Book Review: I Came for the Romanovs, Stayed for the Soul-Eating Machines

History may not repeat itself, but in Leena Likitalo's The Five Daughters of the Moon, it bleeds into fantasy with mechanical peacocks and soul-fueled machines.

Synopsis

Inspired by the fall of the Romanovs and the upheaval of 1917 Russia, The Five Daughters of the Moon is a lush historical fantasy where technology is powered by dark magic and the fate of an empire rests with five sisters.

My Take

I’m a sucker for the Russian Revolution, even though I know it always ends in tragedy. So, I picked this novella up with both anticipation and dread.

First things first: if you want a literal retelling of the Romanovs, this ain’t it. Some reviewers obsess over the details (no hemophiliac son here, just a frail youngest daughter). But Likitalo isn’t writing historical fiction; she uses the story of the last Romanovs as a springboard into something stranger, darker, and altogether more fantastical.

And it works. The world-building glitters: mechanical peacocks, soul-fueled lamps, and machines that run on human essence give the story a steampunk sheen. The Rasputin-inspired villain is eerie without being a parody. The writing has a dreamy, elegiac quality that reminded me of The Romanov Sisters (non-fiction, but with the same sense of doomed beauty).

Each of the five daughters gets her own chapters. It gives the story scope; but I’ll admit, the middle three sisters blurred together for me, much like their real-life counterparts. Still, the alternating perspectives keep the pace lively.

What I loved most was the book’s ambivalence: you feel sympathy both for those who demand revolution and for those crushed beneath it. That tension makes the story linger.

Verdict

This is not a perfect book, but it is a beautifully wrought one. If you want a faithful Romanov saga, look elsewhere. If you want a novella that takes their myth and reshapes it into something haunting and new, The Five Daughters of the Moon will pull you in. And yes, the sequel was just as good