When a work of fiction turns real life author of The Prince; Niccolò Machiavelli, into nothing more than a love struck puppy then it's safe to say : don't waste your time reading this silly fluff. ( )

I will admit a soft spot for historical mysteries. Anything that combines real and fictional characters in an authentic way will always get my attention. This book is no different. In 1502, according to historical record, Nicciolo Machiavelli and Leonardo Di Vinchi found themselves at the court of Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander, who now goes by Duke Valentino, in Imola Italy. These are the facts. Damiata, a prostitute who was the lover of Cesare's brother, the murdered Juan, is despached by the Pope when new evidence come up in Juan's murder, holding her son hostage until she completes her task. What she find is a seriel killer. I loved the story, and the narriation was excellent, but I guess I live in too modern an age to have a letter that is hundreds of pages long. Still, a small complaint for a good story. ( )

With a Masters in Political Science I spent quite a bit of time reading Machiavelli. I found him brilliant and brutally honest. I think it was Fahrenheit who said something to the effect of: Machiavelli does not tell us how rulers should rule, but rather how the actually rule. I liked Machiavelli (who also wrote plays besides writing the Prince). I was really excited about this book. However....

The Machiavelli in this book reminded me more of Socrates in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventurer than the Machiavelli I came to know. If Leonardo said "science" once more in dialog I think he would have repeated the word more times than Thomas Dolby did throughout the 1980s. That and the story line seemed to be an odd mix of Scooby Doo meets CSI.

Sorry, I really had high hopes for this book. Maybe my familiarity with one of the primary characters created unrealistic expectations. It did remind me again that I need to re-read my complete works of Machiavelli again. ( )

It's 1502. Women are being murdered in the Romagna, and their deaths may hold the secret to a mystery that has plagued Pope Alexander VI: the brutal murder of his beloved son Juan, Duke of Gandia. Eager for revenge, he sends an agent north to find out more. The former courtesan Damiata arrives in the town of Imola, the headquarters of the Pope's second son Cesare, with a powerful motivation to succeed: her infant son is being kept as a hostage at the Borgia court. Yet she isn't the only one seeking the truth about these murders. Two others are also trying to identify the killer: one is the put-upon Florentine envoy, Niccolò Machiavelli; the other is Cesare's engineer-general, the Tuscan polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

It doesn't require much imagination to see why I was attracted by this novel. I'm not a big fan of historical murder mysteries, but I couldn't resist the idea of Machiavelli and Leonardo working together to solve a crime. The addition of Cesare Borgia simply added spice to the prospect. In the end, however, the book didn't quite live up to its promise. That's partly because the solution to the mystery was given away in one of the reviews I read - don't worry, I won't do that here. But it was also due to the rather stilted quality of the writing and to the fact the author presents this as a novel accurate in all its details, whereas in fact I feel there's a good proportion of creative interpretation going on here...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/04/10/the-malice-of-fortune-michael-ennis ( )

First of all, I am not an expert on Renaissance Italy or the Borgias. However, this book seemed well-researched to me. I read Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince" years ago so I did have some parallels to make during the story. I liked the plotlines that followed Duke Valentino's rise to power. Loyalties were changed and good guys became bad guys, etc. This seemed real to the time period for me. I liked the ending and the inspiration for the story. The only thing that kept it from being a 5 star book for me was the fact that 1/4 of the book was written from one viewpoint and 3/4 was written from another. The author did not make the purpose for this method clear to me. However, this was an unedited copy that I won on Goodreads so the author might have changed this. If not, it was not so distracting that I couldn't enjoy the story anyway.
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