Jo Graham: The Borgia Dove (Book Review)
Jun. 12th, 2024 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAka the second volume in her series about Giulia Farnese, the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI.) and sister to Alessandro Farnese (aka Pope Paul III.) (The first book was "A Blackened Mirror", which I reviewed here.) It's as engaging and enjoyable to read as the first one, provided you like your Renaissance colourful and your Borgias sympathetic, which I very much do.
It's 1492, Pope Innocent is dying, which means Rodrgio Borgia is about to embark on his life time goal of getting elected as Pope. But the competition is as fierce and ruthless as it's ever been, and our heroine Giulia, who at this point has been his mistress for two years, basically is the Josh Lymon (or would that be Leo?) to his not yet President Bartlett, making and using contacts, arranging and negotiating votes from other Cardinals via their mistresses while Rodrigo & Co. are locked up in the Conclave and not supposed to be in contact with the outside world. (But of course they are. In various degrees of discretion. If one guard takes bribes from too many Cardinals and thus gets caught, though, everyone is screwed for a while and scrambling to find other channels.) If, that is, she's not foiling assassination attempts on either her beloved or herself. Half the fun of this particular novel is Giulia-as-campaign-manager/fixer negotiating with other (older than her) women, all wily and tough in their own right. Earlier on, Rodrigo's son Cesare, who was off to school in the last volume but gets on stage here, who is exactly her own age, asks her what she can do that he can't, since he, of course, is also helping with the electioneering, and this is what. (Fear not, Cesare fans, he also gets plenty to do. Not least because what Giulia can't do is sword fight. Young Cesare is suitably dashing with a good deal more cynicsm than his old man but also some not immediately obvious yearning for more acknowledgment, which Giulia spots.) (Also, one of the ladies Giulia is negotiating with is the courtesan Fiammetta, who immediately is taken by Cesare's hotness, which is mutual. Fiammetta - who historically had a long term affair with him - doesn't often show up in Borgia fictionalisiations for some reasons, or if she does, is barely mentioned. Here, she's an important supporting player, worldly, witty and that rarity, a non-noble woman of independent means who's made a success of her courtesan career and can afford to choose her affairs now.)
Other than Cesare, Fiammetta, and various other female power players of Renaissance Rome with a vested interest in which Cardinal wins the papal election, the novel introduces us to a Jewish family in need of sanctuary. They couldn't have picked a worse time - Rome while one Pope is dead and before the next Pope was voted into power was basically a lethal free for all, even leaving aside the Antijudaism -, but Giulia takes them in anyway, which btw isn't the type of anachronistic giving your historic heroines modern attitudes but foreshadows Rodrigo Borgia's deciding that Rome would take in loads of Jewish refugees from Spain (a papal decision far more sympathetically regarded in our time than it was back in the day, and btw, much as I disliked great parts of the third season of The Borgias, I loved that they included Rodrigo's Jewish sympathies as well). This plotthread is also connected to something I really love about Jo Graham's version of Giulia Farnese, which is that she's a passionate book lover and geek. (Part of Rodrigo's early attraction in the last volume was that he offered her books.) I really like it if a historical novel remembers to give its main characters passionate interests that aren't only brought up when servicing the plot but are part of their constant characterisation, and that is very much the case with Giulia.
Something that did surprise me a bit, though not in a negative way, is that Rodrigo's main long term opponent and bane, Cardinal della Rovere (future Pope Julius) continues to be kept of page, so to speak, solely talked about, but not yet making personal appearances. It makes sense, since Giulia is our pov character, and della Rovere spends his time in the Conclave for most of this volume where Giulia decidedly is not, but I'm ever more curious what he'll be like in person in this version. In the meantime, last volume's villain, Virginio Orsini, makes an encore appearance, and we're introduced to the very intriguing Ascanio Sforza, both rival and (for now) temporary ally in these papal elections.
In conclusion, it's another great novel by Jo Graham, and I hope she'll stay in the Renaissance a good long while, no offense to Napoleonic France. It's one of my favourite eras (to read about; I wouldn't have wanted to live there). (Though our current era shows disturbing similarities - never mind.)
It's 1492, Pope Innocent is dying, which means Rodrgio Borgia is about to embark on his life time goal of getting elected as Pope. But the competition is as fierce and ruthless as it's ever been, and our heroine Giulia, who at this point has been his mistress for two years, basically is the Josh Lymon (or would that be Leo?) to his not yet President Bartlett, making and using contacts, arranging and negotiating votes from other Cardinals via their mistresses while Rodrigo & Co. are locked up in the Conclave and not supposed to be in contact with the outside world. (But of course they are. In various degrees of discretion. If one guard takes bribes from too many Cardinals and thus gets caught, though, everyone is screwed for a while and scrambling to find other channels.) If, that is, she's not foiling assassination attempts on either her beloved or herself. Half the fun of this particular novel is Giulia-as-campaign-manager/fixer negotiating with other (older than her) women, all wily and tough in their own right. Earlier on, Rodrigo's son Cesare, who was off to school in the last volume but gets on stage here, who is exactly her own age, asks her what she can do that he can't, since he, of course, is also helping with the electioneering, and this is what. (Fear not, Cesare fans, he also gets plenty to do. Not least because what Giulia can't do is sword fight. Young Cesare is suitably dashing with a good deal more cynicsm than his old man but also some not immediately obvious yearning for more acknowledgment, which Giulia spots.) (Also, one of the ladies Giulia is negotiating with is the courtesan Fiammetta, who immediately is taken by Cesare's hotness, which is mutual. Fiammetta - who historically had a long term affair with him - doesn't often show up in Borgia fictionalisiations for some reasons, or if she does, is barely mentioned. Here, she's an important supporting player, worldly, witty and that rarity, a non-noble woman of independent means who's made a success of her courtesan career and can afford to choose her affairs now.)
Other than Cesare, Fiammetta, and various other female power players of Renaissance Rome with a vested interest in which Cardinal wins the papal election, the novel introduces us to a Jewish family in need of sanctuary. They couldn't have picked a worse time - Rome while one Pope is dead and before the next Pope was voted into power was basically a lethal free for all, even leaving aside the Antijudaism -, but Giulia takes them in anyway, which btw isn't the type of anachronistic giving your historic heroines modern attitudes but foreshadows Rodrigo Borgia's deciding that Rome would take in loads of Jewish refugees from Spain (a papal decision far more sympathetically regarded in our time than it was back in the day, and btw, much as I disliked great parts of the third season of The Borgias, I loved that they included Rodrigo's Jewish sympathies as well). This plotthread is also connected to something I really love about Jo Graham's version of Giulia Farnese, which is that she's a passionate book lover and geek. (Part of Rodrigo's early attraction in the last volume was that he offered her books.) I really like it if a historical novel remembers to give its main characters passionate interests that aren't only brought up when servicing the plot but are part of their constant characterisation, and that is very much the case with Giulia.
Something that did surprise me a bit, though not in a negative way, is that Rodrigo's main long term opponent and bane, Cardinal della Rovere (future Pope Julius) continues to be kept of page, so to speak, solely talked about, but not yet making personal appearances. It makes sense, since Giulia is our pov character, and della Rovere spends his time in the Conclave for most of this volume where Giulia decidedly is not, but I'm ever more curious what he'll be like in person in this version. In the meantime, last volume's villain, Virginio Orsini, makes an encore appearance, and we're introduced to the very intriguing Ascanio Sforza, both rival and (for now) temporary ally in these papal elections.
In conclusion, it's another great novel by Jo Graham, and I hope she'll stay in the Renaissance a good long while, no offense to Napoleonic France. It's one of my favourite eras (to read about; I wouldn't have wanted to live there). (Though our current era shows disturbing similarities - never mind.)
