Has anyone read Ken Follett's new World Without End? Is is billed as a sort of sequel to the brilliant Pillars of the Earth, but it is set a couple of hundred years on, with the Black Death afoot.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Ken-Follett/dp/0525950079/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0780543-8537463?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194757724&sr=1-1

Pillars of the Earth is excellent for the Harnic setting. I wonder if this new work is as good.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (haven't read it, but it sounds interesting).

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Hoist the brown and black, lads! Morgath's colors never run.

I just got done reading Pillars of the Earth and absolutely loved it. I got World Without End from the library two days ago but haven't started it yet. I'll let you know what I think of it when I get done with it.

Edit: Hours later, I'm a couple hundred pages in. Good so far, although maybe I should have taken a break between reading it and Pillars of the Earth. There are a few things that seem a bit repetitious from the first book that with a interval of month or so would have been less obvious.

I'm finishing it up right now. It is as good as "Pillars of the Earth" but at 1014 pages I thought it dragged at times. He probably could have cut a couple hundred pages and been just fine. Even with that I would recomend it!

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Fides quarens intellectum, Saint Anselm

Who would have thought Oprah had such good taste...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/1 ... index.html

Cheers,

Mark

Who would have thought that so many people on these boards would be de facto members of the Oprah Book Club....

PaladinSix

IMHO disclaimer:
"In the Name of the Rose," Umberto Eco, is an absolutely incredible book... in Italian. The descriptive nature of Eco's writing is absolutely divine. The syllables fit together seamlessly, leaving out the 'click-clack' sound of modern Italian vernacular; it flows as if it had been written as an art piece in the 18th century. I should also note that my romance languages have a Spanish root, and therefore, this book (as well as this nearly formulaic mini-review) should be left to an individual's own interpretation.
Ladurie in any amount is a tedious form of torture, that is, if you can find it. As quoted here:
"All [of] the drama and pathos of a Disney film."—Emily Eakin, Lingua Franca
The Joseph and Frances Gies book called "Life in a Medieval City" reads kind of like a textbook. It is absolutely full of information (much like the "Castle" books), down to the most seemingly trivial details which could be awesome for beginning to work out a campaign. However, I've always thought it should've been called "Life in a French Medieval City."
I am positive that most people on this forum have read Hallam, and I will not take the time to share my thoughts here.

You couldn't be more right. It's definitely on par with "Pillars of the Earth", but goodness gracious, we get the idea already. I'd find myself skimming, and that is always a bad sign. I wanted it to read like "A Place Called Freedom", very articulate and just detailed enough. I suppose I'll have to just settle for one of his other 152 books.

I would like the recommend the books by C J Cherryh;
Fortress in the Eye of Time.
These books fit into the Kanday/Rethem/Tharda triangle amazingly.

Probably works best against the Kanday-Tharda border.
Cefwyn makes a great Andasin. Same problems with brothers and borders and religion.
Throw in a Sindarin connection etc. The books fit like a glove.
Has anyone else read the series.
Allan

For the anecdote, Ken Follett was recently visiting Vitoria-Gasteiz (a city of the Basque Country in northen Spain) where a sculpture of him was unveiled. KF used its cathedral as the inspiration for World Without End.

Links:
http://www.eitb24.com/article/fr/B24_82 ... e-gallois/ (in French)

http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/331502/ ... a/vitoria/ (in Spanish)

One book I'd like to recommend here is:

"Die Kinder der Finsternis" (The Children of Doom) by Wolf von Niebelschütz.

There has been a translation into english, alledgedly under the Name "The badger of Ghissi" Since this dates from the sixties, it is certainly very hard to find. Nonetheless it is worth it. Set in a fictional 12th century Provence, the book gives a stunning picture of the mindset of that time. The language at least in the german edition is also very unusual and fitting the setting very nicely.
To me, the book easily outruns "The Name of the Rose".

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"The purpose of the game is to entertain the players and the GM. The rest is just semantics."
-by Munin from the forum-

I was just having a discussion with Ilka on another part of the board, and mentioned this book I really like and think might be useful for medieval flavour. The Merchant of Prato: Francesco Di Marco Datini by Iris Origo. It's the bio, with extensive notes, of an Italian merchant of the late 14th century. He left was is probably the largest library ever of medieval letters and accountancy books to this day, and also endowed a charitable foundation with his assets, which exists to this day in Prato. Unfortunately it is put of print. It has a lot of important stuff on the first private post services, banking and moving money overseas, notes of credit et. al. and most of all it includes tons of "flashes" of everyday life that makes it a really good read (you can skim the more technical, accountancy chapters).

Here's a review from Amazon:

"In his will, the medieval Tuscan merchant Francesco di Marco Datini ordered that all his account books and correspondence be gathered together and stored for posterity. These archives were lost soon after Datini died in 1410, but found again, remarkably intact, in 1870.

These archives, constituting nearly 140,000 letters to and from Datini and 503 files of business documents, constitute the most complete record of medieval Italian life ever found. Iris Origo mined this treasure trove for all it was worth in "The Merchant of Prato," creating a fascinatingly detailed portrait of how people lived, what they ate, and what they thought in late-14th-century Tuscany.

Because Datini was a merchant, his ledgers provide an intimate account of what goods were available to affluent Italians of his time, and in what quantity. Even more fascinating than the details of family life are Origo's reconstruction of the lives and personalities of her three central characters: Datini himself, his young wife Margherita, and his best friend Ser Lapo Mazzei.

"Certainly he was a difficult man, either to serve or love," Origo says of Datini, and indeed it is a difficult character Datini presents to us through his letters: grasping, imperious, sharp-tongued, morbidly suspicious--in short a model of a self-made tycoon in any age. But a better side of Datini is shown in his correspondence with the spirited, outspoken Margherita--who could give as good as she got--and with the kindly, philosophical Lapo Mazzei. Mazzei--who founded a winemaking dynasty that continues to this day, and whose distant descendant Filippo Mazzei was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson--was constantly reminding Datini of his duties as a Christian, and at length succeeded in persuading him to leave the bulk of his vast fortune to the poor. The foundation for the poor created by Datini's will continues in Prato to this day.

Origo recreates Datini and Mazzei as characters of Dickensian richness, with Mazzei--if you will--playing the Ghost of Christmas Present to Datini's Scrooge. This book is a masterpiece, and how it could be allowed to fall out of print is a mystery to me. It should be reprinted in a new edition as soon as possible.

http://www.amazon.com/Merchant-Prato-Fr ... 0374961492

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José de Freitas
Portugal

Read "Black Viking" by Bill Downey. Bill (d 1994) was a black writer who had fought in the Marines as a young man. Began his writing career in his 40s.

Black VIking chronicles the saga of a half black/half Dane who grew up in the court of Halfdan. His "bother" was Harald Fairhair. That should give you an idea of the era it is set.

A good read.

Here's another very enjoyable read:

Hood by Stephen Lawhead

The sequel, Scarlet, recently came out.

On another note, I just finished The Voyage of the Short Serpent. A very odd, but oddly enjoyable, little book. The story is a bit thin, but the author does a good job of giving us the gritty little details of living in extreme conditions.

I recently re-read Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, which I still think is an entertaining source from which to draw adventure ideas. Probably more familiar to most as the move The 13th Warrior, which I imagine is going to be roundly condemed here as silly and farcical. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both the book and the movie, in a low-brow kind of way.

PaladinSix

I finished this one a few weeks ago, and it really is excellent. Not, in my opinion, as good as Pillars of the Earth, which I read over Christmas, but still engaging. Also an excellent source for information on medieval (English) social and commercial life.

PaladinSix

As I posted above, I found World Without End in some ways repetitive of themes from Pillars of the Earth. One thing I did like in World Without End was how Follett dealt with the plague. I also liked the differing views of healing and medicine between the priests/monks and the nuns. I can see this as an example of how the two Peonian orders may have differing approaches to their treatment of the sick.

Thanks I have been working through a pile of other books and holding off for a bit.

Just ordered Scarlet King Raven through Amazon today so will have it in a week and a half. I'll keep the other in mind.

Four other good recreational reading books:The Alchemist's Apprentice and The Alchemist's Code by Dave Duncan. Think of Nostradamus working in secret as a good Skek Pvar foreign Master Physician in Venice. Magic is practiced in secret even good magic with a strong church persecuting witchcraft. His apprentice is a member of the nobility and operates under odd restrictions. Clothing is mentioned occassionally through out the books but really like the politics and intrigues.

The Sharing Knife (Beguilement and Legacy) by Lois McMaster Bujold seems slightly below Harninc level magic. Emphasis on some of the cultural and clan interactions.

I just finished The Nameless Day, the first book in Sara Douglass's "Crucible" series and was wondering if anyone else had read it.

The author's website has a good synopsis of the series, along with an interesting author's note.

The trilogy is historical fantasy based on the events of the fourteenth century (plague, famine, war, heresies, and other fun stuff). But instead of characterizing this period from a modern or strictly historical point of view, the author adopts the perspective of the world as medieval people understood it, a world where demons and angels walked among men and where every event was as a result of either the hand of God or of the Devil.

The protagonist, Thomas Neville, is an English nobleman who is now a Dominican friar. He is also a thoroughly disagreeable person. He is a man whose extreme piety and devotion to the Church makes him stubborn, judgmental, and self-righteous. I think that Douglass has done a good job of portraying Brother Thomas with a realistic medieval mindset. The 14th century saw a move from intense spirituality to secularism and materialism. It also was a time of growing unrest and rebellion among the peasantry. Thomas is equally horrified by both these developments as, in the noble medieval mind, the feudal order was tightly connected to the Church's own indispensability. A threat to one was a threat to the other.

In a Hârnic context, Thomas would make a fantastic Laranian clergyman. For anyone looking for campaign ideas that mix political intrigue with the supernatural, I suggest you check this out. It will give you some ideas for a different take on the Kaldoric succession crisis.

I can't wait to read the second and third books.

Both books sounded so interesting I ordered a copy of each to check them out. Really good prices on the used hard covers at Amazon.

I've started The Last Kingdom, the last of Cronwell's series (outside of the Sharpe series) that I have not read. Like his other books, they are fun loose historical fictional reads, perfect for my lunch breaks.

As an aside, I have really enjoyed this thread and have read a bunch of good gritty stories & reference works that folks have suggested. Well done all.

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Visit the Nelafayn Hundred Project
http://www.lythia.com/harnpages/nelafayn/

I just read The Whale Road by Robert Low. I really enjoyed it. Vikings again. Check out the inspiration from 100 Bushels of Rye - Krazma's Forge.

From or for?

Roland