Secretum

A">http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7819997

A birthday gift. Usually I like this genre a lot: mystery, history. This book however did not really catch me.
Maybe it was because I did not have enough knowlegde about the time described in the book or peace of mind to dive into the history of that time.

Now I've found someone who would like to read this book, so it'll start a (short) journey. ( )

When we meet again with out short protagonist and Abbe Atto we can aexpect a good load of mysery, mischief and history secrets and thebook is not a diappointment. A bit slow-pacing and sometimes overwhelming with historical and cultural facts (?) but still entertaining to read about the secret love of Louis XIV and the dark side of the spanish inheritance questions and a conclave electing a pope. ( )

The book goes to show that if you're a king or a prince, or a queen or a princess, you can't display in public who you have fallen in love with, and the ministers of state take away the decision of whom you will marry. Talk about awkward moments. A lot of members of royalty may have wished that they could become commoners and out of the public eye. Louis XIV was a teenager too at one point, but he was stuck in a difficult situation and it took him a long time to gain true power, and according to historians and certainly to the authors of this book, he may have been a much more benevolent king and saved thousands of lost lives through decades of wars, if he had been allowed to pick his own bride, instead of having a bride chosen for him for reasons of state.
It touches on the Hapsburgs as well, whom I understand to have been inter-bred among their own near and distant relatives, resulting in miserable marriages and deformities.
I hope book three, Veritas, comes out in English, soon.

I found this sequel harder going than the original, but I have enjoyed reading it. There was some repetition so as to allow this to stand in its own right, which was not too onerous.

The riddles and clues were more familiar in style this time round and covered a vast range of classical literature and politics of the period. ( )