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White Blood
White Blood
White Blood
Ebook482 pages10 hours

White Blood

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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An epic novel of Russia on the eve of revolution

The son of an English father and a Russian mother, Charlie Doig is a big man -- big in stature and big in spirit. A naturalist, he roughs it around the world collecting birds and insects for museums. In 1914 he is on a mission for the Academy of Sciences in Russian Turkestan when war breaks out. His pay is stopped and his companion goes off to enlist. Doig, however, has no intention of volunteering to be killed. He returns to the Pink House, his family's home near Smolensk, and to the woman he loves, his cousin Elizaveta.

At first the Pink House remains almost untouched by outside events, and the familiar ways continue as before. But imperial Russia is doomed and with it all the old certainties. Trapped by the snow with Doig and Elizaveta are a motley collection of old aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on -- and two soldiers who have sought refuge with them, one of whom, Doig fears, is a Bolshevik out to destroy them all.

Beautifully written, richly imagined, by turns savage and tender, this exhilarating novel confirms James Fleming as one of the very best novelists at work today.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAtria Books
Release dateJan 9, 2007
ISBN9781416548430
White Blood
Author

James Fleming

James Fleming was born in London in 1944, the fourth in a family of nine children. He read history at Oxford and has been variously an accountant, farmer, forester and bookseller. The author of two previous novels, The Temple of Optimism and Thomas Gage, he lives in Scotland. Visit him online at jamesfleming.co.uk.

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Rating: 3.388888888888889 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This literary thriller is more literary than thrilling but a page turner none the less as one follows the saga of Russo-Scottish naturalist Charlie Doig in the nightmare that was Russia in 1917. Fresh from collecting birds and rare insects in the east, Charlie returns to Russia and his ancestral home in Smolensk when his funds run out and the Imperial Russian Academy no longer pays out the monies it owes. To his horror, his beloved cousin Elzavita is about to marry a war hero - a union engineered by her impoverished family: his luck seems to turn though when her fiance and her rich uncle [whose heir she is] are assasinated on the eve of the wedding, leaving Charlie to assume the role of bridegroom. Despite lurking on the country estate, the family is not able to escape events that are transforming Russia: poverty, war losses, injured soldiers, mutinous troops, rebelious peasants, murderous Bolsheviks and, finally, the abdication of the Tsar spell the end of the Romanov Empire they have known and usher in a new and deadly era. Mere days before their escape to America, Charlie's new bride is gang raped and tortured to death, and his family and friends are murdered horribly by a Bolshevik to whom they had given shelter during the heart of winter: all that is left for him is to take revenge as best he can before leaving Russia forever. Instead though, he gets drunk and revenge has to wait until the sequel, Cold Blood.A book that is exciting, sad, sexy and brutal in turns, White Blood reads like an authentic early 20th Century Russian work and was not at all what I expected: James Fleming is the nephew of Ian Fleming and - in my opinion - by far the better writer.

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White Blood - James Fleming

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