I bought this after a recommendation and checking the reviews here. It is a tragic travesty. Lost time and money. The book is filled with lies, falsehoods, inaccuracies and colossal blunders. I will list a few of them below. Historical Fiction is supposed to fiction set in actual historical times with all facts accounted for. This is ludicrous. It is written in first person POV and yet the writer has included narrations from obvious modern voice which is IMPOSSIBLE in the 12th century. And the protagonist Kerbouchard is probably the fairiest Mary Sue possible.
List of Blunders:-
1.So the great ninja James Bond kerbouchard finds the recipe for gunpowder in Caliph Suleyman Hakim's notes which were hidden in a secret alcove in Cordoba. The author himself claims the original Chinese work was written in 1044 and Hakim spent his last years translating it..Fantastic magic, considering Hakim died in 1016, 28 years before the Chinese wrote it...Superb
2.And for this author, the flourishing of Cordoba happened most under the Abbassid Caliphate. I am sure the original Abbassids would have loved that considering that they spent several centuries trying to dethrone the Ummayads from Cordoba but never succeeded before the Almoravids did it and the Abbassids themselves were taken out by Hulegu.
3.Oh and Islam was so wonderful for women. Islamic women enjoyed so much freedom when Christian women were treated like chattel. Islamic women could share their husbands with other women while poor Christian women had to keep their husbands to themselves.
4.and Cordoba the great utopia is a massive city that dwarfed Paris..it was filled with so many wonders..it was so beautiful..Mary Sue is stunned...Mary reaches Constantinople and.....meh ;)
5. And Brittany and Kiev are pagan for the author in the 12th century. How stupid and ignorant can one be?
6.And most of all, the great "Mary" Kerbouchard, master rock climber, pirate, swordsman, knight, archer, acrobat, scholar, linguist, Druidic super-scientist, intellectual, wrestler, mixed martial artist, FEMALE MAGNET, super Adonis, etc didnt cure Covid...nooooooo..He is like Doraemon. Whatever he needs, whenever he needs it, it will magically appear.
The worldbuilding is great no doubt but this is not some poor Tolkien fantasy but historical fiction. Apart from Cornwell, go for David Gilman's Master of War, Helena Schrader's Balian of Ibelin trilogy or Scott Amis' To Shine with Honor if you want world class HF works. This is trash.