J.M. Sidorova
The Empress Anna Ioannovna has issued her latest eccentric order: construct a palace out of ice blocks. Inside its walls her slaves build a wedding chamber, a canopy bed on a dais, heavy drapes cascading to the floor--all made of ice. Sealed inside are a disgraced nobleman and a deformed female jester. On the empressâ€™s command--for her entertainment--these two are to be married, the union consummated inside this frozen prison. In the morning, guards enter to find them half-dead. Nine months later, two boys are born.,Surrounded by servants and animals, Prince Alexander Velitzyn and his twin brother, Andrei, have an idyllic childhood on the familyâ€™s large country estate. But as they approach manhood, stark differences coalesce. Andrei is daring and ambitious; Alexander is tentative and adrift. One frigid winter night on the road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, as he flees his army post, Alexander comes to a horrifying revelation: his body is immune to cold.,J. M. Sidorovaâ€™s boldly original and genre-bending novel takes readers from the grisly fields of the Napoleonic Wars to the blazing heat of Afghanistan, from the outer reaches of Siberia to the cacophonous streets of nineteenth-century Paris. The adventures of its protagonist, Prince Alexander Velitzyn--on a lifelong quest for the truth behind his strange physiology--will span three continents and two centuries and bring him into contact with a range of real historical figures, from Mary Shelley, the author of ,Frankenstein,, to the licentious Russian empress Elizaveta and Arctic explorer Joseph Billings.
Historical,Historical Fiction,Fantasy,Fiction,Historical,Cultural,Russia,Magical Realism,Science Fiction,Adult,Unfinished,Literary Fiction
The Age of Ice