I am very confused by this book, along with very uncomfortable. The antisemitism is rampant (which makes sense for the story), but I can’t stand it. Also, some of the characters are quite vulgar. The storytelling itself is just jumbled and confusing.

This dramatic yet playful re-telling of the days leading up to the Russian Revolution (with dragons!) offers a variety of delights, from the courtly intrigues and madness of Rasputin, to the Jews huddling in the burrows to avoid the tsar’s dragons, to the machinations of the revolutionaries, to an entirely new meaning of the term “red death.” I believe the authors, seasoned professionals both, had way too much fun concocting this tale.

A little knowledge of the Russian Revolution is desirable for enjoying this book, and I fear that younger readers, who think “Putin” when they hear “Russia,” had little understanding of the tumultuous events leading to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the principle movers and shakers of those days. On the other hand, The Last Tsar’s Dragons would make a great addition to a serious class about the early part of the 20th century. By shifting the narrative of power to metaphor, while preserving actual historical and occasionally fictional characters, this could and should provoke lively discussion.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything in particular about it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

Talk about false advertisement! This should be called "The last tsar's antisemitic views and actions whilst there are dragons in the background" instead.
And dear god it's boring, one of the most boring books I've ever read. The characters are monodimensional, the story keeps stumbling around without a goal, the prose is just meh. I was so disappointed because the premise was so promising.

Lo Zar odia gli ebrei, e manda i draghi a tormentarli.

I draghi fanno danni.

I nobili odiano gli ebrei.

Monta un movimento rivoluzionario sotterraneo.

Il popolo odia gli ebrei.

I draghi fanno danni.

C'è la Rivoluzione d'Ottobre.

Lo Zar cade.

Fine.

Come annegare una splendida idea (Russia e draghi!) in una sciatta ricostruzione dell'antisemitismo di allora, che per quanto pervasivo non era certo l'unica pecca del regno zarista.

Un vero peccato, da Jane Yolen mi aspettavo decisamente di più.

I can deal with a book being bad if it's at least entertaining, and I can deal with a book being boring at points if it's well done the rest of the time. Unfortunately, this was both bad and boring.

I thought I would love this book. It's described as a retelling of the Russian Revolution with dragons, which sounds pretty awesome. But the dragons play a minor (insignificant, really) role in the story, and what's left is boring, oversimplified, and/or confusing political events. The most entertaining part was the killing of Rasputin, but even that was so rushed and confusing that it wasn't fun.

I ultimately decided to give it 1 star instead of 2 because of how much gross objectification of women there was. I know it was meant to show how bad and evil certain characters were, but less is more with that kind of thing, and this tiny book had a TON of it.

This one is very difficult for me to review properly. As a novella I feel like it wasn't quite long enough for me for a fantasy story, and it read more like a timeline of real events mixed with dragons and fictions. I really loved the idea but I definitely wanted more from it. Love the perspective of the Tsarina.

While the dragons add an interesting fantasy element, the book felt more like a piece of well-researched historical fiction. The novella’s primary focus was a split between the rampant anti-semitism that marked early 20th-century Russia and Rasputin’s rise and fall within the royal family. Adding the dragons didn’t feel necessary, especially given the heavy focus on Rasputin and the unnamed narrator. I was expecting this to be primarily about the dragons and I wish they had factored more heavily into the narrative.

What if there were dragons involved in the Russian Revolution? The novella begins with Tsar Nicholas II sending his black dragons yet again to attack Russian Jews as part of his campaign against them. Meanwhile, a Jewish revolutionary has managed to acquire dragons of his own, red ones, which he and Lenin plan to use to overthrow the Tsar. Other plot threads involve scheming at court as various factions seek greater influence with the Tsar and Tsarina.

There were many elements of this novella that felt incomplete. The dragons did not add much to the plot; they seemed merely to function as an extra tool of violence, one that both sides had some trouble controlling. There were many plot threads, but they did not tie together terribly well, as the court scheming was fairly pointless once the revolution started. Furthermore, the revolution itself barely featured in the novella; the entire February Revolution was covered in about a single page, and then the Romanovs are imprisoned in Tobolsk. Lastly, the characters were one-dimensional.

I wanted to like this book, because I enjoy Yolen’s work and I was excited about the premise. Unfortunately, it was underdeveloped. I would have liked to see more about how the dragons would have changed the political and military landscape surrounding the revolution and more nuance in the plot and characterization.

Trigger warnings:
Anti-Semitism: indicated in the book as problematic, but there’s still a lot of it.
Misogyny: Two POV characters frequently express misogynistic sentiments, discussing women as disposable sexual objects. The characters are not at all framed as good people, but the frequency with which those sentiments appear in their chapters was frustrating to me.

This one didn't quite work for me and ultimately I wasn't able to finish it. The premise intrigued me and the cover is GORGEOUS, but I ultimately found all the characters too unlikeable. The antisemitism, though historically accurate for the historical Russians, was also a bit tough to read.

Slow and with a strong tendency to drag. I was hoping for something different, I suppose. I imagine this book will find it's reader, but that is not me.

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<p>I have to say that the title is what drew me to this strange but enjoyable little novella. How on earth, I thought, can one make dragons relevant to the Russian Revolution? </p>
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<p>Somehow, mother and son team Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple weave together myth and history into a compelling tale of the last days of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, their relentless hatred of both the Jews and the peasants, and their eventual fall from power. </p>
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<p>Several notable historical figures appear in the story, including the "Mad Monk" Grigori Rasputin, the tsarina Alexandra, the man who would later become Leon Trotsky, and a nameless functionary whose narration bookends the story as a whole. </p>
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<p>Of these, arguably the most compelling--and repelling--character is certainly the nameless functionary whose point of view bookends the novella. He is ruthless, vicious, and utterly willing to do whatever it takes to see to it that he advances up the ranks of the imperial bureaucracy, even if that means betraying his own wife (or engage in the murder of Rasputin). He is the only character whose narration is in first person, and this provides us an uncomfortably intimate glimpse into a psyche that is fundamentally twisted and ruthless. </p>
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<p>Though the novella is largely driven by such characters, the authors also have a gift for capturing a fascinating mix of the fantastic and the historical. One gets a sense of the political and social ferment affecting Russia on the eve of the Revolution, as various parties struggle to cope with a country--and a world--that seems to teeter on the brink of absolute collapse. Furthermore, they also manage to bring into the open the toxic antisemitism that was such a prominent part of Russia at the time (and since). </p>
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<p>All in all, I found <em>The Last Tsar's Dragons</em> to be an intriguing tale, and it was rather refreshing to see a story told successfully in the form of the novella. At the same time, however, I for one am left hungering for more, precisely because the central conceit begs so many questions. Where did the dragons come from? Were there other places that used them other than Russia? If not, why not? </p>
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<p>Perhaps the authors will one day pursue these questions, but in the meantime, we can savour what they have provided us, a glimpse into how the real world of history might have been impacted had the mythical played a larger part in it.</p>
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Jane Yolen is an expert in dragons. She’s also a seasoned writer, having written children’s books (my youngest loves the “How Do Dinosaurs” book series), middle grade, and adult books. I was quite excited to read this mother-son team-up. Unfortunately, I didn’t love this one.

That’s not to say I didn’t like it: there were many things that I felt were well done. The book switched back and forth between a few different narrators, one of which was Rasputin. He was an interesting figure in history so it was cool to read chapters written from that character’s point of view. The religious zeal, combined with an enormous amount of narcissism, made him an intriguing character to explore.

I’m not sure why dragons were even included in the book: they actually detracted from the story, although my dragon-loving self hates to admit it. The rest of it is basically a historical fiction, and the dragons just didn’t fit. I might have liked it better without the dragons, and I hate having to say that.

There were parts that really dragged for me. I felt that certain characters, such as the tsarina, weren’t utilized to the best of their potential. She could have been written in a way that contributed much more to the feel of the time. Instead, she was just kind of annoying.

Eventually, it did fall into a sort of storytelling rhythm, and it moved along well after that. It ended up being an enjoyable story, but nothing to write home about. I liked it, but it’s not one that I’ll pick up again.

What an interesting book. I have recently read another book about the Romanov family, so it's easy to compare, I'll try not to. The Last Tsar's Dragons is a retelling of the Russian Tsar's family's imprisonment, but then with dragons. It starts a little slow, I almost gave up, and at the end it picks up the pace and I found myself actually want more at the end!

Rasputin is an interesting character. I found him a little too pervy in this retelling, but it worked for the story. The dragons are really cool and I wish there was more about them!

In short: fun book, quick read. Had some humour and was entertaining.

<i>The Last Tsar's Dragons </i>is a novella I was pretty excited for, but one that unfortunately really disappointed.

The book is set in the months leading up to the Russian Revolution. Tsar Nikolai's dragons are being sent to slaughter Jews in the Russian Empire. At court, Rasputin and his enemies plot around each other as they try to influence the Tsar, while Tsaritsa Alexandra frets about her sickly son. Out in the countryside, Lev Bronstein -- more famously known as Leon Trotsky -- does his own fretting and plotting as he hatches a secret weapon to overthrow the Russian monarchy.

So. This is a book about the Russian Revolution written for Americans. I'm a Ukrainian emigrant. This book was <i>really</i> not written for me. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I can't get out of my own shoes enough to say how it reads to others; for me, it was a straight-up comedy.

There's the usual stuff common in American portrayals of Russia. Surnames aren't always gendered properly; a person is referred to by their patronymic as if it was their last name; random Russian words are peppered in, not always correctly. The only two Russian folktales Americans know are Koschei the Deathless and Baba Yaga so naturally they get a shout-out. Anastasia is the only one of the princesses to get a speaking role.

I've come to expect all that in American books set in Russia, though it does become especially funny when half the characters are high nobility or courtiers. His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nikolai II ponders that he must be "full of batiushka and grozny" -- that is, "full of priest/dad and fearsome". Tsaritsa Alexandra worries whether the barbarian Russians will accept one of her daughters as their ruler if her sickly son dies, forgetting both Russian royal succession laws (the throne would pass to a male relative) and basic Russian history (Russia had five female rulers in the 18th century, e.g. Catherine the Great). Something made me laugh every other page, to the point that I started wondering if the book was a parody.

On a slightly more serious note, I have issues with how the topic of Jewishness, and in particular how one of the main characters, Leon Trotsky, is portrayed. As in the book, the real-life Trotsky was born Lev Bronstein and was ethnically Jewish. However, <a href="https://www.bnaibrith.org/past-magazine-articles/trotsky-in-new-york-1917-reluctant-jew-in-a-jewish-city">he repeatedly</a> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch05.htm">chose to</a> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/amersocialist/deutscher01.htm">distance himself</a> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm">from Jewishness</a>. One likely apocryphal but telling story is that a Moscow Rabbi asked him for help when Jews were being targeted by counterrevolutionaries during the Russian Civil War, and Trotsky turned him away with a pointed reminder that <a href="https://books.google.at/books?id=bkCXBCWHu1gC&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q&f=false">he considered himself a communist, not a Jew</a>.

In <i>The Last Tsar's Dragons</i>, the atheist Trotsky swears by "my God and Marx", considers Lenin being a quarter Jewish to be a great point in his favour, refers to himself by his original (Jewish) name and disparages the moniker 'Trotsky', briefly wants to set dragons to genocide all Russians as revenge for pogroms (to be fair, while possibly delirious), understands that Russian peasants suffer too but dismisses their plight as secondary to that of Jews, and in general thinks "we Jews". His main interest in overthrowing the Tsar is to help Jewish people. In fact, in the whole book the main conflict is Jews vs Tsar.

So... all this is intensely ahistorical, but I think it's supposed to make Trotsky sympathetic to Americans? Oh, Trotsky isn't like them other commie monsters, he's just fighting anti-Semitism! Thing is, you can't simply plonk American race relations onto another country. In the (post-)Soviet space, there's a disgusting, long-held anti-Semitic theory that "Jewish Bolsheviks" -- and in particular Trotsky -- toppled the Russian Empire specifically to advance the Jewish cause.

It's been around since the revolution itself: the Jews that Moscow's Rabbi wanted to protect were killed with shouts of, <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/30/semi-a30.html">"You're getting this for Trotsky!"</a> And it was still around by the collapse of the USSR, when the monarchist, ultranational organisation <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/02/18/anti-semitism-the-return-of-a-russian-nightmare/281515e7-8a20-43ed-9764-47ef311eaf66">Pamyat blamed Jews for destroying the Russian Empire</a> and threatened pogroms as revenge. So a book where the Jewishness of people who didn't particularly identify as Jewish in real life is emphasised above all else, a book where Trotsky's character can be summed up as "the Jew Trotsky who wants to overthrow the Tsar for the Jews and hang the rest" is, to be honest, exceedingly uncomfortable.

To be clear, I absolutely don't think the authors are anti-Semitic -- in the afterword, Yolen mentions that her grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who emigrated to escape Tsarist pogroms at the turn of the 20th century. I do, however, think it's important to point out the issues that can arise when people set a book in a foreign culture and twist historical facts without thinking it through all the way.

Anyway, if you put aside both the accidentally hilarious and accidentally horrible cultural aspects, the book that's left is a bit boring. <em>The Last Tsar's Dragons </em>bills itself as revolution + dragons. My expectations were thus either long, heated debates about how best to carry out revolution, coupled with backstabbing and political maneuvering, or bloody and desperate battles between dragons and outmatched peasants. The book doesn't deliver either.

It's pretty short and there's six POVs: the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, Rasputin, an unnamed official, Trotsky, and Borukh/Axelrod (a Jewish Menshevik). Rasputin probably gets the most focus as he fulfills his shtick as "Russia's greatest love machine" and others plot to assassinate him. Altogether though, once the dragons, politics, and anti-Semitism of Imperial Russia are set up between all the POVs, there's just not enough space to do much with it. The dragons don't appear much on-screen and the politics are all simplified to the point that it's hard to say what really motivated Lenin. Except for being one-quarter Jewish I guess, as anti-Semitism seems to be the only spectre haunting Imperial Russia.

Altogether, I don't know. I can't say that I didn't enjoy reading this book: I actually had a ton of fun. I just feel like the fun I was having wasn't the fun the authors were expecting me to have.

I could not, for the life of me, fathom out the reason behind this book's obsession with Jews when the title promised a twist on the fall of the Russian Tsars, i.e. dragons.