Well-paced story. Fascinating historical aspect. Several anachronistic phrases or thoughts slip in, but just ignore those and enjoy it. A few negative issues made it a less perfect read. It was difficult to bond strongly to the characters; however, the story itself was interesting enough to overcome that. Giuliana isn’t introduced In a way that would make me like her, but a connection with her early on would have helped me have more interest in her in the second part. One thing I wish is that there had been occasional redeeming moments with some of the characters. There is so much that goes wrong, and there are so few glimpses of kindness or redeeming qualities, that the unrelentingness made the experience fatiguing and narrow. So many had evil intent, and even the Claudia character added too much overload.