Review: The Curse of the Romanovs By Staton Rabin

Privet! (Hello, in Russian….I hope)

Another old review…

Title: The Curse of the Romanovs

Author: Staton Rabin

Summary (B&N.com): Alexei Romanov, heir to the Russian throne, is in deadly danger.

It¹s 1916, the struggling Russian people are tired of war and are blaming their Romanov rulers for it, and some are secretly plotting to murder the young heir and his family. But nobody outside the palace knows that Alexei suffers from a terrible bleeding disease, hemophilia, which threatens to finish him off even before the family¹s enemies can. The only person able to help Alexei is the evil and powerful religious mystic Rasputin — and now Rasputin is trying to kill him too! Desperate, Alexei flees through time to New York City in 2010, using a method taught to him by the mad monk himself.

In New York, Alexei meets smart and sassy Varda Rosenberg, and discovers she is a distant cousin. Varda is working on a gene therapy cure for hemophilia, as the disease still runs in the family. When Alexei learns that history shows that his entire family will be assassinated in 1918, he and Varda travel back in time to the Russian Revolution, with Rasputin hot on their heels. Will they be able to rescue Alexei¹s family before it¹s too late?

Staton Rabin lets Alexei tell his own riveting story in a rousing adventure with stunning surprises — a movingly authentic look at royalty and revolution in the days of the tsars.

My Review: I've always had this great interest in historical mysteries. And this book is a new spin on the Romanov assassination. When most people my age think Romanov they think Anastasia and that Disney Cartoon with the singing or that conspiracy about how she survived, I used to as well but after reading this book I think of Anastasia’s little brother, Alexei Romanov. In reality, Alexei really did have Hemophilia, a hereditary disease where blood clotting factors don't work as they should, meaning they can’t help stop bleeding after a cut or injury. Alexei did not, however, time travel which is a part of the plot in this novel. I liked how the author explained how Rasputin was connected to the Romanov family and worked in the time travel so it didn’t cause eye rolling like other time traveling fiction. In the back of the book there’s also a section of the actual historical parts of the book so you don’t mix facts with fiction when you’re in history class and actually can report on something you know.

I recommend this book to all readers who want to learn about history with out a text book and have a little fun with it along the way.