Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

The Kitchen Boy:  A Novel of the Last Tsar
Cattriona avatar reviewed on + 200 more book reviews


This is an amazingly quick and fascinating read. Though it is a novel, the author has drawn upon a great deal of historical documents and other facts to make the story as realistic as possible. The author does sprinkle in some basic Russian words in the dialogue -- greetings, "thank you", etc, and I did not find this as distracting as some reviewers did; rather, I felt they added to the atmosphere of the story. The ending is quite intriguing -- just as you're smugly thinking to yourself, "I know where this is going and how it ends", everything changes in a plot twist literally in the last 2 pages of the book. There are some necessary yet gruesome details on the deaths of the Romanovs, which may be upsetting to some readers, but this is otherwise a highly recommended read for fans of historical fiction, Russian history or the Tsars.