"The Master Craftsman" is a dual-time period novel, alternating between Russia at the end of the Romanov dynasty and the present. I was attracted to the novel by the description that it would deal with the Fabergé family and the eggs they created. The story deals with a search for an undiscovered egg, going back and forth between the circumstances of its creation and trying to discover where it was hidden.
The storyline is engaging. The modern-day component delves into the world of a mom, her shiftless twenty-something year old daughter, and the estranged dad dying of cancer who abandoned them for a life of treasure hunting. The mom and daughter are called to his deathbed and take up this last quest of the dad to find the missing Fabergé egg. We go back in time to the life of Karl Fabergé to see why he created and how it got out of Russia in the face of the revolution. While there are definitely plot holes, it was an enjoyable story.
There are two major issues I had with the novel. First, character development was a bit lacking. We are given people without truly understanding their underlying motivations other than father issues for many of them. Side characters are incredibly flat and the main ones not much deeper. The other issue is that while this book was published by a Christian publishing division, there is zero mention of God or any form of a spiritual life in the book. I found this confusing. Is this meant to be a Christian book or simply a "clean" novel? In fact, the ending moral of the book parallels that of the movie "Encanto." Even the wording is quite similar to that expressed by Abuela in the end of the movie.
The novel was a fast, light read. I received an ebook review copy from the publisher.
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