Blood and Beauty (Sangue e onore: i Borgia), Sarah Dunant

For people lacking that sort of obsessive love of the historical figures or the time period, I’m not sure this book will really grab them. It is well written, interesting, and it is completely clear that Dunant did her homework as far as research is concerned. The characterizations are great, whether it’s Cesare and Michelotto’s “best bros who murder” relationship or Cesare and Lucrezia’s “you get that you guys are actually related though?” connection.

The real flaw I thought in the book was the choice to stage everything in third person present tense. While Dunant spends time with each of the main figures and their perspectives, the narrative device keeps the reader from ever really diving deep into any of the characters. Unfortunately this choice sometimes made the book read more “historical” than “historical fiction”.

This didn’t bother me any, I’ll take the Borgia tale in any form, especially one well written and with all my favorites well represented. For other readers though, I can easily see the book not having enough of a personal narrative hook to get them invested.

The book is fairly long and yet doesn’t cover their entire history, and like I noted it was certainly a page-turner for me. In the epilogue, Sarah Dunant talks about writing a concluding volume to the Borgia saga and man, will I read that the second it becomes available. (Like seriously, gimme!)

Like any historical fiction writer, Dunant makes deliberate choices with the more shady aspects of the Borgia story. But all of her choices made sense for her characters and indeed are in line with historian theories.

This is a very, very long review to say the following: I really, really liked it. However, I wish we had gotten closer to the characters at the heart of the story, which was a failing I felt in the narrative device chosen.