35 - Heresy

Finished Heresy by S.J. Parris. I received this book for free from the publisher.

Heresy is set in the 1500s and is about a former monk who has two main aims. He's going to try and find out if anyone wants to kill/harm Queen Elizabeth I* and to try and find this book, which is rumored to be able to make men equal to God.

They set this up nicely for a sequel; no telling whether or not there will be one.

I enjoyed this book. It's been compared to The Name of the Rose (which I haven't read) but it's a very intellectual thriller. (It's also gross. People start dying and they're murdered in ways that pay a sort of homage to the deaths of early Christian martyrs. And I don't know how familiar you are with the deaths of those martyrs but it's typically pretty bloody.) But it's rare that you find a suspense novel that's both clever and actually suspenseful.

* = This is during the time when people were afraid to admit to being Catholic and when the Pope said that true Catholics should not consider her the monarch and should not obey her.