When a book is described as "genre bending", I tend to be instantly intrigued. This one described the plot as being centred around murder, time travel and history, so I snapped it up right away. If I had to draw comparisons, I would say this is kind of like The Immortal Nicolas Flamel by Michael Scott meets A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness with an oversexed musicologist thrown in for good measure - if unusual character development.
Sarah Weston is a Doctoral candidate in Musicology. Her mentor, Sherbatsky, has been on a special assignment relating to Beethoven for a royal family in Prague when she is suddenly informed that he has died and that she is being summoned to take over forhim on the project. She has been told that he killed himself, but she doesn't believe it. A mystery grows around her and an unusual partnership/romance grows with the Prince who has an unlikely connection to her own past while battling power struggles in his own future. Sarah is soon in the middle of the mystery as she tries to figure out those around her and to solve the alchemal bond she seems to have to Beethoven himself.
Alchemy meets time travel meets murder meets history twisting meets vpolitical intrigue meets strange romance...and set in a castle in Prague. There's even a 400 year old dwarf (of course there is), but what comes out of it is a really rich cast of characters and a sense of never knowing who is really on whose side in the power struggle
I REALLY enjoyed this book. So much. And I was over the moon to discover it has a sequel so I won't need to leave this world quite yet.
