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Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous books and magazine articles for young readers. She holds a Bachelor's Degree with honors in Classics-Archaeology from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Italian Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly interests in the ancient and medieval worlds overlap in her fiction and nonfiction works. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study medieval women writers led to the writing of her first novel, the award-winning Anna of Byzantium. Since then, she has also written The Stepsister's Tale, Dark of the Moon, King of Ithaka, and The Sherlock Files series.
Loosely based on the early life of Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess and scholar born in the 11th century, this debut succeeds neither in creating coherent character portraits, nor in illuminating its epoch. Designated successor to the throne, Anna has grown up in a cloistered court dominated by the rivalry between her gentle mother and crafty, unscrupulous grandmother. Jealous, ambitious, proud of her aptitude for study, Anna is an unappealing narrator who, despite years of her grandmother's tutelage in statecraft, is outclassed in intrigue at every turn by her spiteful, sneaky younger brother, John; ultimately, through her own naivete, she loses her right to succeed her father, then compounds the disaster with an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate John. Off she is sent, to spend the rest of her life in a remote convent. Barrett supplies too light a dusting of detail to give her picture of the court of Byzantium much flavor, and larger events (Anna is remembered chiefly today for her account of her father's reign and the First Crusade) take place offstage. Furthermore, characters act in arbitrary ways, so that when Anna performs a selflessly kind act, it comes out of nowhere, as does John's sudden transformation, when he takes the throne, from malicious brat to the most benevolent and beloved of all the Byzantine emperors. Anna Comnena makes a promising protagonist, but in historical and emotional depth this falls short of other medieval tales, such as Nancy Garden's Dove And Sword (1995). (Kirkus Reviews)
