Audiobook Review – The Bronze Horseman (Bronze Horseman Trilogy, Book 1) by Paullina Simons, Narrated by James Langton (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 30 hours and 49 minutes (810 pages)
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: March 8, 2016
ASIN: B019PHYWFM
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Bronze Horseman series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 3/5 stars
“The golden skies, the translucent twilight, the white nights all hold the promise of youth, of love, of eternal renewal. The war has not yet touched this city of fallen grandeur or the lives of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanova, who share a single room in a cramped apartment with their brother and parents. Their world is turned upside down when Hitler’s armies attack Russia and begin their unstoppable blitz to Leningrad.
Yet there is light in the darkness. Tatiana meets Alexander, a brave young officer in the Red Army. Strong and self-confident yet guarding a mysterious and troubled past, he is drawn to Tatiana – and she to him. Starvation, desperation, and fear soon grip their city during the terrible winter of the merciless German siege. Tatiana and Alexander’s impossible love threatens to tear the Metanova family apart and expose the dangerous secret Alexander so carefully protects – a secret as devastating as the war itself – as the lovers are swept up in the brutal tides that will change the world and their lives forever.”
This is the first book in the Bronze Horseman trilogy. This is a historical fiction novel set in the 1940’s in Russia during Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This book was long and drawn out and plagued by characters that I found frustrating to read about.
I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. I would definitely recommend reading on audiobook if you like audiobooks. The narrator did an amazing job.
If I had one to use one word to describe this book it would be…long. This is a long book and it feels long. Although the wartime setting is intriguing, I struggled to stay interested in our two main characters who constantly sabotage their own lives to make things much much more difficult than they need to be.
Tatiana thinks she is self-sacrificing by begging Alexander to continue to pretend to be in love with her sister, Pasha, when Alexander actually loves Tatiana. She thinks she will help her sister by protecting her sister’s feelings. All she does is make everyone’s life miserable. Both Tatiana and Alexander make one poor decision after another; some they are driven to by their situation but others they make because…well…I am not sure why.
In the end I found both lead characters frustrating to read about. I was especially frustrated by the middle of the book which contained (I listened to this on audiobook) over three hours of a whole summer of Tatania and Alexander having sex. Seriously…I get it…they really really like each other…a lot. This whole book was an exercise in excess and frustration and really should have been edited better.
In the end I am just happy to be done with it. I will not be reading more of the series. I can take no more of Tatania’s passive aggressive behavior and can’t stand anymore of Alexander’s controlling and over-protective attitude. After 31 hours of listening to this I am soooo happy to be moving on to something else. The history was interesting but the rest was just so boring.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
– Audiobook Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
