Hello everyone!
Ugh these last two days have been somewhere between horrible and barely tolerable; I've been working off a headache that was trying to turn into a full-blown migraine, and it was so NOT fun. I don't usually get these since I attempt to stay hydrated and get away from the computer as much as I can, but for some reason (I suspect something though) this has just been impossible and I've only very recently (like, maybe a few hours ago) started feeling more like a human being again.
Enough so, at any rate, to try and get a blog post up, considering it's Thursday! I kept getting distracted throughout the day by self-medicating the headache, giggling over Shadowhunters and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comedic lines, and listening to very low-tuned music.
Apparently, it helped (plus I took painkillers).
So now I'm fit enough for the time being to type this up and hopefully it's going to make some sense somewhere, otherwise ... well, otherwise I'm in trouble aren't I?
Tonight I'll talk about a historic fiction book, The Venetian Contract.
This was something I noticed in a bookshop while I was sooping around the shelves, and only because there's a woman in a beautiful green dress on the cover; it reminded me of the Tudor era and I was definitely interested, but then as I read the blurb on the back I was uncertain whether this would be a middle ages mistery or just a mistery, or a history book.
I let it sit for a while until Goodreads popped it out of its belly in my suggestions list, and then I did a quick Google search on Marina Fiorato, realizing she has more than one book to her name (and all are about Italian situations!) and that this could be my cup of tea.
So, I grabbed a copy of the Contract, and settled down to read it.
The premise of the story is this: the Sultan (I sincerely hope I don't need to explain just which one this is, only one realm had sultans back in the day) has a grudge against Venice and the Doge, and so he invents a rather clever gruesome way of retribution: he packs up someone who is dying of the Black Plague into a coffin and puts him on a Venetian ship meant to make its home port.
What he doesn't count on is that his half-sister, Feyra, who used to be the harem doctor but realized only as the Sltana was dying that she was actually her daughter and the Sultana herself came from Venice, steals away on the ship to tag along and try to warn Venice.
Unfortunately, things don't go according to plan, as the Venetians hate Muslims with a passion, and she barely escapes with her life only because she is rescued by an architect, Paladio, who is charged by the Doge to build a church so God may forgive Venice and lift this curse from the city (this curse being the Plague, just so we're clear).
To further protect her, Feyra is sent with Andrea, who is a young doctor trying to fight the plague by removing a group of sick people to the outlying islands, putting them in quarantine. Despite the difference in religion, the two begin to fall in love and are thwarted at every turn.
Not the least of these being Andrea's mother, who is pretty much a gold digger of the time, who claims she is reformed and wants to be with her son, only to steal the gold he uses to purchase supplies, which forces Feyra back onto the mainland with the medicine they had been working on previously as a sort of vaccine.
At that time, a suicide Muslim bomber (well, fire-started, not bomber) sets fire to the Doge palace, and it all comes back to the Prophecy of the Four Horsemen, connecting everything.
Feyra finally manages to deliver her warning to the Doge, namely that the Sultan wants to weaken Venice before attacking with his fleet, but with her forewarning the Doge is capable of destroying the Muslims; she has other things to worry about as, while most seem to be getting better, Andrea falls sick of the Plague and she must nurse him back to health.
Successful, the two go with Paladio once he finishes his domed church (the first of its kind in the area). The story concludes with the knowledge that Andrea has converted so that he and Feyra could marry, and that the Doge had given them both the islands to build an isolation hospital and a school there. As the final act, they have also patented the medicine they had worked on during the plague situation.
I will admit, the story doesn't seem to make much sense at the beginning as we start with the Doge, and then go to the Sultan's harem, but as soon as the Sultana tells her story, everything starts falling into place and things escalate fairly quickly. Also, even though there IS a love story in this book, it doesn't take center stage but rather supports the main act, which is to defeat the Plague and save Venice. I also enjoyed the addition of the Four Horsemen, even if the thing was rather eerie, really, with how accurately the Sultan had thought it all up.
The writing reads easily and quickly and while it's a sort of mistery novel to figure out who will prevail, a race against time, it also explains a lot about historic Venice and the culture there, which is always a treat.
I will certainly be reading more of Fiorato's books in the future!
xx
*image not mine
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