Review: Very nice historical fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2013
Ruggerio is pious priest wandering the wilderness and writing down an account of the holy war that is raging across the land. What is his purpose? And where did a priest learn to fight as Ruggerio does? The Fourth Crusade is a historical fiction novel that details his beginnings in the priesthood as well as the end of his journey.The writing is expressive and captivating. Each chapter switched between Ruggerio's past and present, often leaving off with a cliffhanger to make the reader press on to see how things turn out. The writing is generally pretty good although there are a lot of punctuation errors, so that may be distracting to some people. What is also distracting are some out of place elements, like words or things that were not used/talked about back then. Still, the basics of the crusades and religious life at the time seem well-researched and/or believable.  Ruggerio is a likeable character; although lots of decisions were made for him in his youth, he rose admirably to challenges and became a strong adult. As he travels the land he meets a variety of characters and delivers news and is helped by them. As a child he is mostly powerless but uses what resources he can muster to improve his situation. The other characters usually end up exposing the failings of the church or the powerlessness of the average man at the time. It is an unfair world that Ruggerio lives in. Overall the story was very interesting and I enjoyed it. It's not a very long book and it does have problems, but if you enjoy this genre (particularly tales of the crusades), you will probably enjoy The Fourth Crusade.