This is not a book for those who are easily offended by "bad" language - as a prostitute, there are words being used by Theodora and her circle of friends etc that aren't in use in polite society. That's not to say that it detracts from the story - some authors may have been prudish and refused to use them, thereby refusing to acknowledge some of the practicalities of how prostitutes and circus workers cope with their station in life.[return][return]The book gives a (probably fictional) account of Theordora's life, starting as a young child redued to performing in the Hippodrome, escaping into the desert, becoming a Christian, and returning to her home city and ending up marrying Justinian. [return][return]Enjoyable, easy read ( )

It tells the story of Theodora, before and after she became one of the most powerful women in the Byzantine Empire. In the novel, she explains how her mother offered her and two other sisters to the Blue faction at age five.

In those days, being an actress meant you could not marry, and you also could not own property. During her relationship with Hecebolus, she was his mistress, but nothing more. She did everything a typical wife would do, but she lacked the title. When Theodora sought a priest who could try to have her sins forgiven and the laws changed for her to marry, she searched for the right priest to represent her in court. As the story progresses, Theodora meets Justinian and begins the path to becoming the Empress.

I think I expected more from this book since it is not a biography or memoir, but a historical fiction novel. Though the narrative style summarized Theodora's life events, the author explained poorly what was going on. My knowledge of the early church and the end of the Roman Empire is very limited, so I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of these topics.

Rather than showing Theodora's life and what made her the powerful woman she was, the story reads like a biography and tells her story. This story disappointed me. ( )

"Award-winning novelist Stella Duffy vividly recreates the life and times of a woman who left her mark on one of the ancient world's most powerful empires."

When I first decided to read this book, it was because I love books about history, and I figured this would be a rather dry, but informative, book about a fascinating historical figure. I was wrong, though. There was nothing dry about it! I learned so much about Theodora, from her childhood as an actress all the way through to her ascension as Empress of Rome, and all the hardship she experiences in between. The book starts with the gruesome death of her father by a bear that he performed with, which she witnessed when she was just a child, and explains how she and her sisters were forced to begin performing to help support their family. Her story is filled with trauma and abuse at the hands of men, but she amazingly never loses her strength of will. She is so, so strong, and this is what allows her to thrive no matter what situation she finds herself in. This was truly an inspirational book.

Favorite quote: "From the moment she was first allowed on the main stage as a fully fledged public performer rather than as Comito's assistant or just a comedic interlude, Theodora was totally at ease. The people did not fall in love with her immediately, years of watching her father, as well as other actors and singers, had taught her they would not - she knew she would have to make them want her, and so she wooed them, won them without their even noticing it."

In summary, I enjoyed this book very much and give it an enthusiastic 5/5 stars.

I received a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion. ( )

The subtitle makes this sound as though it's going to be one of those challenging and controversial biographies, but of course, as the faceless naked woman on the cover reassures us, it's nothing more sensational than a rather generic historical novel. We get to follow Theodora's familiar but improbable rise from dance-classes backstage at the Constantinople Hippodrome to the moment when she first appears in the Imperial box there dressed in purple.

Duffy gives us an engaging and readable account of Theodora's career, without any very obvious wrong notes, but also without anything really interesting that we weren't expecting. She doesn't seem to have found a good solution for the historical novelist's big problem with well-known characters, that the reader has a good idea from the start how it's going to end, and therefore tends to see the trials and tribulations of the story more as delaying tactics on the way to the inevitable conclusion than as real drama. Of course, there's that silly interlude in Antioch where Theodora briefly becomes a lesbian secret agent working for ... the Patriarch of Alexandria???? Yes, well, the less said about that, the better, perhaps.

It does what it says on the tin very competently, but it doesn't really deliver anything that would take it out of the bracket of generic historical novel. ( )

This novel imagines the rise from humble origins to a life of influence and power of Byzantium's notorious Empress Theodora. The book is entertaining, if not always well-crafted. The author and her characters too often express themselves in a barnyard slang which I found offputting. And despite the publisher's breathless puffery about all the titillation to be found between the covers and the author's pottymouth , sex was infrequent and extremely tepid. Some of the workmanship was simply careless: how does somebody "scream in silent agony", wouldn't it take a long time to walk from Libya to Alexandria if one started out by heading west, and would somebody please introduce the author to that most friendly and useful fellow the semicolon? As an entertaining Horatio Alger type of story, this isn't bad, but it's not well-written and it certainly isn't sexy. ( )