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.