I tried to read this book but could only get halfway through. So boring.

This was an interesting work of historical fiction. Christian, the main character finds himself in a predicament when on arriving in Prague, he discovers the body of a young woman in the street. He quickly becomes embroiled in the politics and skullduggery of the Emperor Rudolph's court. 'I felt as if I had been caught up in the workings of some terrible machine from which I would never be released'
He is charged with the task of finding her murderer and meets a variety of untrustworthy and scheming individuals while undertaking this task. Christian is a vain and naive character who is not a particularly likeable protagonist.
The historical details of Prague in 1600 were well described. The pacing was a little off in the middle. The story was written in the first person and reminded me of The Hangman's daughter by Oliver Potzsch and The Unquiet Bones by Melvin R. Starr in tone and style.

I was provided with an ARC for review by Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I am afraid I was a little disappointed in this book. It should have been the kind of book I love, a historical thriller, but I found it rather stilted, as if it was a poor translation from another language, and I didn't find any of the characters credible or likeable. I might have enjoyed it more if the book had begun with the historical notes, rather than ending with them, so I would have known as I was reading which characters were real and which fictional.

This is a impressively researched piece of dark historical crime fiction by John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, set in the Prague of 1599 and the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, The central protagonist is Christian Stern, a markedly unlikeable man. Stern is an arrogant young doctor with ambitions to make his mark and rise in the court. He arrives in Prague, gets drunk on his first night, only to find himself stumbling over the dead body of a woman in the snow. It transpires that the murdered woman is Magda Kroll, the mistress of the emperor. Rudolf takes in Stern, tasking him to investigate Magda's murder. The emperor is a man given to odd whims and has a strong interest in the occult, perceived by many as a poor leader.

However, Christian Stern has neither the wit or the means with which to succeed at the job. He finds himself moving here and there, following leads supplied by others, and hopelessly out of his depth. The court is full of intrigue, plots, conspiracies, covert relationships and the ambitious jostling for power amongst religious divisions and competing parties. There does lurk a more powerful and able wolf behind the scenes. Black writes a well plotted story with a first person narrative and there are finely honed descriptions that evoke the period. The characters struggle to evoke a sympathetic reaction from the reader It is a good read that transports the reader to such an interesting period in history. Thanks to Penguin for an ARC.

Prague Nights is a historical mystery novel set in Prague in 1599. It follows the story of Christian Stern, who arrives in Prague for the first time to find a woman’s body left in the night, a woman who turns out to be the mistress of the emperor, Rudolf II. He is suddenly swept into the court and its intrigues of murder, alchemy, and religious tension. Historical figures mix with fictional characters in this unravelling mystery set as the century turns over into the next.

Black’s novel is written in an archaic style that is somewhat stilted, but once the reader is used to it, it becomes less pronounced. The story is a fairly simple mystery, weaving together the concerns of various figures in the court and how the fairly hapless first person narrator uncovers their secrets. The main character is quite difficult to get invested in as he has few traits other than an occasionally unlikeable attitude towards women, though the book feels more focused on the narrative than the main character. The backdrop is vividly drawn and elements of historical language and references to famous figures like Dr Dee set it firmly at the very end of the sixteenth century. The combination of magic and religion is pretty standard for the era too.

Prague Nights will likely appeal to fans of historical mystery, with the Prague setting a particular selling point, along with the combination of fantasy and court scandal and seduction. However, it does not stand out a great deal in this genre nor is the narrative hugely gripping. It is a light and fairly short read for European history fans not looking for too much depth or complex plot.

bookshelves: spring-2017, e-book, net-galley, published-2017, czech-prague, czech, historical-fiction, mystery-thriller, lit-richer, adventure, beautifully-put

Penquin Books (UK) Viking:
Pub Date 01 Jun 2017 | Archive Date 15 Jun 2017

Description: 'The emperor's mistress had been murdered, and the world had been taken hold of and turned upon its head'. Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman's body half-buried in the snow.

The dead woman is none other than the emperor's mistress, and there's no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor's court - unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But there's no turning back now..



Having read through Banville's 'Prague Pictures'a few years back, it was no surprise to see him weave a historical fiction around the baroque Pražský hrad, home of the noun 'defenestration'. Prague is a bewitching city to visit, steeped in all sorts of superstitions and wild events.

Rudolph is the Holy Roman Emperor and he had predicted the arrival of the doctor, Christian Stern: the ''new star over Prague''...

A nice read over a balmy weekend.

- mild foreshadowing
- gently nuanced
- first person narrative
- deft language usage
- easy reading

Rudolph II

As Benjamin Black

2.5* Christine Falls
3* The Silver Swan
3* Elegy for April
3* Prague Nights

John Banville

4* The Sea
TR The Book of Evidence
2.5* Ancient Light
TR Shroud
3* Prague Pictures
LIDA Bowen and Betjeman

John Banville, who writes his crime fiction as Benjamin Black, gets a nod in the course of this salacious stand-alone novel of a young man’s dangerous visit to Prague. He calls it a historical fantasy; it is 1599. I’d say there were winks as well as nods to his devoted readers, but that the story is blighted by cliché piled upon ossuary. For example, Christian Stern is a callow, not very clever, youngish German from Regensburg, who has studied in Wurzburg (whence he fled) and now comes to visit Prague, where the ruler is mad, bad, and dangerous—but so is almost everybody else, including a Jewish convert, whose daughter is the first victim in the book. There’s an Italian mistress of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph whose children include a werewolf-like murderer who bites his victims to death; his mother, the maitresse en titre, falls for Christian (in itself more than perplexing) and exhibits a repressed man’s idea of untamed sexuality: foreign women, famous for their voracity. This is an early ugly cliché, though the hanged man in a dark courtyard ought perhaps to be counted.
Christian also sleeps with an Italian novice he meets at the Pope’s envoy’s palace, not to mention (later) the English step-daughter of Dr Dee’s assistant, Kelley. The English Ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton seeks Kelley’s acquaintance, and addresses himself to Christian for aid, but doesn’t get it; indeed, when his request becomes known he gets out of town. Even Kepler gets a bad time from the author, who has used him before. As authors let their imaginations slip off the lead, fantasy often gets out of hand. This is mainly just disgusting, its misogyny constant, if ostensibly covered by Christian, who is the narrator. I believe I have not mentioned the dwarf who is Rudolph’s servant, jester, and gossip.
	It is Christian’s name which makes him of interest at court, because it sounds like the answer to a long wait for a mysterious person who will arrive like a star sent by Christ. He doesn’t have a long time to spend in the firmament: picked up by soldiers as a murderer in the first few pages, but taken before one of the palace higher-ups, his life spared. Rudolph assigns him to the murder he did not commit, but discovered. He cannot solve it, of course, and he lends it little attention. The dead woman is the daughter of a the Jewish doctor already mentioned. She has been horribly killed; Rudolph is angry, as he has just made her his mistress. Her fiancé is also discovered murdered, having been tortured first (there are some quite vivid descriptions in the course of the book). But, mostly, Christian dallies in Prague, alternately drunk, terrified, sexually self- absorbed, as well as very stupid about surveillance in this gossipy city. He doesn’t arouse much sympathy, not even from himself. Since this is a first-person narration, it is obvious that he survives, fleeing Prague for a secret destination on a west coast somewhere in ‘the north’, at the limits of the world—because all the clues fell into place and his lap. Another wink for the reader, surely. With luck, we will not meet Christian Stern again.

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I really wanted to like this book as reading the blurb made it sound like it was going to be great. Unfortunately I just didn't. The only thing stopping me from only giving this book 2 stars is that I did find the writing engaging enough to keep reading despite feeling pretty much nothing for all the characters! I know that some books do this deliberately and I have enjoyed books in the past where the characters are all awful, but here I can't quite figure out why but none of them really grabbed me and made me want to root for them or wish for their downfall enough. 
The story is interesting and had plenty of plot twists starting from the mysterious death at the beginning which plays out through the whole book. The historical elements all feel accurate and well researched and it is clear this guy is a decent writer with good ideas. However, I find myself not really knowing what else to say about this book as it has left me feeling for lack of a more elegant turn of phrase, a bit blah!

As usual, words like prose flow from the pen of Benjamin Black(John Banville), in almost lyrical form we set off from Regensburg in lower Bavarian region of Germany to the gothic world of Prague.
Unfortunately in this case, an excellent command of the English language was not enough to draw me in and keep me involved with the story. Cristian Stern, while having an interesting story was not as intriguing a character as Black's Quirke and I (after much self battle) abandoned my fight with this particular tale.

Don’t let the beautiful cover and the fairytale-like description fool you, this book is nothing like what it seems.

I was beyond excited to request Prague Nights on NetGalley. And I can’t tell you how happy I was to start reading it.

Sadly, it was in vain.

Prague Nights is a dreary, boring, uneventful narrative about some equally boring events that did not happen in the court of Rudolf II.

In theory, this book could have been fantastic. Rudolf II was obsessed with the occult, with different curiosities, he was a patron of art and magic. Looking for the philosopher’s stone in 16th century Prague? How awesome is that?

Not very awesome, in this book.

The narrator and main character, Christian Stern, is a person who needs a hard slap. He is not remarkable in any way, he is not particularly talented, nor is he very smart, for that matter. Christian Stern is ordered by the emperor to investigate the death of a young girl. What he does instead of that is snoop around the court affairs, have sex, and think how he should investigate but isn’t. There is not a drop of suspense, because the narrator is in no way engaged in the drama unfolding in the palace. He is no part of it, he doesn’t know what the relations between the other characters are, he is usually at a loss as to how to act and what to do. The main event of the book being the death of Magda Kroll, Christian Stern plays no role in solving it. He just follows what other characters tell him to do and ends up learning information that is completely inconsequential, as everyone else already has the knowledge. Even in the end, he is just a passive observer. He doesn’t manage to achieve absolutely anything.

More so, out of what could have been an absurdly beautiful scene for the events of the book, my dream city of Prague, what we get is usually Stern’s cold house where he has sex. No enchanting adventures in the maze of streets of old Prague, no hidden treasures, no magic, no life in this book.

All of the events simply happen and we are forced to read about them from the view-point of the most uncharismatic outcast in the court of Rudolf II.

Lastly, what could have been the two most interesting characters in the book, Rudolf and his son Don Julius Caesar, are just mentioned as background information, and often mocked, while in reality, they were both probably insane, but also very interesting people.

Wolf on a leash
Winter 1599 and Christian Stern, a naïve and over-confident young man, arrives in Prague determined to make his name at the court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and patron of the alchemical arts. Imagine his surprise when drunk, on his first night in the city, he stumbles across the murdered corpse of a wealthy young woman, is arrested for her murder and then adopted by the superstitious emperor as a talisman sent by God. Worse, despite his innate lack of skill or power, Stern is ordered by the emperor to find out who has murdered the girl, recently his own mistress. 
I confess Christian Stern is not an especially attractive protagonist, cast as he is amidst a pack of conspiring and plotting factions within the eccentric court of Rudolf. But this is what makes this an interesting and entertaining novel: the competing groups of ruthless characters, divided by religion and ambition; the bleakness of the Prague winter; the foibles of Rudolf, a man clearly unfit to rule; the seasoning of Kafkaesque hopelessness, as Stern blindly and ineffectually attempts to negotiate a way through a murderous maze. He imagines himself a ‘wolf on a leash’, but he is wrong – that description better fits another…