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    Alamut
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    Alamut
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    Alamut
    Ebook537 pages9 hours

    Alamut

    By Judith Tarr

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A knight from across the sea, a beleaguered kingdom, a spirit of fire.

    For close to a hundred years the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem has stood with its thin line of fortresses against the combined power of the world of Islam. Now the Sultan Saladin has declared war against the young Leper King.

    Not all the inhabitants of this embattled country are firmly established on one side or the other. One such family, half Frank, half Saracen, stands on the boundary between the two worlds and faiths.

    Into that family comes Prince Aidan, son of a mortal king and an immortal enchantress. He journeys into the East for love of a kinsman and the lure of adventure, and stays for grief and mortal vengeance.

    Morgiana is neither human nor mortal. She is the Slave of Alamut: the Master of the Assassins’ most deadly weapon. She knows little of gentleness and nothing of love—until she meets the prince from across the sea. But he has sworn to destroy her.

    Set in the world of the award-winning series, The Hound and the Falcon.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBook View Cafe
    Release dateNov 28, 2014
    ISBN9781611380262
    Unavailable
    Alamut
    Author

    Judith Tarr

    Judith Tarr is the author of more than twenty widely praised novels, including The Throne of Isis, White Mare's Daughter, and Queen of Swords, as well as five previous volumes in the Avaryan Chronicles: The Hall of the Mountain King, The Lady of Han-Gilen and A Fall of Princes (collected in one volume as Avaryan Rising), Arrows of the Sun, and Spear of Heaven. A graduate of Yale and Cambridge University, Judith Tarr holds degrees in ancient and medieval history, and breeds Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona.

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    Reviews for Alamut

    4/5

    65 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love this book to an alarming degree. Though it's kind of a riff on elven kind in real life, it's also a pretty solid piece of crusade history. A bit of the supernatural added to a real piece of history.

      Alamut was so engaging--with swords and assassins and bold power plays--but what really drew me in was the real history part. The whole Baldwin thing fascinated me so much that after I finished reading this book, I went and got some history books on the crusades and Jerusalem. The magic just emphasized my brain's interest on absorbing the real history stuff.

      A supernatural romance, solid historical settings, and a hunt for an unstoppable assassin. Very much thumbs up.
    • 4/5
      A historical fantasy set in the Crusader days of the Assassins and of the Leper King of Jerusalem. An Ifrit [spirit of fire], Prince Aidan, from what sounds like a fictional Wales or Ireland, visits his human relatives in Jerusalem. His nephew has been killed, then after he attaches himself to him as "squire", his grand-nephew, the boy Thibault, is murdered. Aidan meets the Leper King and promises to declare fealty to him once he has taken vengeance on the Assassins. Saladin gives him a group of mamluks who follow him implicitly. A harrowing journey with obstacles set in his way, from Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo, to the stronghold, Alamut, follows. After attempted murder of Aidan's ladylove, he realizes he is up against another immortal power, such as himself, the ifritah, Morgiana.In the first half, the history seemed pretty solid; in the last half, the fantasy took over. The book was enjoyable, but the copious amount of romance--between Aidan and Thibault's sister, the human Joanna--was cloying and to me, TOO descriptive. I was uncomfortable, in any case. That aspect could have been cut way down. I may or may not read the sequel; I feel the story could have ended very nicely here.
    • 4/5
      I finished this one last night. I really liked it–Tarr is one of those writers who makes prose seem effortless. And who knew that Crusading knights and fey creatures could play so well together? In fact, this is a lovely bit of historical fantasy, and I do love historical fantasy, especially with a dash of mystery and a lot of strong writing. There’s also a strong romantic plot which I found odd, but also enjoyable in a hard-to-define way. I’ve heard really good things about her Lord of the Two Lands, so I have put a hold on that.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It's an alternative history of the Christian Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem during the reign of Baldwin IV and several years prior to Saladin's defeat of the Crusaders (between the Second and Third Crusades).The tale follows Prince Aiden who arrives in Jerusalem to learn his nephew has been slain by an Assassin. He vows to find and kill the Assassin and his master, the Old Man of the Mountain. Along the way he travels to Damascus and Aleppo and learns more about Muslim culture and traditions and even manages to meet Saladin. He also meets the Assassin who, much to his surprise, is a woman. What adds a different twist to the tale is that both Aiden and Morgiana, the Assassin, are faerie folk or ifrits(as they are called in Islamic areas). They are immortal (or close to it) and are very attracted to each other.Tarr does a wonderful job of capturing the essence of what living in that time must have been like. The determination of the Europeans to protect and preserve their holy places sits side by side with their arrogance and disdain for Muslims. The Muslims, in some respects, come off as more tolerant and open-minded. They tend to view Christians as misguided in their religion rather than as "heathens". The pervasiveness of Christianity into every aspect of their lives was also somewhat eye-opening. It's hard for someone like me to imagine the Church holding sway over every aspect of its followers lives. I also didn't know that Baldwin IV was a leper. It made him a tragic and heroic figure. His skills and talents are presently so clearly as well as his isolation. His inevitable death at too early an age made me mourn his loss. This book was a great read and I'd recommend it to any fans of alternative history and fantasy.