Sisi: Empress on Her Own: A Novel

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 4,018 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 11-06-2024


About this item

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A sweeping historical novel that tells the dramatic story of Sisi, the empress of Austria-Hungary who fought for her family, her people, and her empire in a changing world

“Irresistible—completely impossible to put down . . . Allison Pataki reimagines the reign of the nineteenth-century Princess Diana in this stunning book.”—Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Rebel Queen

Married to Emperor Franz Joseph, Elisabeth—fondly known as Sisi—captures the hearts of her people as their “fairy queen,” but beneath that dazzling persona lives a far more complex figure. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, the halls of the Hofburg Palace buzz not only with imperial waltzes and champagne but with temptations, rivals, and cutthroat intrigue. Feeling stifled by strict protocols and a turbulent marriage, Sisi finds solace at her estate outside Budapest, where she rides her beloved horses and enjoys visits from a man with whom she’s unwittingly become enamored. But tragic news brings the empressout of her fragile seclusion, forcing her to return to her capital and a world of gossip, envy, and sorrow where a dangerous fate lurks in the shadows.
 
Through love affairs and loss, dedication and defiance, Sisi struggles against conflicting desires: to keep her family together, or to flee amid the collapse of her suffocating marriage and the gathering tumult of the First World War. In an age of crumbling monarchies, the empress fights to assert her right to the throne beside her husband, to win the love of her people and the world, and to save an empire. But in the end, can she save herself?

Featuring larger-than-life historic figures such as Bavaria’s “Mad King Ludwig” and the tragic Crown Prince Rudolf, and set against many of Europe’s grandest sites—from Germany’s storied Neuschwanstein Castle to England’s lush shires—Sisi brings to life an extraordinary woman and the romantic, volatile era over which she presided.

From the Publisher

Kathie Lee Gifford says, “Allison Pataki simply stuns me with each new book. Sisi is her best yet.”

Lynn Cullen says Sisi swept me into the glittering, treacherous world of the waning Habsburg empire

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie say, “Humanizes one of the great female figures of history.”


Top reviews from the United States

Shawn S. Sullivan
5.0 out of 5 stars Third time is a charm for Allison Pataki
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2016
Sisi, Allison Pataki’s third novel (and sequel to The Accidental Empress) is a marvelous work of historical fiction. At times this genre can be dense, but Pataki has a flair that few do. Pataki demonstrates an ability to convey a painting to her readers of some very complex, but real, characters. She creates a landscape of Europe in the late 19th Century. Her Empress Sisi, a very colorful persona, comes alive in this wonderful and fun book. While she writes in light hearted way, there is no conceivable way that one comes out from this read without knowing (or perhaps even more likely, feeling) more about 19th Century European monarchies.

Pataki takes the reader away into the drama of Sisi’s complex and rigid world. Clearly some of it is her own making but, regardless, this is a clever work of writing - seeing the inner workings of a woman who is trapped in a marriage she once she so wanted. This hierarchy of European monarchies is written of in a truly palpable sense as even their existence is questioned by revolutions and disequilibrium in the balance of power of the nation-states. Sisi’s mother-in-law, Sophie the archduchess, plays a perfect role and is used splendidly for historical context stating such things as “the whole world slept soundly at night. With Austria at the helm of Europe, it was the age of the great monarchs. Dynasties were assured; all was in its proper order. People knew who their leaders were. There was none of this bickering over constitutions and revolutions and laissez-faire governments. There was peace. There was order!” Some truly wonderful dialogue.

Pataki brings Sisi and the Hapsburg Empire to light in her skilled water-colored writing. I found myself whisked away in the intrigue and the drama of it all. The men that fascinate her and are obviously forbidden – they simply highlight her opulent life as a prisoner of her own throne. These novels continue to impress me and I hope Ms. Pataki might find other characters in history she finds worthy to write about to all of her readers’ enjoyment. This is good and fun writing. It obviously makes for a grand read.
lisaleo (Lisa Yount)
4.0 out of 5 stars sad later life of Elisabeth of Austria
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2019
This is the second of a pair of novels by Pataki about Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria (and later Austria-Hungary) during the second half of the nineteenth century. Elisabeth, widely known by her childhood nickname of Sisi, was the Princess Diana of her day—renowned for her beauty, loved by many but criticized by many others, and mired in an unhappy marriage and an uneasy (at best) relationship with her royal in-laws and their court. I strongly recommend reading the first novel of the pair, The Accidental Empress, before reading this one; Pataki does briefly sketch the events of the first half of Elisabeth’s life in this second book, but readers will have much more understanding of Elisabeth’s character if they take the books in order.

This book begins in 1868, shortly after the first book ends, and continues to Elisabeth’s assassination by an anarchist thirty years later—an event foreshadowed in sections throughout the book. It has less romance and more tragedy than the first book, though Sisi does have a strong attraction to Bay Middleton, her English companion during endless hunts in Britain in the first half of the book. The tragedies include the mysterious death of her cousin and friend, “Mad” King Ludwig of Bavaria, builder of the ultimate fairy-tale castle of Neuschwanstein, and the suicide of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, at the family’s Mayerling hunting lodge in the Vienna woods in 1889.

Pataki sticks close to the facts of Elisabeth’s well-documented life, but she is writing a novel, not a nonfiction biography, and she is writing it from Sisi’s point of view (though in the third person). Since Sisi was an emotion-centered person, the book therefore is also emotion centered, and it tends to take Sisi’s side more than a nonfiction book might, somewhat glossing over her contributions to the unhappiness of her marriage and to the tragic mess Rudolf makes of his short life. Despite this, I found Sisi less appealing than I did in the first book; she criticizes Franz Josef for his unrelenting devotion to the duty of running the empire, but she seldom seems to consider that she, too, might have a job to do as an empress and a mother and ought to make some attempt to do it now and then rather than spending all her time traveling, horseback riding, and getting her hair done.

As in the first book, I think Pataki does a good job as a historical novelist, making her characters lively and basically sympathetic. Whether I agreed with their attitudes and actions or not, I really felt by the end of the books that I knew these people—and that’s what a novel should achieve. I strongly recommend both books to anyone who enjoys royal dramas.
CJ-SS
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Books!
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2024
Great books. I can't wait to start reading them. Easy softback and not too large.
Melissa Oestreich
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2024
This fascinating book about Sisi, the Beloved Empress of Austria is simultaneously a history lesson, a psychological case study into damaging family dynamics, a Big Five Personality case study among the dynamics of different people, and a dazzling look at beauty, celebrity, and mystique. Sisi's upbringing and life as the Empress, especially under her totalitarian mother in law and aunt, who thought nothing of ripping her babies away from her and keeping them from her, is beyond tragic and portrays how "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
This is an enthralling book in to about half of the life of Austria's beautiful child bride with the floor length hair bedecked in diamonds who adored her horses, adventure, travel, who worked desperately to keep her husband's love and affection and who may have worked herself in to being anorexic due to the intense pressures she faced that not even a beloved empresses wealth could untangle.
ckteagan
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Hapsberg hx
Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2024
Hard to like Sisi who made some questionable choices, and chose not to change them as time changed the circumstances.

Best Sellers in

 
 

A Duke of One's Own: A BRAND NEW gorgeously funny, spicy Regency romance from Emma Orchard for 2024

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 523
0.99
 
 

The Price You Pay (A Peter Ash Novel Book 8)

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1525
1.99
 
 

Keep It in the Family

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 43736
3.99
 
 

Ransom (Highlands' Lairds Book 2)

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 6486
0.99
 
 

Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 79094
2.99
 
 

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 16576
14.99
 
 

Eight Hundred Grapes: A Novel

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 16836
1.99
 
 

God of Malice: A Dark College Romance (Legacy of Gods Book 1)

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 37007
5.99