Lucrezia comes off sympathetically, in love with both her brother Cesare and her second husband and suffering the inevitable conflict when one tries to murder the other, and the other retaliates. Readers of this book will know with fictional certainty who killed Juan Borgia and which relative fathered Lucrezia’s infant. Like most historical novelists, Puzo picks a side and resolves the thorny problems over which historians still argue. There were also a few ascetic saints, but they do not figure in this story. This Borgia family consists of a pope so handsome that most women flush upon meeting him, and with illegitimate children so attractive one could hardly blame them for their enthusiastic incest. This gangster story takes place in Italy during the late 15th and early 16th centuries at the time of the papacy of Alexander VI. The title of this novel evokes The Godfather both as a marketing device and an indication of the tone to be taken.
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