a lot of caveats were offered for this book: that it was based on specific medieval research that was done for a movie, and that it was fiction but rooted on aforementioned historical research (at the end of the introduction the author says, “what i offer you is in part my invention, but held tightly in check by the voices of the past.”). honestly the author should not have offered that caveat because holy hell, this was some arid piece of writing that i would have more or less accepted if it was offered as research. but that it was supposedly “fictionalized” one would expect a degree of embellishment akin to historical fiction. but - not even close.