Book Review | Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Really liked this one a lot, which will come as no surprise to those who knows my reading habits. Yeah, fiction is great, but the REAL stories behind those figures is SO much more interesting. Like, Game of Thrones is fine, but the Plantagenets are absolutely batshit bananas and way more fun to read about.

The title is 100% spot-on and the author does a fantastic job presenting evidence of all the faces Vlad showed to the world, and how the world perceived him - and continues to perceive him to this day. He is one of the most intriguing figures of the middle ages.

I appreciated how the author presented warfare at the time. I am not terribly interested in military history, even in medieval times, but that makes up a huge part of who Vlad Dracul was and why he was so loved by his people. The author was able to present that information in context, but did not overload the reader. There is also much about the politics of the time, and if you consider what was going on in eastern Europe and Asia at the time, those politics are incredibly important.

There is no doubt that Vlad Darcul was an absolutely brutal and cruel leader. But so were many other rulers in the middle ages. This period of history is littered with all kinds of atrocities, but for some reason Dracul is identified as being worse than all the others. And okay, yeah, being impaled on a giant wooden pole would be an agonizing and horrible way to die, but there was a plethora of torture going on all over Europe and Asia. Not to mention the world as a whole was filled with endless misery - constant violent warfare and everything associated with moving armies, boughts of plague, and in general for peasants, short lives, often puntuated by starvation, deaths of children, and so on. But the book does not gloss over how the victims died, so consider this your warning.

Vlad Dracul was a product of the time and place he existed in, and needs to be considered in that context.

Much of Vlad's life, and thus the book, revolved around warfare and the reasons for his brutal campaigns. Given the horrific murders of his father and brother at the hands of the Boyers, Vlad doesn't really have a choice but to employ the tactics he does while consolidating power and shoring up support from the people. He also has to contend with the Ottoman Turks banging on the door of medieval Transylvania and specifically Wallachia so to speak. Even though he did not in the end completely repel the Turks, he fought ruthlessly to keep his country free.

In the end the author presents us with three options for how we can view Vlad Dracul: a literal blood-thirty tyrant, a cruel but justified ruler, or a hero who fought for the freedom of his land and people. It is not wrong to believe that all three views can be correct, but you will have to decide for yourself.

Recommended.

NetGalley ARC | The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It will surprise no one that everything we think we know about Vikings women dates back to those darn Victorians and their ability to completely Victorian-ize everything.

The island of Birka, not far from Stockholm, is home to a once-busy Viking village, meant to control trade routes around northern Scandinavia. It also happens to be home to hundreds of Viking graves. One grave in particular is of most interest to the author, that of a Viking warrior that was first excavated in 1878. Given the items recovered from the grave and the high-status burial provided, for over one hundred years it has been assumed (by dudes who could not conceive of any other option) that the Birka Warrior was male.

Not so, says the 2017 DNA test.

And from there the author is off and running on a fantastical journey across Europe, imagining what life must have been like for this warrior who lived over hundreds of years ago.

The author does a fantastic job using archaeology, history, and the Norse legends and sagas to bring to light a much more accurate picture of how Vikings women lived, fought, and died. In imagining what life might have been like for this warrior, to whom she gives the name Hervor, the author is able to shed more light on the women of the age who were far more independent than the Victorians would have you believe.

Using the many varieties of sources previously mentioned, the author constructs an example of what life might have been like for young Hervor. Each chapter begins with a segment of Hervor's "story" - a story which sees her cross paths with other formidable women of the age, from Queen Gunnhild to Queen Olga of Kyiv.

While the author has fictionalized what life might have been like for this Birka warrior, each chapter delves deeply into various aspects of life for the real Viking women who lived so long ago. There is extensive research here and the author clearly knows her stuff. The author's knowledge of the sagas and old Norse stories is a wonderful addition to the historical record.

Publisher Gift (via NetGalley) | Prisoners of War: What Monuments to World War II Tell Us about Our History and Ourselves

 

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. (In this case, the publisher contacted me by email, and directed me to NetGalley if I was interested.)

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The importance of this book cannot be overstated. it is a timely look at our relationship with statues dedicated to history. One only has to look at the arguments made against removing confederate statues from public spaces to see the relevance. (Side note: pull all that bullshit down and stick it in a museum, with context, where it belongs. There are no heroes of the confederacy and not a single one of those men should be honored for their actions. They fought to keep slaves and no amount of supposed 'good' they ever did can make up for that fact. Fuck THAT bullshit narrative.)

Anyway.

Addressing this issue of accepting statues at face-value of being accurate representations of a moment in time in our history of war is done quite well within these pages. The author not only looks at how these monuments are written about, talked about, and viewed in the US, but looks at various monuments to the very same war and how they are viewed in countries around the world. In total he discusses 25 different monuments, from the US, to Italy, to Jerusalem, China, and many in between.

The photographs are stunning and for once I was glad to have received the file for my laptop only instead of my Kindle. Even though I hate sitting at my laptop to read, the photos alone were nearly enough to make it worth it. This truly is a book to have a physical copy of to peruse at your leisure. I don't feel it is a book meant to be read quickly or in just a couple of sittings. It will definitely give anyone pause who has visited these sites, and perhaps grapple with how one originally interpreted the monument, compared to its original and intended purpose.

One of the biggest take-aways from this book is the vast difference in how World War II is memorialized. Here in the US, our statues are to honor the heroes and our triumph over true and despicable evil. Yet around the world, monuments are most often dedicated to the victims - such as Italy's Shrine to the Fallen or The A Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. I think this again confirms the fact that the US often equates winning and patriotism - though it must also be remembered that aside from Pearl Harbor, World War II was not fought here. The monuments to the victims and the fallen are most often literally on the site of the atrocities they represent.

Lowe provides much context for the various events being commemorated by each statue. The research is thorough and he writes in an engaging way. He certainly gives the reader a lot to think about - both regarding those he is writing about, and the specific issue in the US regarding confederate monuments still standing.

When we come upon these monuments, either because we've specifically taken a trip to see them or we stumble upon them by accident, we must not stop asking ourselves to look beyond the scenery as it being another pretty picture for photo ops. We have to consider the original intended purpose of the statue, what aspect of history is being told, and whether or not it is actually accurate in its depiction.

Highly recommended.