Crusades (finished)

The crusades: the series of wars that took the lives of millions of civilians and warriors alike. The Crusades, by Robyn Young, is a stimulating historical fiction novel from the viewpoint of Will Campell, a respected Christan templar, who has a dream of establishing peace in the religous world, where Muslims and Christans gets along with each other as efficently as oil mixes with water. Fortunately, Will isn't the only one with this dream. The Anima Templi, latin for "the Soul of the Temple", is a secret organization of templars whose goal is to establish and maintain peace in this harsh world of religous conflicts and chaos. The Anima Templi was actually established near the end of the first book in the series, The Bretheren. I accidently picked up The Crusades and started reading it, confused at first but that quickly changed. After reading the first few pages, I quickly adjusted and got comfortable with the book, since the writing style Young uses makes it seem that the second book of the series is the first story, since she does such a great job on explaining current events in the book. She also connects to the previous novel in the series by writing about Will's flashbacks on events back in the first book. After giving information about the first novel, those events in the past book lead to significant events in the second story. For example, Will spends and afternoon thinking back to when Will lost his father in a Muslim assault on a Christian fort and spared no one in it. This is just one of the countless factors that contribute to everyone's bloddlust for another Crusade to occur and eliminate the opposing religon. To make it even worse, there is treason occuring in both sides of the war: traitors in the Muslim court are trying to coax king sultan Baybars, ruler of the Islam empire, into eliminating the Christans and Christan merchants are pulling strings to start a crusade, which would imporve their failing businesses with the high demand of weapons. With all of this suspense occuring with just the prevention of a single crusade, it's frightening to think what people had to go through to survive the crusades and even more terrifying to think how difficult the struggle is for Will and the Anima Templi, who have to prevent the intentions of hundreds of political figures of getting through and starting mass blood shed. It just goes to show how amazing Robyn Young is by using her fanatastic narrative skills to make you feel and experience all of the emotions of the characters. Lastly, as a side note, she also includes a glossary filled with characters' names, positions and places, which is helpful when trying to comprehend the viewpoints of different people as a new chapter begins.

Angelmass (completed)

This is really rare. I have actually found another book where it kept me up till three in the morning to read more of the book. Only other books that have done so before is City at the End of Time. Yep, with this, I can certainly cliam that Greg Bear and Timothy Zahn have become my two favorite authors. But enough of the babbling, on with the summary.



Over the course of about four days of reading, everything turned upside down. At first, I believed that Kosta and Chrandris are in a team but instead, Kosta is the offical spy while Chrandris is just running away from her psycho lover/killer and just happens to go to the same planet as Kosta. In addition, both Chrandis and Kosta are actually forced to dive into Emphryean culture and blend in with the civilains in order to know more about the angels. In the beginning, I thought that angels were an alien species where in fact they were really entites that are as small as a little gemstone and are inserted into the necklaces that political leaders of the Emphryean empire wear to make it impossible for them to lie. Amoung these leaders, however, is a soon-to-be politician named Forcystus who's father was famous because he resigned his position as a political leader due to his belief that the angels were slowly taking over the Emphyreans, these beliefs being passed onto his son, so it's pretty obvious not everyone is happy with the angels. Another key aspect in this story is that Kosta is accepted in the Institute of Angelmass Studies (Angelmass being the small blackhole that ejects the angels) and learns that many scientists have applied numerous theories onto what the angels are and how they affect humans. That's the thing that I found so attractive in this story: Zahn has managed to take a fanatasy universe and inserted his own list of space physics that make this fantasy universe feel like that it actually exists and that he is simpy doing an autobiography about this universe. Chrandis, on the other hand, has managed to become a member of one of the the hunterships (the ships that are constantly going to Angelmass to collect angels), even though she is highly suspcious. This is expalined by the fact that the owners of the ship have a secret angel they kept on board in order to change the hearts and lives of thiefs and criminals alike by turning them into good citizens plus the fact that Chrandis has a natural talent for spaceships. After all introductions are made and the characters get comfortable with their new lives, the Pax, the Earth force that wants to retake the Emphryean empire, starts their invasion on the Emphyrean system. Adding onto the list of problems Kosta has, he has also confirmed that the angels are actually living beings inside the little gems and they are controlling the Angelmass black hole to eject dangerous amounts of gamma rays and can also move by itself. If this were to continue, Angelmass would pick up enough speed to swallow the whole planet. Being the hero, of course he succeeds in stopping Angelmass' movement and saves the day and all but the story doesn't end there. When all of this confusion is over, Kosta gives up on his duty as a spy and decides to stay with the Emphryeans because he still has one more duty to complete: he must oversee the return of all of the angels to Angelmass. The reason behind this is that Kosta concludes that the only reason that Angelmass has been dangerous recently is because the number of angels is decreasing, reulting in the angels being scared and forced to fight for in self-defense. In order for Angelmass to calm down, Kosta proposed that all of the angels be returned to the black hole. When a character argued that without the angels, peace would be broken amoung the leaders but Forcystus told him otherwise, claiming that in reality, the angels are the ones who enable to calm down the leaders and said that humans should be able to look after themselves, not rely on some unknown force. Not only was this book fantastic, Zahn was able to bring in a little moral into this epic adventure, which is nice compared to common books such as Eragon and Harry Potter, where the point is all like "hey, hero, learn this cool ability and you can beat the bad guy!" An enjoyable book, one that shows why Timothy Zahn is one of the greatest sci-fi wirters of all time.

Angelmass (continuing)

I've made enough progress in the book to answer some of my questions from last week. Apparently, the book doesn't kick off with some random narrator coming from the middle of nowhere and saying, "It's the year ---- AD and humanity has to fight against blah blah blah." It actually starts off with Kosta boarding the Kotamdiji, a grand space battleship that is the pride of the Pax space force. he describes the trip as a honor for someone who barely got eight weeks of military training and that his nerves seem to be shot. He meets the captain of the ship, Commander Lleshi and Adjutor Corps representative Telthorst. In my mind, these two officiers play the popular two military figures of the military hero who can think rationally, Lleshi, and the high ranking political figure who cares nothing more than to get the job done, or realpolitiks in other words, Telthorst. Anyway, the two officers remind Kosta about the situation in the Emphryean empire is critical due to the influence of the angels' strange powers to subdue any tpye of lying what-so-ever, and that his role in the mission is to secretly land on Seraph, the empire's home planet, and gather as much data as possible about these strange entities. Apparently, I was wrong about the whole Pax/Emphryean connection: the whole human empire was known as the Pax but then there was a schism between the colonies that discovered the angels and created the Empyrean empire. In addition, I also cleared up that Chrandis is not an offcial companion of Kosta: the government gave her a fake ID card to get her onto a spaceship that was departing for Seraph. In the spaceport, she metions that she feels like that she's being followed by a man called Trillings and that she can't detect him because he's that good, so I'm assuming that it's the one who taught her how to be a thief. Timothy Zahn has been added to my list of favorite authors, along with Greg Bear, thanks to his amazing indirect method of explaining the plot, which most sci-fi artists tend to fail at. Now I'm even more curious as to how Kosta will proceed with this mission and if he'll manage to meet up with Chrandis.

Angelmass (new book)

I had to return Poisonwood Bible to the libary. Due to the inability to renew it twice, I was forced to choose a new independent reading book. So, I chose Angelmass, by Timothy Zahn. This novel is another sci-fi novel where humans have expanded their borders to space. Now, I am assume that the moment you read the words "sci-fi", you assumed that this would be another story where humans battle against an unknown race, right? Well, it is true humans meet an unknown force, but it doesn't seem to be hostile. Humans in the late future have established an empire called Empyrean empire, where colonies have settled across the stars. In the colony of the planet "Seraph", scientists have recovered a strange being from a black hole under the identification of an "angel". People in close proximity of these strange creatures find themeslves calm, reasonable, and seem to find it impossible to lie (wish we could do the same). The Empyreans then distributed these creatures throughout their government in hopes of turning political leaders into trustworthy leaders and establishing peace amoung the Empire. (Boy, we need that kind of stuff now, don't we?) However, the top leaders of the empire, the Pax, suspect that there is more than meets the eye and that the angels are a danger to mankind. To confirm their suspicions, they send out academic Jereko Kostas and petty theif Chandris on a ship to ventrue out and uncover the truth about these so-called "angels". The book summary also mentions that tension between the Empyreans and the Pax increase. Just to clear this up, it seems that the Empyreans view themselves as an independent society from the empire, so that explains why these two forces look at each other as rivals. Now, I only just started the book, so I really don't know why Chandris is of any significance in this. Perphaps they need her to demostrate the powers of the angels. Hopefully, I'll read far enough to answer my questions next week.