num_pages: 283
description: No historical episode leans so close to fiction as the Crusades. the world of Bohemond and St. Louis, of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart still appears as highly coloured and dramatic as it did eight hundred years ago. The people are still, somehow, larger than life; their virtues brighter, their vices blacker than the world of everyday. The sheer improbability of the whole undertaking still astounds; both its heroism and villainy seem to transcend reality.In this novel of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem, Graham Shelby has found full scope for his remarkable gifts of story-telling and characterisation. The speed and violence of events is balanced by an eye for light and colour and a curiosity about human motives. Churchmen, barons, knights, courtiers, their wives and mistresses are seen in sharp outline against a hard, dry, dangerous landscape commanded by huge castles and roamed by mounted soldiers. The code of chivalry chimes in hideous dissonance with massacre and cruelty, personified most memorably in Reynald of Chatillon who knew neither fear nor mercy. It is indeed the story of his monstrous exploits culminating in the famous battle of the Horns of Hattin that Mr. Shelby has taken for the theme of this most exciting book.
language: English
title: The knights of dark renown
titlecomplete: The knights of dark renown
characters: Sibylla of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, Baldwin V of Jerusalem
genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Medieval
ratings_count: 125
series: The Crusader Knights Cycle
publisher: Collins