The Tournament

Starred review from October 26, 2015
Reilly is a unique, vivacious guide in this entertaining trip to the world’s first international chess tournament in 16th-century Constantinople, complete with murders, political and religious intrigues, and the assorted opulence and decadence of Sultan Suleiman’s Ottoman Empire. Reader Firth gives quite a performance as the curious, naive, strong-willed, and utterly charming protagonist Princess Bess, the 13-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and the late Anne Boleyn, who is on a journey with her brilliant tutor, Roger Ascham. Her vocal expertise is displayed as the future queen meets and matches wits with the sultan’s officious, misogynistic grand vizier, flirts with an arrogant, heavily accented teenage Prince Ivan of Muscovy (Bess claims to be the one to label him Ivan the Terrible), peeks breathlessly into the sultan’s son’s ultrahedonistic group-sex soirees, and assists Ascham as he searches for the murderer of six boys. Firth’s winning presentation of Reilly’s imaginative faux-historical yarn would be sinful to miss. A S&S/Gallery hardcover.

May 25, 2015
The 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor, the narrator of this delightful, well-crafted thriller set in 1546 from Reilly (The Great Zoo of China), accompanies her tutor, Roger Ascham, to Constantinople, where the sultan Suleiman is hosting a tournament to determine the world’s chess champion. As part of her political education, Elizabeth has a memorable encounter with arrogant young Ivan, “grand prince of the Duchy of Muscovy” and future Ivan the Terrible, but her life lessons turn to the deductive when Suleiman puts brilliant Ascham in charge of investigating the murder and mutilation of an anti-Islamic cardinal just before the tournament’s start. She also gains a better understanding of man’s carnal nature from hearing about the Ottoman crown prince’s after-hours parties and spying on drunken priests cavorting with teenage boys in the priests’ chambers. Reilly remains true to the realities of his historical characters and effectively communicates Elizabeth’s feeling of being an inquisitive stranger without falling into undue exoticism. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.