The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty (2.5 stars)

This was my backup book, purchased for $1 through some promotion and left on my kindle in case I found myself without a book or internet. That happened recently and it served its purpose, but was fairly unremarkable.

I appreciated the historical fiction aspect and the research that went into it: the descriptions of the Cesky Krumlov bathhouse, bloodletting and application of leeches were all fairly interesting.  Kepler was thrown into the story in a clumsy fashion, I guess his sidebar was supposed to be background on the conflict between religion and science, but it felt very disconnected.

The writing is amateurish, but not in a terribly distracting way.  Marketa and Don Julius are the only characters we get to know in any sort of detail.  Marketa's pure white virginity and passion for medicine and academic study seemed fairly implausible for a poor bathmaid in the 1600s, but I was willing to put that aside.  Don Julius is actually pretty good.  Where the story really falls apart is shortly before the climax.

Spoilers ahead.

Marketa's friend and protector drugs and date-rapes her true-love sweetheart, which is completely forgiven by all parties, because Annabella wants a child and the guy was being too precious about his virginity.  Right then.

I shall have the child I long for, and you - you no longer have your priestly virtue to confuse your heart and deny love.  I have set you free.

Marketa blindly accepts that Annabella's plan is the right course, even though she has no idea what it is.  Everyone else also appears to be on board, including Jakub and Marketa's dying aunt.  When the completely implausible plan comes to fruition I could see why it needed to be kept secret from Marketa and the reader - it's so incredibly complicated and unlikely that it would never work.

It's not like there were no other options. Putting aside the bizarre notion that Don Julius would call on the barber he has imprisoned and whose daughter he is promising to kill to cut his hair and shave him with a straight razor, having Pichler kill him at that point would have been far more plausible.

In the early part of the novel I thought Don Julius was going to turn out to be some sort of autistic savant and solve the puzzles of the Coded Book of Wonder, leading us on an Indiana-Jones meets Dan Brown quest for treasure.  I'm glad this book didn't turn out that way, but I still wasn't very impressed.

2.5 stars