Book Review: A Quest for God and Spices by Dean Cycon

Brother Mauro, an older monk, and Nicolo, a young, striving merchant are called by the Pope to traverse the treacherous political, religious, and mercantile terrain of medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire to seek out the powerful Presbyter John, a mysterious king in the Far East who has promised to put his wealth and vast armies to the service of the pope's crusade.

I don't understand why all books nowadays have to be an epic trilogy. There's a perfectly decent story in here - but it is padded out to the point of flabbiness. The dialogue veers between trite and didactic. At times it feels like the author has rummaged around Wikipedia for contemporaneous famous people and thrown them in to the story without any particular reason.

Similarly, lots of the scene setting feels like a needless history lesson, inserted just to bring up the word-count.

He was joined by a thin, muscular young man who played an oud, the Arabic stringed instrument that French crusaders had recently brought to Europe under the name l’oud and were now calling the “lute.”

I loved the idea of a super-smeller going on a journey to find the source of the expensive spices which were entering Europe. A quest of a befuddled monk to reunite the various strands of Christendom also makes for a rich tale. But mashed together - and interspersed with treacherous kings, scheming Popes, and duplicitous pirates - it loses all coherence.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.