While reading this book, I was most struck by the "wicked queen" character and her brother. These two characters are supposedly of the Borgia family, and I felt that their twisted, sick family dynamics were too much of a focus in the book and probably not representative of this historical family. It just so happened that I finished the book on my first night of a week in Rome and the next day, I found myself in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican. Okay, so maybe the focus on the sick, twisted side of the family was justified after all! Wow!

Having read "Wicked" first, this novel paled in comparison. The deep political and personal battles were absent, and i thought it really fell short of what it could have. The Borgia family has popped up in many books i've read, but i'm not interested in finding out much more about them. I was disappointed.