![]() The story is focused almost exclusively on shifting political alliances and the arranged marriages that create and sustain them-and machinations involving the royalty and nobility of Rome, Naples, France, and Spain tend quickly to blur together in the reader’s mind. Nor are Puzo’s characters especially compelling, though the cast includes such notable late-Renaissance figures as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, first vice-chancellor (that is, consigliere) to Pope Innocent, then himself pontiff the children this “son of the church” fathers on his various mistresses (such as infamous siblings Cesare and Lucrezia) and immortals like Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarotti, and Leonardo da Vinci (the last of whom advises the military-minded Cesare on the construction of impregnable fortifications). ![]() ![]() Canned history predominates, and minimal dramatic action is more often summarized than portrayed. The scattershot composition is all too obvious. The late (1920–99) Puzo’s last novel, completed by his companion Gino, is historical fiction, about the 15th-century Borgia clan-a book on which Puzo had worked sporadically since 1983. ![]()
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