Knights of the Cross: A Novel of the Crusades (Novels of the Crusades)

If you are are looking for a Brother Cadfael type mystery then this is not the book for you. Actually the mystery part of it occupies very little space and is more of a sideline to the main story. This book is really about the siege of Antioch during the First Crusade. Tom Harper gives splendid character protrayals of the main protagonists of the that historical event.

The reviewer who complained about historical anachronisms just didn't know anything about the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. Let me educate him -- the Varangians were vikings who served as the guards of the Emperor in Constantinople. Look at any Historical Atlas for the period and you can see that Varangia to the inhabitants of Constantinople would have include all the lands of Greenland, Norway, Denmark -- ( i.e. lands where the vikings came from -- that was all known as Varangia. Being "schooled in" does NOT mean read or write -- it only means they could speak both Latin and Greek. And yes there were chimneys - it was something the Romans knew all about. Also female doctors were not uncommon in the Eastern Roman Empire when you remember that this was a Greek culture not a Western Medieval one. I mentions his in my review as I want people to understand how wrong that reviewer was and not to be influenced by his review.

Again this is a great novelization of the siege of Antioch and it gives you the "guts and glory" of the men of the first Crusade as well as how really almost "superhuman" their feat was. The Crusaders faced overwhelming odds and triumphed, but never made it to Jerusalem because of the green and venality of their leaders -- and the flaws of their leaders are rigorously exposed -- esp. that of Bohemond.

If anyone wants to capture the real flavor of the First Crusade then you should look no farther than this book. A great read!!

As a fellow writer, I have complete respect for Tom Harper. I think writing fiction is much more difficulty than non-fiction, so my hat goes off to anyone who attempts fiction.

Having said that, I was really looking forward to reading this book. I picked it up off the library shelves over a Thanksgiving weekend, looking forward to getting lost in the story....

... but I couldn't.

For a "historically accurate" novel, this book drove me crazy with....

* a Varangian (Swedish? Danish?) warrior schooled in both Greek AND Latin. Soldiers of 1098 would not know how to read.

* a female doctor performing post-mortem examinations. (The gender of the doctor seems to add little to the storyline other than a presence as the apparently requisite babe (in introducing her, the author comments on her "...robust beauty."). Personally, I'm all for female doctors and post-mortems (when necessary), but again, the likelihood of either in 1098 seems slim-to-none.

* ...and many others.

The breaking point for me was page 58, when the author mentioned "A thick plume of woodsmoke rose from the chimney, sharpening the air.". Ummm, chimneys do not seem to be recorded until the mid-1300's, so the author is providing a farm house of 1098 with technology that is easily 200-years ahead of the time, which is like talking about an SUV in an Revolutionary War novel.

These repeated anachronism felt like they kept hitting me in the face as I read (and I'm hardly a history expert).

I might have possibly excused these anachronism if it wasn't for the writing style of the book (which I hold Mr. Harper's editor more responsible for). Among other things....

* the book needs a final edit, especially with pronoun usage. There were several sentences that mentioned several men, then would use "he", and I wasn't clear which "he" the pronoun was referring to; and

* the flashback felt choppy and intrusive.

Again, I wanted to very much like this book. Instead I stopped at page 58 and the book goes back to the library today.

The main character is weakly drawn, the murder mystery not quite believable in development or finish; it does not generate any who-dunnit interest or surprise. But the author has done alot of homework to set the scene of the Christian siege of Antioch and then, through a real life turn of events, the Christian defense against a siege as they are trapped inside Antioch, all with a actually-happened miraculous ending. The grit, sweat and barbarity of the first crusade is solidly told. Interesting book for a crusade story, not much for a Medieval murder mystery, as in Cadfael or Name of the Rose.

First posted on Amzon.co.uk on 5 February 2012

This is the second book about Demetrios Askietes, the byzantine soldier turned "truth-teller". After his role in uncovering the plot against the Emperor's life (see Mosaïc of Shadows) he is sent by Alexios I as part of the Byzantine contingent alongside the Crusaders to act as a spy. The story starts while the armies of the First Crusade are besieging Antioch. Straight away, the reader is plunged into the squalid horrors of the siege, with the Franks digging up bodies to loot them and suffering from hunger as the siege goes on, and on, and on...

Askietes is called up by Bohemond because one of his norman knights is found murdered and the norman warlord wants him to find the killer. While the detective story may not seem all that original, the context in which it is set certainly is. Harper paints a vivid and horrific picture of suffering, betrayal, desperation and heresy and in-fighting between the increasingly desperate Crusaders. As another reviewer puts it, the story is so griping that at times you forget completely about the detective story and murder plot and concentrate on how the hero, his friends and the band of Varanguards that are left with him are going to survive. A particularly good piece is when Demetrios finds at last Quino of Melfi defending a tower after the fall of the city to the Crusaders and has to repulse an assault from the Turkish garrison of the citadel.

I will not tell anymore of the story, although I found that at least some parts of the epilogue were rather unexpected and surprising. It is far more than a detective story set in a historical context. At times, the reverse seems true: this is a historical novel about the siege of Antioch, with the detective story being more of a pretext to tell the larger story than anything else.

Anyway, it is enough to say that this rather graphic and ultra-realistic book is absolutly superb with a mixture of savagery, fanaticism, intrigue between the leaders of the Crusade, ruthlessness and murder. Not the romanticized and glorious view of the First Crusade, probably closer to what really happened and well worth five stars.

While subtitled as a novel of the crusades it is actually a very cleverly disguised treatise on current events; the battle of religions for control of the middle east and the world at large, how each religion that was spawned in the middle east believes in the same god but differs in the means, how politics, vanity greed and fear are used to promote wars, control a people and to gain wealth. Around this were a interwoven a sometimes clever murder mystery and the common hopes and fears of men and women in battle. The writing while tedious too often to merit my wanting to read more of his work did keep a constant style and voice. The characters ring true with surefooted research into the history of the crusades, the depths of emotions felt and expressed differently by men of war, religion, and honor and woman who love them and express their opinions in carefully chosen responses. A good read.

I just picked up this book at random before my vacation. I was never particularly interested in the Crusades, but I am now! I just finished the sequel (Siege of Heaven) and it too is great. I will now read "Mosaic of Shadows" even though I suspect I already know much of its contents. So first advice: read the books in their proper order.
Tom Harper has found a way to combine a history lesson with a gripping detective story. And even the events of this latter part of the book have a historical basis. I found myself searching through Wikipedia (second advice: read the books first, then do the Wikipedia thing) to the names and events described in the book only to find that Tom Harper is not exaggerating the hardship and brutality of the whole affair in any way. I can only hope he continues the series. I would love to read about the first throughly chivalrous knight: Saladin.

I loved the first book in the series. And I'm a nut for anything with knights, especially The Knights Templar. But this book fails miserably when it comes to character development and action.
It's almost as if the book was written in a rush.

Another very good novel from Harper! Being an historian Harper manages to recreate a wonderful yet brutal world of the First Crusade and one of the greatest fortress cities of the medieval world, Antioch. We can see all the hardships of war, starvation, illness and political infighting by the different nations and leaders of the Grand Army Of God. We also get to look at the soldiers themselves, the mental and physical hardships that they have to endure and the things they will do to survive also when the siege is broken the brutality they will bring to Antioch.

Surprised my his recent fate Demetrios Askiates finds himself outside the walled city of Antioch on orders from the Emperor, with all his guile and cunning he must stop the Franks and Normans from keeping the walled city for themselves. Surely an impossible task? With him on his new adventure are his friends Sigurd, the large barbarian warrior who thrives for glory in what he sees to be the war to end all wars, and his lover Anna a female doctor who cares for him and loves him. They will face perilous times together and have their faith tested to the limit.

Anyone who is interested in historical novels will love this series of books, Harper has brought these vivid and brutal times alive in a way that many authors simply fail to do. Read them, live them and enjoy them!