This book is utter drivel.

Elementary chronological and factual errors are too many to mention - one example will suffice. In March 1917 we have the Tsar and his family under hiuse arrest on their estate on the outskirts of Petrograd, so far, so good. Except Eastland has the novel's protagonist languishing 'after months under house arrest' in March 1917! The revolution only broke out in February (or March, depending on which calendar one uses) that year...

The characterisation of the Tsar is a travesty, portraying him as an avuncular ruler who 'loves his people' instead of the stupid incompetent who presided over famine, war and a ramshackle and murderous state apparatus that took Russia to the brink of ruin.

The back story love interest is gratuitous and mawkish. The main character one dimensional and wooden.

Just because it's easy to cash in on the interest in Soviet era thrillers sparked by Child 44 and Olan Steinhaur's sublime series set in a fictionalised post war East European country doesn't justify publishing this rubbish.