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Title: What happened after The Winter Queen?
Review: After The Winter Queen, I was very disappointed with this sequal. More of a romance novel, the mystery doesn't even develop until about one-third of the way through. Then, it becomes a romance story/dialogue about the doldrums of Russian military camp life, occasionally punctuated by references to the actual mystery. There are only a handful of sections where the mystery figures heavily into the plot, and the story is mired down with many boring exchanges and side plots (not to mention several pointless characters). I hope Akunin writes another story like The Winter Queen, but if the rest of them come out like this, he will have at least one very disappointed reader.
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