Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—Unyielding***This review contains spoilers for The Bronze Horseman. Under no circumstances read this review if you haven't read the first book in the trilogy yet.***Once again, Paullina Simons has rendered me speechless. This book has been emotional torture from beginning to end. I loved every page and every word I read. It was just pure perfection. I got very emotional from the beginning and the emotions kept building up. I'd spill a few tears every now and then, but at one point I started full on sobbing and just sobbed my way through the rest of the book. This book was extremely touching, moving and just beautiful. This was the ultimate story about love and loss.A love that started on the first day of war could never be peaceful. And so it wasn't. All it took was one glance, one look, and their lives would never be the same again. She was in a world Alexander had never seen, swimming on the moon in a sea of tranquility. [...] On that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova. He had found her, a Lazarevo orphan waiting for him, and made her whole.Tatiana and Alexander have an extraordinary love that goes deeper than any other love I've read about. It is so touching, so real and so pure, that the loss of that love is unimaginable. Both Tatiana and Alexander were willing to risk their own life to save the other, but at the same time neither one of them was willing to go on without the other. I will go to the wall as your wife and never regret a second I spent with you.When betrayal and deceit throw Alexander in the claws of the NKVD, he makes sure that his wife and their baby are safe. Tania, who now has to consider her baby's life too, makes her way to New York thinking her husband's dead. Where did they teach you how to live after you'd lost it all? [...] How was she going to get through losing him without him?Alexander and Tatiana were literally each other's halves. One complementing the other and without each other they're lost. In Alexander’s life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.Alexander didn't get executed, but was sent to command a penal battalion. While fighting to keep his life, she was all he could think about. She was the only thing that kept him alive and kept him going in Soviet Russia. He loves her as much as it is possible for a man to love a woman. His only goal was to get back to her again, so he could be whole again. Have you been looking for me? she had once asked him, and he replied, All my life.As she had been looking for him. In New York the only face she kept seeing everywhere was his. The only face she kept looking for was his. The only hand she wanted to hold was his and the only lips she wanted to kiss were his. Tatiana was alive, but she wasn't living. Today with every breath of the past she colored her breath of the future, with every blink of her eye, Alexander bore himself deeper and deeper inside her until the whole of what they were together blinded her from seeing what else might be in the world for her.[...]As she nursed her boy, Tatiana’s salty tears fell on his face that she didn’t bother to wipe, and in her tears and in her milk and in her heart only one word struck the clock of her soul on the stroke of every minute: Alexander.My heart broke together with theirs. Her being away from him, him being away from her.. It was too much. Yet I loved the torture and the emotions it got out of me. It had gotten to the point where the single mention of Lazarevo reduced me to tears. And all my friends know I don't usually cry over books. Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Perseus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you’ll know it’s me, calling for you…calling you back to Lazarevo.Even though she "knew" he was dead, she couldn't help but shake the feeling that maybe he wasn't. That maybe he needed her. That maybe she should go find him.In the ocean, her arm outstretched to God, was Lady Liberty and on the fire escape was Tatiana, sitting in the three-in-the-morning air, listening across the ocean for the breathing of one man. The king among men.Tatiana's character kept amazing me over and over again. I cannot express how much I love her and how awesome I think she is. She was as resolute as ever, as fully loving, as completely giving, intensely tender, unbearably moving, as always affecting him utterly. Tania is at her core a happy soul, a resilient person. She is loyal and she is true, she is unyielding and relentless, but she also feels a child’s delight for the smallest things.Her kindness was often mistaken for weakness, but she was everything but weak. Tatiana is the strongest female character I've ever read about. She's also the smartest and the most loyal one. "What if he is wondering why it’s taking me so long to come and find him, and I don’t come? Why don’t I come?”“Why would he be waiting?”“Because he knows what I am. I won’t leave him."Alexander possessed the same strength and loyalty. Even when there seemed to be no way out, he never lost hope. He never gave up on finding his way back to her, because she was his only life force and the brightest star in the sky. "This is it, isn’t it? There is no way out.”“You don’t think there is, but there is. We just haven’t thought of it."This book gave us a lot of insight on what Alexander was like as a kid and how he became the man he is now. It tells us the story of Harold and Jane Barrington and how they saw their Soviet dream fall into pieces and how Alexander survived from it up till the moment where he meets Tania. The book switches back and forth between three different stories (Alexander's past, his present and Tania's present) and about halfway it becomes two stories/POV (Alexander's present and Tania's present). I loved this variation in stories. It kept it interesting and enjoyable to read.I loved how there were many flashbacks and memories of book one of the trilogy. You could really see how symbolic everything was and how well it all connected with each other. I am going to lie down on his sled and close my eyes and he will pull me along the snow to my Fifth Soviet building, except when we get there, I will not feel his hand on my cheek.'[...]Courage, babe. Get up, get up for me, and go on. Go on, go take care of our son, and I will take care of you.It's funny how everything in book one was so different from the way things were in book two. It's funny how life changed drastically for the both of them. Dive into hope, or die in despair. They dived into hope and it got them through the toughest times of their lives. I cannot wait to continue the journey in book three and see what more life has in store for them. My Tatiana & Alexander, I will never forget them. We walk alone through this world, but if we’re lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.For an evening minute I touched him again and grew red wings and was young again in the Summer Garden, and had hope and eternal life.
10++ big beautiful stars and then some WOW!!!! This second installment of The Bronze Horseman trilogy was BEAUTIFUL!!!!! This is truly the most EPIC LOVE story EVER told bar none. I am writing this review through the tears left over from reading this book. This book was the PERFECT sequel to The Bronze Horseman. In many ways, it not so much followed it as it did complete it. While things are still very open for book 3, I felt like this book was the second half of TBH. It was utterly BREATHTAKING!!!!!!When we left Tatiana and Alexander in TBH, Alexander had arranged for a pregnant Tatiana to get passage to America by having her think he was dead (he was sure they were going to execute him) but as fate would have it, he wasn't and was made to serve in the penal battalions at the front of the war. Tatiana meanwhile in America is forced to try and live on with their infant son believing that he is dead.I don't have words to describe and BEAUTIFULLY and SEAMLESSLY the author wove together Alexander's story with Tatiana's as well as flashbacks and memories. We learn a lot about Alexander in this book. While the books are not written in first person, a lot of what we saw in The Bronze Horseman was through Tatiana's eyes and in this book, we are taken back to events seen in TBH and also some events that we didn't see (that happened in between) and are shown them through Alexander's eyes. It explains so much leaving no question unanswered.... We also see Alexander's childhood through intermingled flashbacks that help the reader understand how he became the man he is. The HEARTACHE and LONGING in this book almost killed me. I was openly crying or sobbing every 10 pages or so. You'll just be reading normally and your emotional state will be relatively stable (well, still full of aching for them missing each other but bearably so) in a 'current' scene but then a memory will be inserted and just throw you right over the emotional edge.The happy memories of each other are inserted throughout the entire book at times when Tatiana and Alexander are despairing beyond all hope, and the memories of each other serve as a means to get them through. To get up one more time. To put one foot in front of the other. Not to give up.... In this same way, they help the reader get through their separation by constantly giving hope.And their reunion!!!!! Wow. Wow. Wow. Alexander and Tatiana are both SUCH strong characters - some of the strongest I've ever read about. I don't think I have ever sobbed through a book so much - but in a completely good way. This is such a story of survival and love. The author's ability to make you FEEL every single thing that Tatiana and Alexander are going through is just incredible. No piece of music, book, story, movie, show, anything has EVER made me FEEL as strongly as this book did. If I were going to be stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life and could only bring one series of books, it would be these.The LOVE that Tatiana and Alexander share is beyond words. You just have to experience it for yourself. I don't think anyone but the author can do it justice.Again, this book is long, not as long as the first one though but my print copy is 559 pages. But it did not drag even once. I read every. single. word. every syllable even as slowly as I could. I didn't want it to end.... And there is absolutely zero fluff. Absolutely everything mentioned is a vital part of the story. And as with the first one, the writing is also broken up really interestingly. It is in chapters, but within those chapters are little sections, each one is a writing work of art. I really don't know how to explain it, but each one is not just telling you what is happening, but it has a greater point ... Its achingly beautifully poetic... This writing style becomes more and more poignant as the series goes on because as you know more and more about the characters, the author is able to make the sections more and more emotional until every single one of your heart strings is raw.The ending is perfect and this being the romance love story that it is, everything does work out in the end, which believe me is what will keep you going throughout it.I'm starting book 3 right away which follows Alexander and Tatiana in their new life in America with their son as they face life after the war together. These are by FAR my FAVORITE books ever. There is nothing else in their league.. This story is one that i will reread over and over again and will stay with me forever.And tell me that's not the most beautiful book cover ???? :)CASTING: see above**************************** For more of my reviews, book news and updates:✦ Main blog: Aestas Book Blog✦ Facebook Blog Page✦ Twitter
What do You think about Tatiana And Alexander (2015)?
♥ 5 AGONIZINGLY BEAUTIFUL AND EPIC STARS. ♥The EPIC love story of Tatiana and Alexander continues and once again I loved every minute of it...Review to come ~
—Debra
4.5 ★'s After finishing The Bronze Horseman how could you not continue on with this book? We were left with Tatiana believing that Alexander was dead and she was left alone and pregnant. She struggles in deciding if she should continue on with their plan and ultimately does that, working her magic and making it to America just in time to give birth. Let me just say....and not only that but it will severely test your patience! I was desperate to find out what happened but of course, nothing could be that easy! The author takes us on a journey down memory lane...we get to find out quite a bit about what makes Alexander tick and more about his relationship with his parents. Not a lot of excitement but at least it did make me dislike his parents a little less. Fortunately, the time will Tatiana moves in a forward pace for the most part. We get to find out what happens to her in New York and what she does with herself and the baby. You would think this is an easy road but it is not. That was the difficult part...reading how much both of them suffered being away from the other. Alexander hoping that Tania made it to the USA but having to still live under horrible circumstances and fight the war. Tatiana being in a much better place but left with doubts if Alexander did die or not, and if he did, should she move on with her life? I wish I could say that there wasn't a lot of war/military history in this one but I would be wrong. It was b-o-r-i-n-g!! I am just not into that but I do like that it seemed to be factual...and I did like knowing what Alexander went through because it seems like a lot of that will come back to bite him in the butt. Thankfully, we are done with that for the most part. There were a few surprises...one in particular was something I knew would happen even though I'm quite sadden by how things ultimately turned out.I was really blown away by Tatiana...she has definitely grown up! I love how determined and focused she is and she never ceases to amaze me. What happened towards the end was amazing and I loved her conviction! You can see how there will be some problems. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the next book, The Summer Garden. Sadly, I don't have any idea if they end up together or not so I'm going in with no expectations....well, mostly.Favorite quotes:♥ “It’s not marriage bait, it’s the wedding tackle."♥ “Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights in Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.”
—Sharon ✽ is an emotional book junkie ✽
Before reading Tatiana and Alexander I wondered if it was possible for my heart to feel for these two even more. It was possible. It was also possible for the tiny pieces left of my fragile heart, broken after reading book #1, to be shattered even further. Yet again, I’m utterly broken.Alone and consumed by the feeling of loss, Tatiana escapes to America. Though freed from Soviet reality, she’s imprisoned by grief, pain and hope. Hope for her beloved Alexander to be alive. And then she would blink, blink again and he would be gone. And she would be gone, too. Oceans and continents away Alexander barely escapes death. More determined than ever, he’ll do anything to find his Tatiana and their newborn child. It’s her love that keeps him alive. It’s the memory of her strength, pure heart and beautiful face that compels him to fight his way out of Soviet Russia. It’s hope he’ll find her again that tells him not to give up.Every step of this journey was agonizing. Every second these two spent apart pained my heart, every memory of their time together brought me tears, every moment they spent trying to survive for each other gave me hope and every time they fought for their love gave me strength to keep reading. Paullina Simmons took my heart and ripped it from my chest. She made me feel every emotion these two had two endure. This book was simply perfect.
—Olga
