From the death of her father at five killed by his own favourite bear of his trade, which we see through flashbacks of a kind, and the fact as the plainer and less talented in dancing and singing sister of three Theodora has a slight underdog status from the opening of the book and you feel for her, you side with her, you like her. Theodora definitely is the star of ‘Theodora’ (that sounds a bit weird, you get what I mean). I think the most important thing in any book where the main character is also the title of the novel is that the author makes that character reader friendly, why are you going to get through 300+ pages if you don’t like the star of the book. If the reader knows from the start where a book is going then why would they read on? All three together is quite a risk for any author to take, some risks fail and others really pay off. It’s the latter that I think is the most challenging. The word ‘Empress’ is on the cover of the book too after all. The second is the book is about a real if rather mysterious woman ‘Theodora’, which leads to the third challenge we know what happens to the character. The first is stepping into a slightly new genre for her with a historical novel. In her twelfth book Stella Duffy sets herself several challenges.
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