Nicked
Bari, 1087. Brother Nicephorus, a monk with a pure heart, has had a sacred dream in which St. Nicholas is calling him to minister to the sick outside of his monastery. However, the powers that be decree the dream as a different sign: The bones of St. Nicholas must be “rescued” from their current resting place and brought to Saint Benedict’s in Bari! Surely, that will cure the pox sweeping across the coast. Along with a relic thief and his crew of pirates, including a dog-headed man, Brother Nicephorus is sent out into a world of deception, manipulation, and dark secrets.
The book is both based on an actual event and is a “willfully inaccurate” (per the author’s afterword) heist yarn. It’s also partly an exploration of the history that’s remembered as mythical, versus what’s been crafted by the writers of history. The prose is sometimes an after-the-fact retelling and other times not, so it’s hard to sink into the narrative style since the tale itself doesn’t fully define what it wants to be. At the start, the book propels forward on dialogue-heavy footing. While there’s a peppering here and there of setting detail, it was much scantier than I prefer as a historical reader.
The night of the heist, a large section where a bunch of characters are running around trying to evade townspeople, goes on too long and becomes monotonous. Meanwhile, the queer romance aspects really aren’t strong. There’s little chemistry or time taken to develop a believable relationship. Perhaps this is because the plot jumps between scenes of perpetual action. Overall, the book is a blend of religious mysticism, dryly humorous hijinks, and high seas adventure that culminates into a light read but which might have worked better in a historical fantasy setting.
