Don Antonio Baltazar

Perhaps it might’ve been because I haven’t delved into a new fictional universe in quite a while. Reading King’s Dragon by Kate Elliot, felt very much a pleasant breath of fresh air. Published in 1997, this book is the first of a seven book novel series called Crown of Stars. I first heard of this on r/Fantasy Subreddit, when I searched for a fictional epic high fantasy that incorporates some Mesoamerican history and myth. However this series is actually heavily inspired on European history with some minor Eurasia and Mesoamerican elements. As a mainly Hispanic medieval history geek, I still was intrigue on reading this series, and more so given that’s fully completed!

Right form the beginning we learn about the importance of magic and religion in this fictional world, and how it shapes it. In this book we get to follow two characters named Liath and Alain. Both of which have their own distinct character arcs. As the first novel of a seven novel series, world building is significant. However going back to our main characters in the story, the character development process is also significant in this story, by the time this book ends, both our our protagonists are completely different people that from the story started. Going back to the world building aspect of this book, we get to read the history of this fictional universe, and the current state of the world where politics play a major role in the story.

I read a lot of history books, and I’m quite well versed in European history, albeit Hispanic mainly. Thus said, I definitely see the inspiration medieval Europe had on the author when writing this book. The religion in very much Christianity. It’s not like in The Lord of the Rings where Christianity is beautifully incorporated in the world in a somewhat hidden manner, in here it’s much more “in your face”. Let’s just say, I can easily tell that the author read a lot of medieval primary sources.

I really enjoyed this first book in the Crown of Stars, and I’m excited to see where book two takes us.

I have somewhat of a firm knowledge of the history of the crusades, where I can easily laugh at some of the myths about the Crusades that spews out of people’s mouth. Though in some cases, that laughter may translate to absolute disgust because of the blatant disinformation. I can understand having biases, after I’m the first to admit my bias in favor of the Latin world. However I can’t stand any sort of slander. The Crusades is one of topics that is slandered to death.

This book is written by 10 different well established history academics, all of which provide extremely well research and good objective points of view’s debunking the different myths covered.The following are the seven popular myths that are thoroughly explained in this book:

1. The First Crusade: Provoked Offensive or Overdue Defense?
2. Mad Men on Crusade: Religion Madness and the Origins of The First Crusade
3. The Crusades and Medieval Anti-Judaism: Cause or Consequence
4. The Quest for Gain: Were the First Crusaders Proto-Colonists?
5. Myths of Innocence: The Making of the Children’s Crusade
6. Templars and Masons: An Origin Myth
7. Islam and the Crusades: A Nine Hundred-Year-Long Grievance?

Each chapter starts with a quote of someone fueling the example of a popular crusading myth. I’m not joking when I refer to these as being laughable. The authors do provide some backgrounds of those individuals spewing negative crusading rhetoric. Some of these includes, Hollywood movies and TV shows, Western Politicians, and shocking (not really) university academics. The latter was amusing to me, since after I did a quick Google search of some of these academics regurgitating crusade (and Christian) disinformation, all mostly were Western scholars whose university programs happened to be sponsored by the Saudi government! But I digress.

In my opinion, this is the perfect introductory book for anyone that is mildly interested on learning about the crusades. It gives a good foundation on explanation what the crusades were, but more important what they weren’t.

As someone who has studied the Spanish “Black Legend”, the popular negative crusade myths aren’t any different. Even as such both are well intertwined! So I wasn’t surprised that the inspiration for this book came from the book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.

1212 Las Navas is a historical novel based on the events around The Battle of Las Navas of Tolosa. I read this book immediately after finishing Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212 la batalla que decidió la Reconquista. This meant, the historical facts were fresh in my mind while reading this book, which I felt this added to even a more full immersive experience while reading this book. Thus said, you don’t have know the integrate details of the historical events. The author does an excellent job describing the setting, without being a horrible info dump. Speaking of the author, this is a very beautifully written book. It is so beautifully written that, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with so many poetic descriptions of the sun!

The story is equally presented from the point of view of the three fictional Crusaders and Moors (although some may have been true historical people). With the different characters having their own unique story arcs that culminates in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. This is such a well crafted story, that almost all the time I was reading this book, I constantly had the thought of this story being adapted into a movie directed by Mel Gibson! This is how good this story is.

Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212 la batalla que decidió la Reconquista (The Battle that decided the Reconquest) is the best book that anyone can read regarding the massive crusade that is known to history as The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Although it seems small in scope, a book being solely about a single battle. The vast amount of information in this book is awesome. The amount of work the author did to write book is incredible. To fully understand the battle, the author goes into great detail of the political landscape of the Iberia Peninsula, on both Christian and Muslim sides. He goes into great detail how the military campaign was organized from a strategical approach. We get to learn about crusading and jihad ideology, and finally we learn about the tactics that was used in the battlefield.

This is a purely scholarly focused book, also with a heavily anthropology focus. The author literally describes the march of both armies to the battle with clear precision. He literally gives us the actual GPS coordinates, with clear details describing the environment! Perhaps the only drawback of this book is that it doesn’t include maps. Having already done an excellent job researching and describing the journey and battle, I feel that with the addition of maps, would have taking this already incredible book to an even higher standard.

The Templars and the Shroud of Christ: A Priceless Relic in the Dawn of the Christian Era and the Men Who Swore to Protect It, is the second book written by Barbara Frale that I’ve read. The first being The Templars: The Secret History Revealed. One of the leading scholars and expert in Templar history, the author does an excellent job writing about Templar and crusader history from a purely neutral academic standpoint.

This book can be divided into three sections. First is a general history of The Knights Templar, the second is history and importance of relics in Christianity, and lastly the history of the Shroud of Christ or Shroud of Turin as it’s widely known.

I already have a good firm knowledge on Templar history, so the first section of this book was a mere refresher. I did however, learned a lot starting from the second section of this book. For example, I’ve seen the Madylion of Edessa image a lot throughout eastern Christianity, but I never knew its history, or what was its name. This was something that I learned by reading this book. In addition to this important relic, we read about other important relics, and most importantly the significance of the relics and iconography in Christianity. The third and final section of this book, deals with obscure history of the Shroud of Christ, and how it landed in the Western Europe.