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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
History exciting and humane,
By "pluto357" (Wellington, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Imprimatur (French Edition) (Paperback)
After a gentle start, reminding us of the ways of life in baroque Europe with fascinating details of medicine, gastronomy, and life at court, this book develops into a not-put-downable story of high crime. On the way we observe a directly involved small group of people during their quarantaine in a Roman inn. Their day time labours are interspersed with (sometimes excitingly incredible) clandestine action at night. While their interaction is sketched with much humanity and psychological insight, the highly dramatic plot begins to overflow onto the world stage of the time, against the background of the Turkish siege of Vienna. We are forced to re-evaluate characters in the course of developments and we learn that politics is not a matter of blind, daring action, but of balance. This work goes further than ordinary fiction, because it includes an illuminating reappraisal of 17th century history. The story is also underpinned musically, as a main character is a singer (and one of the authors a musicologist) and known efforts to encode messages in music leads to a daring poetic hypothesis. For those interested (and for doubters)a solid appendix underpins historical details, and finally the authors ask some questions of the real world, regarding material archived in the Vatican. This is a well-rounded work which keeps all its initial promise, and my bet is the authors will not write another quite like it.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best historical novel ever,
By Simone Cardelli (Fribourg, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Imprimatur (French Edition) (Paperback)
People who love historical novels should definitely read this book. It's really great. I read the original version in italian and I must say it is extremely well written. It is also very accurate, based on serious historical studies. The incredible thing is that the authors are almost unknown in Italy, victims of a conspiracy of the most important publishers ... If you read the book you will understand why the Vatican doesn't like it. Only Imprimatur (the first novel) is published in Italy (very few copies). The following novels are not! Though they're published in translation in 44 countries (Imprimatur sold 165'000 copies in France and 100'000 in Germany and many others in Spain, Holland etc) . Isn't that strange??
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A slow starter, but nevertheless...,
By Bruno van Dunné (Netherlands) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Imprimatur (French Edition) (Paperback)
Set in 17th century Rome, this is a whodunnit in a class of it's own. There are elements of Eco's Name of the Rose and of the contempory Da Vinci Code.
The story has a very slow start. I had no idea what direction it was going to take. The long descriptions of the various meals and their ingredients and of all kinds of medicines and their cures are a bit tedious sometimes. But forgetting all that, the story is original and gripping, once it takes off. A good read! It is supposed to be the first part of a tetralogy; Secretum (2004) is the second part.
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