This would be shelved with Alisa Libby's Blood Confession under 'counterintuitive subject matter for young adult historical fiction'. Certainly the theme of the older, more capable female child being passed over in favor of the younger, less capable male one is no surprise, but the denouement of the plot is unusual for the subgenre to which it belongs, and I do wonder why Tracy Barrett thought Anna Commena's Machiavellian ambition and thouroughly messed up psyche made her a likely heroine for a book of this sort.

That aside, I enjoyed it immensely. There is a baffling scarcity of historical fiction set in the Byzantine Empire, and this helped fill that gap with ease. In addition, the choice of character did what I wish more historical fiction did, expanding upon a personage who is merely a footnote in history, but whose sparse biographical details offer rich literary possibilities. The choice of intended group for the book limited it a great deal - I would have preferred something four hundred pages long, with none of the hesitation that young adult novels with ineptly chosen subject matter betray - and left the characters feeling more like sketches than fully drawn portraits, but the interest of the plot made up for that most of the time.