Although the author’s lyrical style is beautifully poetic, I found the book often tedious to read and I kept looking to see how many pages were left. There were many times when I put it down with the thought that I just can’t wade through this anymore. The best-drawn and most interesting character in the book is the young, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich. He appears to have a much better grasp of what is happening to his country than his father did; and the book leads one to believe that, had he lived to rule, he might have saved Russia from its disastrous fall to communism.