Eh. The title text for the two stars rating here says "it was ok" and that is pretty much how I feel. This was fine. It did not set the world on fire. It did not offend me egregiously. It had actual female characters, with names, and it sort of passed the Bechdel test in that two women talked to each other about what they wanted, but the context of that discussion was marriage, so a technical pass at best. If you love stories about Napoleon or Stendhal, you'd probably like this more than I did. ( )

I did not find this an enjoyable book. I was exceptionally intrigued by the premise of the return of Napoleon's body from exile to France, but I had not planned on the (entirely unnecessary) introduction of a love story.

In the end, the book spent little time on the return of the body, even less on the politicial implications the decision held and far too much on the relationship which became a love triangle which I understood even less. As the author tried to flesh out areas of the book, the details became almost distasteful, the characters held no sympathy (from me), and eventually they held no interest.

Had I not received this as an Advance Reader's copy and promised to do a review, I would never have completed it. ( )

I have started this book several times and just can not get interested in it. It seems as if the writer was trying too hard to make it sound like a historical fiction book. ( )

I received this book through the Early Reviewers program, to which I am rating this book a 3 out of 5 stars. “The Emperor’s Body” consists of two stories: first, it’s about a young man, Philippe Chabot, going on an expedition to return the mortal remains of Napoleon back to France. And second, it’s about Chabot’s courting of a young woman named Amelia Curial. The first story is basically straight forward, but unfortunately gets a bit stagnant at times; but the second involving Amelia is more complicated, especially since she has a fear of marriage and what it would do to her freedom. It was the second story involving Amelia and her complications that I valued more throughout the book, since it gave some movement to the novel. ( )

Literary writing is an art, not a science, something that can be clearly gleaned from this novel, which reads like an exercise in the scientific approach to fiction writing. Even though the title of this book is The Emperor's Body by Peter Brooks, there is no reason why the retrieval of Napoleon's remains from the island of St. Helena is in any way important to the rest of the story, which is about a murky love triangle. It is not even explained with enough reasoning why the return of Napoleon's body to France is such a grand event. The author appears to make the classic mistake that unless you show a direct link between an event and a person, the reader isn't going to care about the wider implications of that event. For example the events in Russia during the time of War and Piece are directly and clearly linked to the main characters because it starts with those real people and it is about them, not the bigger historical impact, unlike The Emperor's Body where everyone and everything seems to be incidental to everything else. Likewise, it is very mysterious why one of the characters, the author Stendhal, was chosen to feature in this work. There are some historical links that might better explain the relationship between the old womanizing author of The Charterhouse of Parma a British government official on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic and a European socialite who can't make up her mind who she wants to marry. At is stands the book reads like a history textbook with many facts left out. For example if you did not know who the author Stendhal was you will miss a lot of the more subtle character developments. Similarly the story itself leaves out many explanations as to why these particular characters are or were so interesting and why their lives touch ours?

So what's happening? It appears that in our current cultural age we put a tremendous amount of value on scientific acumen. The more you know the more you can (fill in any kind of skill for 'can'). Many historical novels are now written by academics, which gives us a sense that the facts are reliable and well researched. Another good example is Roma by Steven Saylor. Although rich in historical detail with plenty of interesting events even, they do not however feel reliable in the way humans are presented.

Most writers with an academic or formal background tend to focus on plot and structure. Peter Brooks is no exception and this book, The Emperor's Body is a prime example of narrative structure gone out of control. We are immediately introduced to what appear to be multiple narrators, neither of which apparently know what they are doing and tell us as much. After these confusing first chapters the book continually switches perspective without many clues as to who we're now following and sometimes this switch in perspective occurs right in the middle of a chapter! Most of the time reading this book I spent trying to figure out who was doing what, why and when, quite remarkable for a novel with such a small amount of characters.

What probably bothers me most about this particular author is that with such a bad first literary attempt Peter Brooks appears to have already produced a book on writing called: Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Ironically the author fails miserably in creating an understandable plot, or any kind of guiding structure, with The Emperor's Body, a book that has so many imperceptible little twists and such grossly misused structure that one wishes he had read his own book on plot first. ( )