I got about 1/3 through and just ran out of energy for this book. Most of the characters didn't appeal to me much except for the "Princess". It wasn't enough to keep me going.

This book was amazing. It turned a serious subject-the disastrous Fourth Crusade-into an entertaining, informative page turner. And it was all thanks to Galland's invented Gregor of Manz and his motley entourage. These characters were wonderfully written, each and every one-Gregor himself, the pious knight who just wants to go on a pilgrimage and who's irritated by all these stops along the way; his half-brother Otto who is in love with a prostitute he shares with the whole tent and is up for an...

This book was full of excellent details and very well researched. My one problem with it was that I, probably much like the crusaders, wanted it to move a little faster. By the time I got to the end, I found I didn't much care any more what happened.I loved the Briton, and would have loved him even more if we had learned his name. Gregor was boring. Jamila and Liliana I liked, but wanted to know more about them, their histories.

This book is another random novel I got in a batch from my godmother. The Crusades are a fascinating and twisted area of history. Galland wrote this back in 2003, during the Iraq War as history repeated itself once more.Told from the POV of an unnamed (by choice) Briton, we follow along from the pre-launch days of the Fourth Crusade. The Briton is lumped in with well-known German knight Gregor of Mainz, his rich half-brother Otto, Otto's mistress Liliana, and the two Richards (grandfather and gr...

A fun novel based in and around the Fourth Crusade - and if you don't know anything about that then google it before deciding on the book - it is quite good - but its point of view is predictable - of course the fourth crusade was a bad idea and awful things happened - I didn't expect this book to explain or put it is perspective - its a novel - but it was predictably from a late 20th, early 21st century point of view that it was all a bit flat. I am sure many people will enjoy it and if you kno...

An engaging historical novel, featuring fun, interesting protagonists with a Forrest Gump-esque ability to be present at major events (and occasionally explain inexplicable historical events). The story does a good job of depicting how a series of mostly comprehensible human decisions culminate in one of the worst excesses of Western Christianity, and how the truly faithful and well-meaning might go along with it.

I didn't know anything about the fourth crusade. What a convoluted story! Very entertaining. I very much liked the characters, especially "the Briton". The whole story is told (mostly) through his eyes, though we never learn his name or his history. The only thing we know about him is that he came from the British Isles seeking out "the Englisman" to kill him for what he had done to his (the Briton's) people. Ouf!

This book is a truly masterful example of historical fiction. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, I loved every page of this one!

Truly HeroicThe nameless hero, called the Briton, manipulates events far above his station by taking on the persona of an idiot musician. His friends are a motley crue, representing the wide variety of Pilgrims on Crusade. Many adventures ensue.

Galland is co author with Neal Stephenson onThe Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. I wanted to see what kind of stories she wrote. Not a fan of Byzantium or the crusades but she writes a wonderful tale of fictional characters interwoven with history. So, read this for the story, the history or the romance. You will not be disappointed.

I am kind of a fanatic for the history of the Fourth Crusade. I've read more non-fiction books on it than any non-professional historian has any right to. That interest and knowledge was in both the pro and con columns while reading this novel. The pro is that my intense interest in reading any historical fiction depiction of the period kept me reading when the other elements weren't so engaging. The con was that my knowledge of how the story ends resulted in a growing sense of dread as I neared...

Nicole Galland wrote this story in the point of view of a man we only know as the Briton. He was a musician and therefore a sensitive man, accustomed to the friendship of women. For the time period and setting, I thought this would be unusual. The Briton is also somewhat a jester, with clever quips and a quick witted mind. When set against the backdrop of the serious pilgrimage of the fourth crusade, the Briton is quite entertaining. Another character, the German knight Gregor, writes in a journ...

This is a terrific historical novel. The Crusade is the one where, led by the Venetian Doge and venal representatives of the pope, the western European army attacked and sacked Constantinople, which was still a Christian city. It was done out of greed. The protagonist is an unnamed musician (he's probably Welsh) who rescues a woman he thinks is an Egyptian princess from a Venetian merchant and attaches himself to a fictitious German knight to take her home. The princess is really Jewish, the kni...

When I first rated this book, I gave it three stars. It was a good read for sure, and the 600 pages were finished at break neck speed. But there was just something about the history altering character of historical romans that kept lingering in the back of my mind. Now I changed my rating to five stars. Reading Jonathan Phillips's The Fourth Crusade And The Sack Of Constantinople made me change my opinion on Galland's novel. Though she does alter some facts, she gives a very good representation

I seriously stayed up until midnight finishing this book. Unfortunately, I'm way too tired this morning to write much about it, except that it's got a lively narrative voice, although the narrator has an ahistorical feel (to me anyway), there's lots of twists & turns, and I almost cried near the end.

I put this book down around page 160 or so to read something else. The fact that I never went back to it says something. I just could not get into this book no matter how much I tried. I thought the subject was interesting, I just couldn't seem to care about the characters. I had too many other books to read to try to slog through this one. I was saddened too, because I liked two of her others books very much.

It took a few pages to get into this historical novel, but by persevering, one encounters a very readable, at times gripping, and wryly humorous account of the Fourth Crusade. (As the author says in the afterword, if Monty Python had made a film of the Fourth Crusade, the tag line would be "No infidels were harmed".) The author brings out the politics, both civil and ecclesial, admirably. And the love story that has been interwoven into the narrative also has some touching, and some funny, momen...

I was really disappointed with this book. I was so excited to read it, when then I just could not get into it. I finally stopped on page 172. I just don't think pleasure reading should feel like so much work. I was never able to get into the storyline or relate to any of the characters. The history behind the story was interesting, but it took 172 pages for the crusade just to get to Zara. So slow moving; I don't think I could make it through another 450 pages.

My second Nicole Galland novel, and I'm now a fan for life. Somehow, she manages to take an event in history that I didn't know much about (the Fourth Crusade) and that I'm already biased against (not a fan of the crusades in general, much like the MC) and make me invested in the events, cultures, and people through a small group of very real characters. It wasn't until partway through the novel that I realized the MC (the Briton) is Gwirion from The Fool's Tale- a character I loved from a book

This was an impeccably researched, masterfully written book. Engaging and compelling all the way through. It makes me wish there was more historical fiction set in the medieval era being published these days. Galland has written a masterpiece in CROSSED, bringing the disastrous Fourth Crusade, and characters both real and fictional, to vivid life. This is truly historical fiction at its finest.