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The Romanov Prophecy: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Steve Berry
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
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Rating:  129 reviews
Sales Rank: 384327
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 2005 Edition
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0345460065
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345460066
ASIN: 0345460065
Publication Date: April 26, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: ACCEPTABLE with noted wear to cover and pages. Binding intact. May contain highlighting, inscriptions or notations. We offer a no hassle guarantee on all our items. Orders are generally shipped no later than next business day. We offer a no hassle gu
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Product Description
Ekaterinburg, Russia: July 16, 1918. Ten months have passed since Nicholas II’s reign was cut short by revolutionaries. Tonight, the White Army advances on the town where the Tsar and his family are being held captive by the Bolsheviks. Nicholas dares to hope for salvation. Instead, the Romanovs are coldly and methodically executed.
Moscow: Present Day. Atlanta lawyer Miles Lord, fluent in Russian and well versed in the country’s history, is thrilled to be in Moscow on the eve of such a momentous event. After the fall of Communism and a succession of weak governments, the Russian people have voted to bring back the monarchy. The new tsar will be chosen from the distant relatives of Nicholas II by a specially appointed commission, and Miles’ job is to perform a background check on the Tsarist candidate favored by a powerful group of Western businessmen. But research quickly becomes the least of Miles’ concerns when he is nearly killed by gunmen on a city plaza.
Suddenly Miles is racing across continents, shadowed by nefarious henchmen. At first, his only question is why people are pursuing him. But after a strange conversation with a mysterious Russian, who steers Miles toward the writings of Rasputin, he becomes desperate to know more–most important, what really happened to the family of Russia’s last tsar?
His only companion is Akilina Petrov, a Russian circus performer sympathetic to his struggle, and his only guide is a cryptic message from Rasputin that implies that the bloody night of so long ago is not the last chapter in the Romanovs’ story . . . and that someone might even have survived the massacre. The prophecy’s implications are earth-shattering–not only for the future of the tsar and mother Russia, but also for Miles himself.
Steve Berry, national bestselling author of the phenomenal thriller The Amber Room, once again delves into rich historical fact to produce an explosive page-turner. In The Romanov Prophecy, the authentic and the speculative meld into a fascinating and exceptionally suspenseful work of fiction.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 124 more reviews...
 So bad, I couldn't finish it. September 18, 2004
Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
79 out of 130 found this review helpful
You've hear the cliche "spine-tingling suspense"? Well, Steve Berry's "The Romanov Prophecy" is brain-numbing nonsense. At page 273, one hundred pages from the end, I had to put myself out of my misery.
Russia has had a referendum and decided to restore Tsardom. Miles Lord, a young American attorney (who just happens to be black) is in Moscow with his boss making sure the right descendant of Nicholas II is chosen.
Lord and all the other characters couldn't make a 40s B movie. Thin to the point of transparency, none of the characters are believable. The plot is just ridiculous. Lord in his research learns of a prophecy by Rasputin, the monk who had been clutched to the busom of the royal family. Lord is marked for death because he stumbled across information that may lead to the discovery of others who could claim the Russian throne.
Lord escapes one murder plot after another in action scenes that are clumsily choreographed and unbelievable. He just happens to meet a Russian woman circus acrobat who just happens to be a necessary component for the fulfillment of Rasputin's prophecy . . .
All the coincidences don't add up to a plot.
Berry's writing style is forced and the dialog brittle.
Berry is clearly attempting to emulate Dan Brown - and he fails.
Best, in my opinion, to avoid this turkey.
Jerry
 Cross between John Grisham and Dan Brown (DaVinci Code) August 2, 2005
Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA)
39 out of 46 found this review helpful
I had such high hopes for The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry. Most people know the tragic fate of the last tsar and his family, and rumors have swirled for almost a century about possible survivors. When the remains were exhumed in 1991 and the skeletons of two of the royal children were missing, it just added fuel to the fire. Berry took the known facts, and added lots of fantasy to embellish this tale. But somewhere along the line, he dropped the ball.
The Romanov Prophecy opens in modern day Russia. The Russian people are tired of the lawlessness and economic uncertainty that have plagued their country since the fall of communism, and have decided to restore the monarchy. A 17 member independent Tsarist Commission has been appointed to find the "true" tsar. There are nine or ten Romanov claimants that need to be investigated. Stefan Baklanov seems to be the frontrunner, and his claim is bolstered by a secret group consisting of government officials, the military, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Mafia and a group of American businessmen with companies in Russia. Their goal is to bribe the members of the Tsarist Commission to make sure Stefan assumes the crown, and then control the new tsar like a puppet. The American's are financing this plot through an American law firm, Pridgen and Woodworth.
The main character, Miles Lord, is an African American lawyer from South Carolina who speaks fluent Russian. An employee of Pridgen and Woodworth, his job is to sift through Russian archives to find anything that might affect Baklanov's claim to the throne. After weeks of research, Lord finds documents (one from Lenin) that allude to the fact that several of Tsar Nicholas II's children survived the massacre in Yekaterinburg. But this new evidence now proves dangerous to Lord, and those representing Baklanov now want Lord killed. Lord gains the assistance of a beautiful acrobat in the Russian Circus, and together, they try to flee those trying to kill him. He is assisted by a secret organization, and must find clues and solve puzzles to discover the true secret of the Romanov's fate. Of course, he also must travel extensively at breakneck speed. In this sense, The Romanov Prophecy reads like John Grisham meets Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code).
While I enjoy historical fiction and I am not opposed to a little fantasy, The Romanov Prophecy is just too unbelievable. The fact that the Russian's would restore the monarchy is perhaps the biggest stretch of all. Also, do we really think that so many Russian factions (mafia, church, military, etc.) would all agree on anything? Or that two Russian mafia goons and a corrupt policeman could travel the world chasing Lord, without any problems with passports and visas? Or that the FBI and American police would be so easily fooled by the Russians without double checking? Or that the KGB has informants in US banks where they monitor bank accounts and safety deposit boxes that might still contain tsarist gold? Also, Lord is supposed to be a brilliant lawyer, but he's totally clueless in figuring out who is betraying him (it takes more than a house to fall on Lord).
So while I enjoyed The Romanov Prophecy and was anxious to see how it played out, I just think it had the potential to be so much more. Still, I gave it three stars as it combines two of my favorites-Romanov history in a mystery setting.
The proof that wasn't. February 2, 2006
J. Martens (Winnetka, IL USA)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
"Write what you know" is advice often offered to writers. Steve Berry should have heeded that advice. He doesn't speak Russian, nor does he know much about Russia.
His incorrect Russian was like a fingernail dragging across a chalkboard through the whole novel. Instead of Nikolskiy prospect, we get Nikolskaya. A babushka becomes a bobushka. And he dresses a Russian policeman in a woman's hat or "shlapa," which is actually written shlyapa. That's hardly an exhaustive list. Orleg (did he mean Oleg?) eats his bliny like an American, using syrup, rather than tvarog and jam.
Not that Berry's English is all that powerful. "And other than the man in the archives, whom he'd thought might be watching ..." Whom? Who would do just fine. Unleashing his creativity to write in a staccato, hard-boiled style, Berry pens: "He spent at least nine weeks a year traveling the world on expeditions. Canadian caribou and geese. Asian pheasant and wild sheep. European red stag and fox. ...." I don't think semi-colons would spoil the canvas here.
Don't expect any psychological depth from Berry's characters. Insights on what makes his characters tick appear as afterthoughts, plopped down on paper. Chapter 18 ends with: "Just like his father." Clunk. Evil-doer Hayes stands on a hill overlooking Moscow where "the Kremlin cathedrals peaked through a cold haze like tombstones in a fog." Is Hayes sensing his own death? He doesn't appear to be. So what's the reader to make of this image? Don't dig deeply. My guess is that it's only a doodad to give the work the semblance of the profound thought and observation expected in good literature.
Believability is an important quality of fiction. Berry lost all believability when he wrote that DNA testing confirmed that Michael Thorn was directly descended from the Russian Tsar Nicholas. He stated that Michael's "genetic structure matched Nicholas's exactly, even containing the same mutation scientists had found when Nicholas's bones were identified in 1994."
In the case Berry refers to, scientists tested mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed down the female line. Michael's mother got her mitochondrial DNA from her mother. Her mother got hers from her mother, etc.
If Michael Thorn's mitochondrial DNA matches Nicholas's, then Michael Thorn's mother is related to a female in Nicholas's mother's family.
Yet, that can't be. Berry states that Michael Thorn's mother, a Russian refugee living in America, was "Russian born to noble blood." Nicholas's mother's family is Danish. Thus, the results of the DNA test actually mean that Michael Thorn is not the Tsar. When science speaks, Berry's story disappears. That's just plain sloppy writing and editing.
Berry seems to have developed a recipe: take a foreign vacation, find colorful sights, take copious notes for descriptions, salt and pepper with foreign words, boil down local history to Cliff Notes sketches and attach them to scenery, simmer with a stock plot, and voila!
worse than I thought possible October 6, 2004
D.K.V. (Santa Monica, CA United States)
12 out of 20 found this review helpful
I didn't have very high expectations for this book, but thought the premise was interesting enough to warrant an impulse buy at the bookstore.
I really wanted to like this book because the concept was intriguing, but the writing was so amatuer and the plot so contrived that I had to stop myself from laughing aloud at the ridiculous storyline and characters and force myself to finish reading the book.
One example: the protagonist is a Southern African-American whose father was a preacher. Puuu-lease. Will we ever get over such stereotypes? I have several caucasian friends whose fathers were preachers/ministers, not ANY African-American friends with preacher fathers.
Another example: The Protagonist hooks up with a Russian Gymnast/Acrobat working in the Moscow circus, whose special talent as a gymnast allows her the ability to gracefully catapult herself into a tree to escape from a menacing gorilla at the zoo as the Russian bad guys are after her. Of course, later in the book the gymnast and Protaganost end up in a romantic embrace. Need I say more? Could this book get more ridiculous? The answer is yes.
Don't waste your time on this.
Not even one star for this book... June 19, 2005
Elena I. Uvarova (Washington, DC)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
The author claims to be an expert on Russia (at least, there is no single Russian name in his Acknowledgments, which probably means that in his arrogance he thought he can pull this novel by himself).
I was going to write about the book being bad literary - but there's enough written about it already. So, let me tell you just this - Mr.Berry appears to have no clue about Russia. Has he even been there? Some of his remarks through the book make me think he hasn't. Although he might have - but never stepped outside his hotel and never talked to Russian people. He starts with making up Russian personal and geographical names, and finishes with offending Russians in general. Too many lies show unfamiliarity with the country and its culture.
I know what I am talking about - I was born and spent most of my life in Russia (in Moscow).
Mr.Berry, there is no such a Russian surname as "Petrovna" (your lovely heroine, Akilina Petrovna). "Petrovna" is a middle name, or - a paternal name for a female whose father's name is Peter (Petr). She might have been Petrova. As to Akilina, it doesn't mean ANYTHING in "old Russian", it means "eagle-like" in Latin. There is a Russian name AKULINA, which was perhaps derived from the Latin AKILINA, but don't call it "old Russian".
There are LOTS of discrepancies in the book that could have been eliminated had the author done some research, or asked an educated Russian to proof-read the script before publishing it.
The overall impression - depressing. And it made a best-seller list, too. Amazing.
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