If you read me, you know I adore historical fiction, and one of my favorite places is Florence, Italy! I’ve been there several times and last year spent a wonderful vacation with my husband there, exploring and walking around this fascinating, beautiful, and historical place. No one can visit Florence without hearing about the Medici, and their family history is the subject of many wonderful historical novels.
This story focuses on a street urchin, Guilia, a young girl who poses as a boy to enhance her safety and the safety of the little boy she cares for. She is quick, smart, and plucky. Through a series of events, she is taken in by the “Magician of Florence”, and begins to learn his magic, especially ciphers and codes, and how it ties in to the Medici family. A series of violent and incredible events takes place, and Guilia finds herself running for her life.
I loved this story, and especially liked how it evoked vivid images of Florence/Firenze. This was a lively and intriguing read that fans of historical fiction of this period should enjoy.
Thank you for my review e-copy!
Description
In this irresistible historical novel set in the turbulent world of the Medicis, a young woman finds herself driven from pick-pocketing to espionage when she meets a mysterious man.
Giulia has been an orphan all her life. Raised in Florence’s famous Ospedale degli Innocenti, her probing questions and insubordinate behavior made her an unwelcome presence, and at the age of fifteen, she was given an awful choice: become a nun, or be married off to a man she didn’t love. She chose neither, and after refusing an elderly suitor, Giulia escaped onto the streets of Florence.
Now, after spending two years as a successful pickpocket, an old man catches her about to make off with his purse, and rather than having her carted off to prison he offers her a business proposition. The man claims to be a cabalist, a student of Jewish mysticism and ritual magic, who works for the most powerful families in Florence. But his identity is secret—he is known only as “the Magician of Florence”—and he is in need of an assistant. She accepts the job and begins smuggling his talismans throughout the city.
But the talismans are not what they seem, and neither is the Magician. When Giulia’s involvement with him ends with his murder, she’s drawn into a treacherous web of espionage and deceit involving the forces of Rome, Naples, and a man known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Accused of the Magician’s murder, Giulia is pursued by the handsome policeman Niccolo, Lorenzo’s henchmen, and foreign spies, and in order to survive, she must not only solve the mystery of the mystery of the Magician’s murder, but that of her own past.
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