Review: An Interesting historical fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2013
The Fourth Crusade follows the life of Father Ruggiero de Merafiza. At the start of the novel, the reader is introduced to him while he is traveling back to his hometown of Barcelona to give the report on the Fourth Crusade. From there the story jumps back and forth to when he was a child and the events that led up to him being sent to join the priesthood and how he became a part of the crusade.Once he gets back to Barcelona, he meets with Prince Peter, the Lord of Aragon. He gives his account of the crusade, not sparing any details to the failure that he had been a part of. He tells of the bloody battles, the sacking of other Christian cities, ignoring the Pope's orders, and ultimately never arriving in the Holy Land to fight the Muslims which had been the reason for creating the crusade in the first place.Rugggiero has a richly colored background and the reader is definitely given a good insight into who he is. The book is also well written and keeps the interest of the reader. There were some minor grammatical issues of singular/plural etc but nothing that really detracted much from the story.At the end of the novel, the author does include a note to explain historical facts and anything that he changed for the sake of the novel. I found that a nice bit of information since I had found myself wondering several times as I was reading the novel whether or not any of it was actually historically accurate.It was an easy, interesting read that I did find overall enjoyable. If you enjoy historical fiction, want to know more about the dark ages and times of the crusades, then I think that you would enjoy this book.