The Romanov prophecy door Steve Berry

A General Information 1. Title The Romanov Prophecy
Author Steve Berry
Date of first publication 2004
Which edition Ballantine Books 2005 No. of pages 384

2. Author Steve Berry lives on the Georgia coast in Camden County. He\'s a lawyer who, for twenty-five years, has helped people both in and out of the courtroom. He\'s also active in local politics, having served on the Camden County Board of Education and currently, he is one of five members of the Camden County Board of Commissioners. He has been writing since 1990. In 2000 and 2001 he won the Georgia State Bar fiction writing contest and his two short stories appeared in the Georgia State Bar Journal. He also tried his hand at novel contests. An early version of his first published novel, The Amber Room, placed third at the 1998 Florida First Coast Writers Festival. Though his undergraduate degree was in political science, and he was trained as a lawyer, it was Steve\'s interest in history that led to him writing international suspense thrillers. He also credits the nuns who taught him in elementary school with instilling the discipline needed to both craft a novel, then sell it to a publisher. It took him 12 years - 85 rejections over 5 different manuscripts – before a publisher finally bought a manuscript. Steve\'s first two books, The Amber Room and The Romanov Prophecy were both national bestsellers spending time on the New York Times, USA Today, Publisher\'s Weekly, and BookSense bestseller lists. His third novel, The Third Secret, became an instant bestseller, debuting at #13 on The New York Times list its first week on sale. Also, at the same time, the book appeared on the USA Today, Publisher\'s Weekly, and Booksense bestseller lists. Rights to all three novels have been sold worldwide—currently in 24 countries and 25 languages. In addition, Steve was recently selected by the Georgia Writer\'s Association as Novelist Author of the Year. Steve and his wife, Amy, travel a great deal. Together, they have spent time in the Caribbean, Mexico, Germany, Austria, England, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, France, and Denmark. Recently, Ballantine Books renewed Steve\'s contract for three more thrillers, which will be published in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The next book deals with Knights Templar and a mysterious village in southern France, coming in May 2006.

3. Setting of the book The story takes place in Russia, especially in Moscow, and in the United States, especially in California and North Carolina. The story takes place from October 28 till April 10, but in which years isn’t clear. It’s in any case after the fall of Communism, I think around the year 2000. There are also some flashbacks to the years of the death of the Romanov family and the years after that.

4. Plot The cryptic question of what really happened to Russia\'s royal family on July 16, 1918, is answered in this sensational bestseller that is predicated on Rasputin\'s prophecy that the murder of the Romanovs was not the final chapter in their story.

5. Characters
Major character Miles Lord: An African-American lawyer, who has a deeply interest in (the history of) Russia. He escapes nearly from a death attack because he found in the archives that some members of the Romanovs probably survived. After that he is racing through continents to find out how this could happen and where those heirs are.

Minor characters Akilina Petrovna: A Russian lady who is a circus artist. She meets Miles Lord in the train when there are men after him. She hides him and saves his life in this way. After this adventure Miles comes to the circus and together they are going to look for the heirs of the Romanovs. In the end they have a sort of relation. Taylor Hayes: He is the boss of Miles Lord and though Miles Lord trusts him completely, he is in with the mafiya and wants Miles Lord dead.

6. Theme / Themes The theme of the book is the restoration of the Romanov dynasty. The Russians want a new tsar in stead of a president and therefore a special commission search for a new tsar out of distant relatives of Nicholas II, the latest tsar of Russia.

B Your personal opinion 1. Which character(s) in the book did you especially like? What qualities that these persons had appealed to you? Explain why! (quote from the book and give page number) I especially like Akalina Petrovna, because she saves Miles Lords life, while she doesn’t even know him even while he’s black and black people are dangerous according to many Russians. She is also very brave, she looks together with Lord for the heirs of the Romanovs and she goes trough a lot during this search. She is especially very brave when she rescues Miles Lord while they’re both in the train and there are men after him: ‘‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said in Russian. ‘My name is Miles Lord. I have a big problem’ ‘That still does not explain why you barged into my compartment.’ ‘Two men are after me.’ ‘Are you mafiya?’ she asked. He shook his head. ‘But the men after me may be. They killed a man two days ago and tried to kill me.’ ‘Step back,’ she said. He brushed past toward the compartment’s solitary window. She slid open the door, glanced out casually, then shut it. ‘There are three men at the far end.’ ‘Are the three talking?’ She nodded. ‘They are also knocking on compartment doors, headed this way’ The concern that immediately filled his eyes was apparently evident. She pointed to the bin above the door. ‘Climb up there and stay quiet.’’ Page numbers 101 and 102.

2. Which character(s) in the book did you especially dislike? What in their behaviour displeased you or angered you? Explain why. (quote from the book and give page numbers) I especially dislike Taylor Hayes, because Miles Lord trusts him and Hayes betrays him because he wants him dead and helps the mafiya with that. The worst moment of Hayes is when Akalina and Miles find the grandson of Alexei Romanov, the tsarevitsj, and Hayes find them in a house and let two members of the mafiya, Droopy and Orleg, enter. Lord still thinks then that Hayes is to be trusted: ‘‘What do you suggest we do?’ Hayes stood and moved toward windows that fronted the house. ‘That’s a good question.’ He peered out past the curtains. Hayes opened the front door. Feliks Orleg and Droopy walked inside. Both men cradled rifles. Akalina let out a gasp. Lord was in shock. ‘It was you all along? ‘Miles, I have some associates in Moscow who became quite upset with you. Hell, I sent you into the archives to find out if Baklanov had any problems, and you come out with the heir to the Russian throne. What did you expect?’ ‘You sonovabitch. I trusted you.’’ Page numbers 360 and 361

3. Did you find any humour in the book? Describe the part(s) that you made smile or laugh. Give a short example, if possible. I couldn’t find a lot humour in this book. I almost wanted to write here ‘none’, but by reading the last sentence of the answer of the last question, I saw finally something I could laugh about. When I first read that sentence, and especially the word ‘sonovabitch’, I thought it was something Russian, because it ends with ‘itch’, like a lot of other Russian words. But when I read it more carefully, I saw that it actually means ‘son of a bitch’. I had to laugh about that.

4. What feelings did this book arouse in you? What part(s) made you feel worried, sad, frightened, angry, envious, excited, surprised etc. Copy a sentence or passage of the book that struck you in some way. The book especially made me excited, especially when Miles Lord was in danger to his life and the mafiya was after him: ‘The guard gasped for breath, his eyes rolled skywards, then his body folded to the pavement. Lord spun around and spied a gunman a hundred yards away atop the GUM department store. The gunman levelled his rifle and re-aimed. Pocketing the passport, Lord rushed past the crowd and leapt up the granite steps, shoving people to the ground and screaming in English and Russian, ‘Gunman. Run.’ Tourists scattered. He dived forward just as another bullet ricocheted off the glazed stone beside him. He landed hard on the black labradorite of the tomb’s foyer and rolled inside just as another bullet obliterated more red granite at the doorway. Two more guards rushed up from inside the tomb. ‘There’s a gunman outside,’ he screamed in Russian. ‘On top of GUM.’’

5. What was your favourite part of the book? Why did you especially like this part? Explain. I have to say I liked every part of the book, there wasn’t a favourite, every part is either exciting, either interesting.

6. Write down something you have learnt from the book, or something you have discovered from the book. I discovered from the book that people are not very soon satisfied with their government. There is one sentence in the book that struck me; I don’t know anymore where to find it, so I can’t quote it, but it was something like: ‘Yeltsin and his retinue succeeded in something Lenin and Stalin couldn’t do: Get the people long for communism.’ The Russians want to have a tsar again, but they very easily forgot that the tsar did some awful things as well, but they only remembered the good things and the bad things of the communism and of Yeltsin.

7. Choose a piece of music / a song that fits (a passage in) the book. Explain why they fit together. Include the lyrics / the song. I chose the song ‘Stranger in Moscow’ from Michael Jackson, because Lord is a stranger in Moscow as well, though he has been here a lot of times and he even can speaks Russian almost fluently, but he’s a black, and there are very few of them in Moscow. He is also walking at the Kremlin and sees Stalin’s tomb. The last thing is that, just in the book, the songs writes of danger in Moscow and of course Miles Lord is in great danger as well in Moscow.

Michael Jackson – Stranger in Moscow
I was wandering in the rain
Mask of life, feelin\' insane
Swift and sudden fall from grace
Sunny days seem far away
Kremlin\'s shadow belittlin\' me
Stalin\'s tomb won\'t let me be
On and on and on it came
Wish the rain would just let me be

Chorus: How does it feel (How does it feel) How does it feel
How does it feel
When you\'re alone
And you\'re cold inside

Here abandoned in my fame
Armageddon of the brain
KGB was doggin\' me
Take my name and just let me be
Then a beggar boy called my name
Happy days will drown the pain
On and on and on it came
Again, and again, and again... Take my name and just let me be

Chorus (Repeat)

Like a stranger in Moscow
Like a stranger in Moscow
We\'re talkin\' danger
We\'re talkin\' danger baby
Like a stranger in Moscow
We\'re talkin\' danger
We\'re talkin\' danger baby
Like a stranger in Moscow
I\'m livin\' lonely
I\'m livin\' lonely baby
A stranger in Moscow

C The Summary Miles Lord is an American lawyer who is extremely interested in Russia and its history. So when there is an election of a new Russian tsar in Russia, he is asked by his boss, Taylor Hayes, to go to Russia and find some things out in archives about one of the candidates, Stefan Baklanov. Something Lord doesn’t know, is that Taylor Hayes has contacts with the mafiya, the Russian mafia, because he wants that Baklanov becomes the new tsar, because he has a ‘western view’. Of course Lord wants to go to Russia. When he is there a few weeks, he walks around in Moscow with a Russian lawyer, Artemy Bely and something happens that will change his life forever: There are coming gunmen to them and they are shooting on them. Bely dies immediately, but Lord can run away. He escapes because a police car arrives and the gunmen are running away. The only man he tells about his adventure is Taylor Hayes, but he says that the shooting was definitely on Bely and not on him. When Lord is again in the archives, he finds two interesting letters, one of Alexandra, the latest tsarina, and one of Lenin. Lenin writes that he thinks that maybe one or more of the Romanovs, the tsar family, survived. Alexandra writes about a prophecy that Rasputin, their doctor, made and which says that the deaths of the Romanovs won’t be the last chapter in the story of the Romanovs. Lord is not the only one who is interested in these letters, he meets a man in the archives who is interested as well, Semyon Pashenko, a Russian professor of history. Pashenko says that if Lord wants to know more of this, he has to go to the archives of St Petersburg. Lord does this and find some more interesting things about this and he’s really starting to believe that there are persons who survived the massacre of the Romanovs. When he is on the train back to Moscow, there are again gunmen who want to murder him, the same he saw during the shooting in Moscow. He tries to escape to go into a compartment where a woman is, she is called Akalina Petrovna. She saves him by hiding him. She is a circus artist and she says that he always can come to the circus of Moscow when he is in trouble. When again in Moscow he’s attacked again, after that he called Taylor Hayes. He goes to the circus where again gunmen are attacking him, but he and Akalina Petrovna are saved by some men who bring them to Semyon Pashenko. There he hears that indeed two Romanovs have survived the massacre: Alexie, the tsarevitsj, and Anastasia, one of the daughters of the tsar. Akalina and Lord are both predestined to search those heirs of the Romanovs, because they must become the real tsar of Russia and not Baklanov, who is just a distant heir of the last tsar. First they have to go to Starodug, a village beneath Moscow, where a certain Maks lives. There they get their next ‘task’: they have to go to San Francisco. While they are at the house of Maks, again the gunmen are coming and they shoot Maks dead. Akalina and Lord both escapes. When they’re in San Francisco, they get the instruction to go to Genesis, a village in North Carolina. There they have to find a Thorn. When they come in Genesis, they find a Michael Thorn, and they discover that he is a grandson of Alexei. Again the gunmen are coming to the house of Thorn, they try to kill him and Akalina and Lord, but now they can fight back and both Hayes and two gunmen are dead. Michael Thorn alias Mikhail II becomes the new tsar of Russia.

D The Review

THE ROMANOV PROPHECY - Steve Berry
By Joe Hartlaub

Steve Berry\'s debut novel THE AMBER ROOM was a hit right out of the gate when it was published last year. Unlike what typically happens when the publicity machines over-hype a second work, Berry\'s sophomore title, THE ROMANOV PROPHECY has pre-publication buzz, which, if anything, understates how good this book really is.

THE ROMANOV PROPHECY grabs a hold of the reader within the first few pages. It begins with an enigmatic prologue involving Alexandra, Empress of Russia, and Father Gregorii Rasputin, the monk who, for good reason, held sway over the Russian royal family in the early years of the 20th century. The prologue foreshadows the impetus for the novel: the Russian people, weary of a succession of failed governments following the downfall of the Communists, have voted to bring back the tsar. Miles Lord, an Atlanta attorney with the prestigious firm of Pridgen & Woodworth, is with his mentor, Taylor Hayes, helping to oversee the selection process of the new tsar, ensuring that the tsar\'s selection conforms to a rigorous set of conditions established hundreds of years previously. Lord\'s life takes a dramatic turn when he is the subject of an assassination attempt. Dogged by his pursuers, Lord --- a black man in a city, and country, where people of color are a rarity --- has no idea who is trying to kill him, or what their motives might be.

Lord slowly comes to the realization that he has discovered documents that indicate that, as had long been rumored, at least one member of the Romanov royal family had survived the brutal execution of the family by Marxist thugs and the true, direct line heir to the Romanov throne exists. Lord, assisted by a mysterious organization known as the Holy Band, slowly and methodically unearths a puzzling but fascinating series of clues that, if a prophecy of Rasputin is to be believed, leads to the Romanov descendent. All the while, however, Lord is hounded by his mysterious pursuers, who are guided in part by the one man Lord trusts the most. Lord\'s search takes him across continents to a destination that is ironic, apocalyptic and thrilling.

THE ROMANOV PROPHECY is a captivating work. Like THE AMBER ROOM, it benefits from Berry\'s interest in the country, people and history of Russia, an interest that he infuses into his books and that ultimately infects his readers as well. One cannot read THE ROMANOV PROPHECY without yearning to visit the country that Berry describes so beautifully and intriguingly. Berry, however, never lets the action get bogged down by the scenery; I\'m surprised that THE ROMANOV PROPHECY doesn\'t come with a blood pressure cuff shrink-wrapped to it. But don\'t let that stop you from reading this riveting work.

Berry\'s path to writing THE AMBER ROOM was long and arduous. THE ROMANOV PROPHECY is, accordingly, more than an artistic triumph in the thriller genre; it is also the ultimate justification of those who had faith in Berry and, more importantly, Berry\'s faith in himself. Highly recommended.

Review found on: http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews2/0345460057.asp