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Sisi

Empress on Her Own : a Novel
Sep 04, 2019gloryb rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Pataki writes well. This entire novel is carried by conversation, dialogue, and inner thoughts of her characters with short paragraphs of description of the surroundings that the characters find themselves in. When letters between the characters are included - there are no footnotes - so it is impossible to know if the letters are artifacts. There is no bibliography, only a suggested reading list of books should her reader wish to delve further in the lives of Empress Sisi and her family. Despite these caveats, I enjoyed reading Pataki's novel more than Daisy Goodwin's novel, "The Fortune Hunter", also a historical fiction novel, which focuses on Empress Sisi's time in England riding horses in foxhunts with Bay Middleton. As Pataki also writes about Empress Sisi's infatuation with Bay Middleton, it was interesting to compare the two author's treatment of that time period in Empress Sisi's life. Pataki's novel covers the time period 1868 to 1898 while her earlier novel, "Accidental Empress", describes Empress Sisi's childhood and early married life, up to early 1860's.