy. The only difference is that this is a ‘parvenu’ family who are not even Italian (they come from Spain) and that they are headed up by one cardinal Rodrigo Borgia who cleverly manoeuvres himself into being elected Head of the Church. He does not allow this to interfere with his plans to make his children and grandchildren among the most powerful rulers in Italy, using his own talents for making and breaking alliances with foreign powers and his brilliant son Cesare’s talents in warfare to conquer many of the surrounding city-states and take their lands for the Borgias. It was only about two thirds of the way through the book that I realised that, short of an earthquake flattening the entire Borgia clan (quite a pleasant thought) this book would require a sequel. I look forward to reading it. It will be interesting to see how high this particular family can get before ‘coming a cropper’ as we Brits like to say... less

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