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Jan. 4th, 2011 11:21 pmBlood for a Borgia is quite awful. This awfulness resides mainly in the prose, since the plot, although it starts a little more than halfway through the book, is quite good, and there are no egregious mistakes in characterization. (Although Giovanni Sforza goes from limp-wristed to killing Giovanni Borgia pretty quickly.) So yeah, quotes:
“The heavy dews of passion drowned all else in her as she thrilled to him.” From, what else, a sex scene. A sex scene that starts the book and in which Giovanni Borgia tells his lover all about contemporary politics.
“That’s the trouble with Italy. There’s no national army.” Man, that is possibly the most anachronistic sentence I have ever read. It’s like “And then Caesar disposed of the assassins with his laser gun.”
“He was fabulously wealthy, ambitious, well-connected, powerful…and now he was dead.” Because really. That sentence happened.
“You daren’t trust yourself. You live the life of a zombi.” Did they even know about zombies in renaissance Italy? Or does zombi mean something else that Google and I know nothing of?
“There’s enough circumstantial evidence against him.” Evidently renaissance Italian justice systems worked exactly the same as 20th century American ones.
"Amazed, he confronted her, surprise in every feature of his face."
Also, pet peeve alert! Italian thrown in to "make it more authentic" or something. As in "Diavolo! I must now say some stilted exposition!"
And Iago Lanuto is referred to as Giovanni Borgia's "evil genius" more times than you can shake a lamb's tail at. Further "ugh": Iago Lanuto is not a historical character. Real subtle there, Mr. Gaunt.
I also disapprove of Lucrezia showing up very briefly and being characterized as a silly child. Of course. Because I like Lucrezia as a schemer, because it's cool.
“The heavy dews of passion drowned all else in her as she thrilled to him.” From, what else, a sex scene. A sex scene that starts the book and in which Giovanni Borgia tells his lover all about contemporary politics.
“That’s the trouble with Italy. There’s no national army.” Man, that is possibly the most anachronistic sentence I have ever read. It’s like “And then Caesar disposed of the assassins with his laser gun.”
“He was fabulously wealthy, ambitious, well-connected, powerful…and now he was dead.” Because really. That sentence happened.
“You daren’t trust yourself. You live the life of a zombi.” Did they even know about zombies in renaissance Italy? Or does zombi mean something else that Google and I know nothing of?
“There’s enough circumstantial evidence against him.” Evidently renaissance Italian justice systems worked exactly the same as 20th century American ones.
"Amazed, he confronted her, surprise in every feature of his face."
Also, pet peeve alert! Italian thrown in to "make it more authentic" or something. As in "Diavolo! I must now say some stilted exposition!"
And Iago Lanuto is referred to as Giovanni Borgia's "evil genius" more times than you can shake a lamb's tail at. Further "ugh": Iago Lanuto is not a historical character. Real subtle there, Mr. Gaunt.
I also disapprove of Lucrezia showing up very briefly and being characterized as a silly child. Of course. Because I like Lucrezia as a schemer, because it's cool.
