Review #3: Review by Ruffina Oserio
Reviewed by:
Ruffina Oserio
Review Rating:
5 Stars – Congratulations on your 5-star review!
Reviewed by Ruffina Oserio for Readers’ Favorite
The Matriarch Mission by Maxime Trencavel is the enthralling odyssey of thirteen-year-old Oksana Mangupli, a Krymchak girl in 1913 Crimea who loses her grandmother and is charged by the divine feminine entity Asherah with a destiny tied to the “tail of the bird star” and the “blue light.” Over the following decade, the Russian Empire crumbles into revolution, Bolshevik terror, and civil war. But the fiercely intelligent Oksana finds herself in the court of the exiled Romanovs at the Diulber Palace. Trained in espionage and combat, she faces the sinister agendas of the occult-obsessed Zoran Murometz, a very dangerous man who will do anything to access the gift she possesses. Her journey leads to a point where she must face the conflict between the matriarchal blue light and the patriarchal “black object” and decide whether love is destiny, duty, or sacrifice.
Maxime Trencavel creates a dazzlingly complex world with Oksana’s captivating first-person voice, which wields sharp humor, such as her refrain of being a “simple, humble, Krymchak girl” as strategic armor against a world filled with predatory men. The tension grows with well-crafted scenes of her confrontation with the Cheka’s brutality, giants, and the theft of her daughter. The pacing is propulsive, and the historical atrocities like the labor camps and famines combine with elements of speculative mythology to create suspense. The author feeds your senses with the smell of food, the mystical glow of the azure, and the rituals. The dialogue in The Matriarch Mission is engaging, embracing various cultures — Russian, French, and Yiddish — and defining a cast of unforgettable characters, from the menacingly telepathic Murometz to the maternal Grand Duchess Stana. This enthralling story about the divine feminine is worth reading.
