RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Grisly ... The author brings her powers of language and research to bear on a historical novel that announces from the start that it plans to break the rules. She opens with a description that seems to gestate and eat itself, like an ouroboros ... Visceral ... This is a sensory feast that asks us what brutality we are prepared to witness, taste, hear, smell and touch. While some may find the prose overstuffed, others will relish a compelling, urgent, empathic, beautifully revolting novel that wants to kick the stuffing out of our complacency.
