The third novel in the series takes Giulia and Rodrigo through a very rough patch in their relationship. Oh, and there’s a French Invasion too.
And therein, The Blood of the Bull, tells its tale. I am going to come to this story through a historical lens. This novel, like the second, is somewhat less focused on the supernatural elements of Giulia and her life and much more interested in the interpersonal dynamics of the pair. It takes a while for any real supernatural elements to come out of the woodwork. In the main, most of this novel, even more than the first two, is a richly done historical fiction novel. If the first novel was a coming of age story, and the second something of a mystery novel, this is more of a social conflict novel between Giulia and Rodrigo, with the French army as a leavening agent.
So, once again, we get Graham’s view of the Renaissance and its history. It is a considerably brighter view than some¹.As such, until Giulia leaves Rome after tempers flare between her and Rodrigo, we get the see the rich life of being the Pope’s mistress and how both Giulia and Rodrigo have to navigate it (we are, like the first two novels, always in Giulia’s point of view in the book). In our historical records, Giulia Farnese was one of the most powerful women in Rome with her relationship to the Pope, but not just for that. Graham makes it clear such a powerful woman has allies, clients, networks and in the course of a dangerous French invasion, Giulia needs all of them and they need here, and we get very much a social web. In a real way, Giulia is not just a partner to Rodrigo but an heir, a student, a pupil of him as well. And possibly the father of her child. The historical record is uncertain, but baby Laura, in the world of the novels is most definitely Rodrigo’s daughter.
Having Giulia leave Rome when she discovers Rodrigo’s infidelity is an invention, as far as is well known in the historical records, she does not go off with Lucrezia and her new husband. This does give us a look at Italy outside of Rome for a while, especially with that looming threat of the French becoming a very real and potent danger as they move south. The threat of a seemingly unstoppable force, coming to erase all that she has come to treasure, is a real emotional button in the book that Graham presses well.
Eventually the narrative joins the timeline we know again as Giulia goes to the estate of Capodimonte because her brother is dying. This happened in our timeline, but this story has Giulia go from Lucrezia’s estate to there, rather than from Rome, as what we know happened in history. We see Giulia at her most vulnerable and isolated here, feeling duty to her dying brother, and the strain of being apart from Rodrigo, and of course, the bloody French. The book keeps us in line with historical events when Giulia, heading back to Rome at last, is captured by a French officer, Yves d’Allegre, who ransoms her back to the Pope. Since we are only in Giulia’s point of view, we do not see the mysterious machinations directly that allowed Rome, and Pope Alexander VI’s papacy, not to be toppled by King Charles and his army. Graham does add a helping of her supernatural elements here to explain the motives and actions of some of the participants in this drama, and gives Giulia agency to oppose them.
The novel ends there, more or less, with Rome and the Papacy safe, Giulia and Rodrigo reunited, but the French are poised to rain down on Naples next. Interesting times are indeed what is in store for the next adventures of the Borgia Sybil. As always Graham is interested in the historical events and the allo-supernatural elements that help cause them to happen as they really did. Does this make her novels a magical secret history? Maybe! There is a little what-if speculation toward the end as Rodrigo’s fate is uncertain, and both Giulia and Rodrigo (but especially the magically talented Giulia) wonders if Rodrigo might have to be a sacrifice, a martyr, in the end. This ties nicely into the title Blood of the Bull.
So who is this book for? Should you read this? Readers of the first two books is a rather flip answer, and that has the advantage of being true. I suppose you could start the series here, if you were really interested in this period of Italian history or wanted to get in on this series and did not want to read books one and two. But really this is a big narrative and a series that together forms a tapestry of a life (the choice of title Memoirs of the Borgia Sybil is a telling one).
But who is this series for, then? In general, if you want historical fiction with some supernatural elements that don’t change the history, and a strong sense and grounding in its point of view with a strong female protagonist (and other women as well). If you aren’t absolutely and resolutely anti-Borgia (and to be clear there is a case to have that point of view), then yes, this series may be your cup of tea. Graham is a hell of a writer and she is writing what she loves passionately about. It comes through with the intimacy she describes art in the papal apartments, the depth of feeling in her letters as she struggles with Rodrigos’ infidelity, with the blood and terror of the French invasion³. It’s here, should you want it.
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- Strong historical fictional grounding
- Excellent use of female characters
- Amazing immersive look at Renaissance Italy
- Yet another spectacular cover for the series
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin
¹ This is going to be a footnote of some length but it is a diversion from talking about the main subject of the novel itself and is not essential to that part of the book review, but it is an essential bit nevertheless. So this is more of a Pratchettian footnote than, say, a Vancean one. Graham’s view of the Renaissance, and perhaps the Borgias in particular, is far more positive and bright than, say, the recent Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, and reading this book after reading Palmer’s book was an interesting experience. I also in recent history have read Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization volume on these times. So I have gotten several runs through of the events of these times and perspectives of these times. Palmer’s thesis is the clearest because she says it on the tin “The Myth of a Golden Age”. She makes it clear time and again that in research and perspective, which is formidable, that the Renaissance was no golden age at all and in fact was not the greatest time and place to live in. From invasions to plagues to the vicissitudes of life in 15th century Italy, it was no golden age at all--even if its remnants and products make it seem so.
The whole project of the Renaissance, too and its history and it’s historification as a golden age is a matter of manipulating history. The Durants take a middle course, since they never go to primary sources. They are a product of their time and place, reading texts written mostly contemporary with themselves, so they have a more positive view of the events, and see the end of the Renaissance and the decline of Italy after the French Invasion and subsequent wars (spoiler, the French Invasion is just the beginning) as a tragedy that extinguished a turbulent but fecund period. Graham’s view is far far more positive, and takes lots of pains to show the light, the art, the vision that the humanist faction under Rodrigo (and to be fair, Giulia) want to bring. She sees those forces as fighting as war of light against dark (which melds into her grand supernatural conflict).
So who is right? All of them! None of them! (as Palmer points out, history is an ever refining project, and our own views are going to be looked at with shaken heads a century or two from now).
² In a conversation between myself and Graham, she compared Giulia and Rodrigo to Mystique and Magneto. And I definitely can see it, Mystique learning a lot at Magneto’s knee in the way of mutant and worldwide power politics, learning intrigue and manipulation and social graces and skills but applying them ultimately in her own way. And of course having a sometimes thorny relationship with her mentor as a lover. We didn’t see much in the way of the thorns in book 2, Graham reserved them for book 3.
³ Maybe someone like H. Beam Piper or Poul Anderson never lived long enough, but surely, one could do a space opera version of the papal election of 1492 and the subsequent French invasion and make it a high SF drama. Such rich and interesting characters, times, and conflicts. It would be hellacious to research (reading these books and the aforementioned works by Palmer and the Durants might get you some of the way there) . Doing it as a fantasy novel could also work but I kind of like a space opera treatment better.
