Rating: 
Summary: A very Well Written Account of an Imperial Family
Review: I think this book was an excellent read. The authors did an wonderful job in every aspect of this book. The research was very detailed and explicit, and the writting was superb. It definitely left me wanting to learn more about the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: More nonsense about the Imperial Family
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. Everything that is contained in this book is found in "The Lost Princess" by James Blair Lovell, "Anastasia" by Peter Kurth and a host of other "tabloid trash bios" written on the Romanovs. The evidence has been proven repeatedly by TRUE scholars and historians time and time again so why twist the truth with nonsense that the Imperial family survived? Ah, the old greenback no doubt. The book offers nothing concrete and I doubt very much that the authors researched any Russian archives. It is a disappointing fairy tale to say the least. Furthermore, I simply cannot believe that the authors have the audacity to coin themselves as "historians" and "experts". That is like saying that the papparazzi who hunted down Princess Diana were "journalists". The book is nothing but a load of rubbish and deserves to end up in the remainder bins of Barnes and Noble!
Rating:
Summary: Historically inaccurate crap
Review: I'd expect this kind of American claptrap from the Regan era, but this awful book does real harm to any Russian American. The author can't write, has no real knowlege of the subject matter and is so hideously boring that you'll have a hard time getting past page 5.
Save your money, I wish I had. What a waste of paper!
Rating:
Summary: LUMINOUS
Review: ILLUMINATE: to clarify or enlighten. OBFUSCATE: to obscure or confuse. The recent spate of books written about the end of the Romanov dynasty and the fate of the imperial family do both. Some, the products of tortured logic and silly speculation, reduce this enormous historical event to Grand Guignol. Others do indeed shed light and unravel the twisted threads of the mysteries surrounding the collapse of a ruling house and the sad end of its last members.
The Fate of the Romanovs by King and Wilson is a tour de force, a brilliant book, the product of years of research in previously unexamined archives here and abroad. Flowing in style and meticulously documented, this history marches at its own relentless pace taking the reader week by week, night by night through the final months of the lives of the imperial family and their servants.
Although many readers will be familiar with the horrendous outcome of the Romanovs' imprisonment, the suspense leading inexorably to the slaughter is almost unbearable. No longer are we witnessing the massacre of cardboard figures but vulnerable, living human beings. No longer are the guards drunken louts but fully fleshed-out young men with conflicting passions and ideals.
But The Fate of the Romanovs is more than compelling historical drama. The authors have managed, in the course of their narrative, to document and illuminate such puzzling aspects of the Romanovs' last days as the purpose of Yakovlev's transport of the family to Ekaterinburg, the forgery of the Officer Lettrs, the control exercised by the Ural Soviet, the relationship between the family and guards, and the complex nature of Yurovsky, so often portrayed as a calculating murderer without conscience.
The epilogue is gripping in itself and a masterpiece of sleuthing. Not a mere compendium of characters and events, it tracks the waves of violence that wracked Russia for decades and tellingly describes how atrocities -- from the White Army's wholesale slaughter of Jews to the Soviets' killing camps -- decimated a population already ravaged by war and revolution. It is interesting to note how few of those men and women involved, even peripherally with the Romanov saga, lived out their lives in peace.
Especially for those students of history who believe they've read the final (and often fallacious) word on the fall of the
Romanov dynasty, The Fate of The Romanovs will be enthralling reading.Gretchen Haskin Author: "Imperial Affair"
Rating:
Summary: Correction
Review: In regard to an earlier customer review: There is no direct evidence at all that Lenin ordered the execution of the tsar and his family; neither did their murder at Ekaterinburg mark the beginning of the Bolshevik terror. Since this book is dedicated to me, I'm not in a position to review it objectively. I can, however, recommend it unequivocally as the most comprehensive account of the Ekaterinburg murders to appear at any time, here or abroad.
Rating:
Summary: Correction
Review: In regard to an earlier customer review: There is no direct evidence whatsoever that Lenin ordered the murder of the tsar and his family; neither did the Bolshevik terror begin with their execution at Ekaterinburg. Since this book is dedicated to me, I'm not in a position to review it objectively. I can recommend it unequivocally, however, as the most comprehensive account of the Ekaterinburg murders to appear at any time, here or abroad.
Rating:
Summary: A damp squib, plenty of smokescreen, and an agenda or two.
Review: It appears that the latest tendency in books concerned about Tsar Nicholas II and his family (apart from Robert Alexander's outstanding 5 star novel 'The Kitchen Boy') is to take advantage of the retrograde -- in this case, the rumors, speculations and memoirs written not too long after their horrific murders - and put a modern spin on it. Since a whole generation of Romanov buffs has not been able to get a hold of certain out of print books (much less read anything that had been written in Russian), it seems everything old is new again in 'The Fate of the Romanovs'. Two agendas side by side form the book's raison d'etre. One, as the authors assert, is to 'shatter long held beliefs' about the Imperial Family. The other is to plant or water any seeds of doubt about what happened on the night of their murder, thus whetting readers' appetite for the planned sequel about those that have claimed to be one of the Grand Duchesses or the Heir. When faced with readers possessed of a good enough memory and enough powers of discrimination, King and Wilson fail on both counts. Two cases in point. First: It is claimed that the executioners did not discover any undergarments that concealed jewels on Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna because of her having been disgraced in her mother's eyes. This is only the sort of supposition typical of this book. It is easy to recall that at the time her sisters were sewing those fortified clothes, she was with her mother and father, separated from them. Therefore, a far more logical reason exists for no such thing being found on Maria. Secondly: How could the ailing Tsarevich Alexei ever have propped himself up in his bed at the Ipatiev house and shot arrows with his toy weapon through a window that had been sealed by the guards days before he arrived with his sisters? King and Wilson, it seems, have been exceptionally uncritical in their acceptance of any sources that support their agenda to make the Imperial Family appear to be less than close and less than saintly, while excluding other sources that attest to their character. Absolutely nothing in their book but a spurious report of bullying and bad language that smacks of Princess Catherine Radziwill supports an off-the-wall assessment of the frail, patient Tsarevich as an unpleasant young man. Such things are said about the family because the authors seem especially zealous to decry the glorification of Tsar Nicholas and his family as saints. They dredge up many of the arguments once made in opposition to this. For example: the weak argument that the youngest children had not written anything spiritually profound. (But does one expect a martyr or a passion-bearer to be a hagiographer or a theologian?) Yet even King and Wilson, not having much to go on about Alexei Nikolaevich, cited some anecdotes about the Heir that witness to the kind of patience, longsuffering and simple forthrightness typical of a very good boy indeed. About any fodder for supporters of various false Alexeis and spurious Grand Duchesses: nothing new, nothing convincing. Everything written here only sounds like Yurovsky persevered in the gruesome task of hiding the strongest evidence of two of the murders. Is it really anything 'new' that the Imperial Family tended to charm their captors? Hasn't it been stated in some books prior to this that not Lenin but the locals may have been the ones to pass the death sentences in a fit of panic as the Whites approached the city? And while there is a reasonable suspicion that Baroness Buxhoevden was not particularly honest, were there any real grounds to 'out' an honorable member of the Orthodox clergy who throughout his life remained extremely loyal to the memory of the family he'd once served? The one positive thing to say is that King and Wilson have done a lot of legwork to find the sources on which many of the early published books are based and add other intriguing tidbits. In dealing with far too much material in the first place, they were bound to have made at least some assumptions without thinking things out carefully enough. A certain contempt for a segment of their potential audience shows in their remarks about what they would call 'the Romanov internet cult'. Perhaps this stems from the experiences they had when making announcements about their upcoming book to that potential audience. Yet for all those announcements about 'stunning new revelations' and 'original sources', there are no bombshells, and no real shocks in store in spite of all the attempts to do so. Only a damp squib, plenty of smokescreen, and an agenda or two.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive research, insightful analysis
Review: It's obvious (especially if you lurk on certain google newsgroups) that there's an agenda involved in several recently posted negative reviews of this book. Having lurked on these google groups for several years, I'm even pretty certain who wrote these reviews. But no matter -- buy and read this book with pleasure! King and Wilson have executed an almost flawless piece of history -- an examination of their extensive footnotes and bibliography containing hundreds of books and original archival documents serve to show this. They have had recourse to several European, Russian and royal archives, have interviewed many forensic experts, and have translated or had translated books and documents culled from world-wide sources to "fill in the blanks" of the Romanov case. And I can't state this next sentence forcefully enough: There is an enormous amount of new information in this book. Make no mistake about it. If you are truly interested in history, you will value the dedicated work in this book. But if you are determined to see the Romanovs as saints and angels -- well, you probably wrote one of the negative reviews here!
Rating:
Summary: Superb research, well written, a must for any collection
Review: King and Wilson do a fabulous job of researching a topic that remains to this day, politically charged. It is a great bonus to see the evolution of Greg King as a writer. The Fate of the Romanovs is very readable and it is doubtless an important book in the area of Romanov scholarship. While there have been many books written about the Imperial Family and their murder, the strength of this book lies in the depth of the authors' research and their logical analysis of that material. Doubtless some may quibble at their use of Bolshevik sources. However, their approach to this seems fair and reasonable, in that they seek corroboration for them wherever possible. They make an excellent case, for example, for the murders being authorized by the Ural Regional Soviet rather than by Moscow and Lenin. For anyone interested in this topic, Fate of the Romanovs is a "must have" for your collection. (By the way, it appears that several Amazon "reviewers" have issues with sources rather than with the book itself. For this reason, I think their "reviews" are completely biased against this book and represent everything that can be wrong with Romanov scholarship - that facts are sacrificed in the name of pushing a particular agenda. It is a shame Amazon has no means of eliminating these "non reviews".)
Rating:
Summary: Please explain?.
Review: Like other sentimental books on the Romanovs the authors of this one fail to tell the reader why they should care what fate befell Russia's ruling dynasty?, the last in a long and undistinguished line of despotic parasites who kept generations of Russians poor, uneducated, imprisoned and deprived of basic democratic rights to maintain the imperial power and lavish Cinderella lifestyle we so marvel at today. The Russian people were as well rid of the Romanovs as the Iraqi people are the Husseins, so what next a tear jerker on how the Hussein family fled their palaces and plunder as our liberating troops advanced, their last tearful embrace before our troops slaughtered them?. The only difference between the Romanovs & Husseins is a crown, both dynasties left an equally negative legacy behind.
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