Queen of the Night (Chee) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. Mr. Chee could be speaking of his own work when he exalts "the ridiculous and beloved thief that is opera—the singer who sneaks into the palace of your heart and somehow enters the stage singing aloud the secret hope or love or grief you hoped would always stay secret, disguised as melodrama." The highest compliment one can pay this book is that it is easy to imagine a version of it triumphing on the stage.
Wall Street Journal


Under the layers of plot and operatic melodrama, the constant scene changes and set pieces, Queen of the Night explores the question of what gives the courtesan her hold, her power over the hearts of men.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune


This should be a stirring tale, and at times it is, but Chee doesn’t let us stay stirred for long. He is constantly throwing flashbacks and flash-forwards at us, so that we lose the thread of the plot. The story, anyway, is too packed with sensational events for us to keep them straight. Above all, Chee blocks our engagement by keeping Lilliet distant from us. For all her claims of experiencing intense emotion, we never feel that we know much about her inner life.
The New Yorker


The Queen of the Night is a 576-page historical novel [with a] plot that is operatically elaborate, enthralling, and occasionally far fetched—a bit like Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in its twists and turns. Chee has the great novelistic skill...of getting his character into sticky situations and letting her get out of them with her creativity and intelligence. Chee does an excellent job of making the world of 19th-century opera—an art form that continues to struggle with the perception that it is not fun—lively and fascinating and louche.
Slate


It’s the ball gowns, and roses, magic tricks and, ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria, waiting to see whom fate will curse and whom it will avenge.
Time


[L]ush and sweeping.... Though the momentum flags in the book’s lengthy central sections, Chee’s voice, at once dreamy and dramatic, never falters; Lilliet’s cycle of reinventions is a moving meditation on the transformative power of fate, art, time, and sheer survival.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) In a richly imagined work nonetheless grounded in fact, we follow Lilliet from one performance to another as she attempts to outrun a curse that she believes has been cast upon her.... Verdict: completely engrossing work that should appeal to the widest range of readers, especially those with a taste for historical fiction. —Edward B. Cone, New York
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Life as opera: the intrigues and passions of a star soprano in 19th-century Paris.... [T]he voice [Chee] has created for his female protagonist never falters.... Richly researched, ornately plotted, this story demands, and repays, close attention.
Kirkus Reviews