É un libro moi emocionante e cunha carga histórica apaixonante. Altamente adictivo. ( )

It's a long book,and I sense could have been shorter to its own advantage. I happen to know a little about the radical Reformation players who populate its pages. I can't understand the authors' portrayal of Hans Denck, who based on everything I've read was a gentle soul and perhaps much more of an influence in moving Hans Hut and others like him away from the violence of Thomas Muentzer. I did not understand why the authors mentioned Obbe Philips only briefly and somewhat dismissively, since his (and his brother Dirk's) connection to Menno Simons will be very important to subsequent Anabaptist history. Menno isn't even mentioned. I think the authors had it right in that David Joris for a moment attempts to combine Anabaptist visions and include the remnants of Muenster. As I understand it he has to leave the north fairly quickly to flee to Basle. The authors have him operating openly there under his real name, but this seems very unlikely. As I understand it, he directed the DavidJorist sect from afar, clandestinely under the name of Jan of Bruges, and that even his own family was unaware of his former life and the deception which was discovered after his death. I hope it isn't too much of a spoiler (quit reading immediately if you are very sensitive), to say that

I loved the surprise ending. ( )

This was touted somewhere as a cross between a Le Carré spy novel and The Name of the Rose, I don't think it reaches the heights of either. By the time the central question of the novel heats up, it's practically over, and the main character's travels across the religious wars of Europe just aren't that interesting. ( )

I smile. No plan can take everything into account. Other people will raise their heads, others will desert. Time will go on spreading victory and defeat among those who pursue struggle.


There is a scene in Alan Bennett's History Boys where the instructor tells his students, if you want to know about Stalin you should study Henry VIII. I felt similar illustrations throughout this sprawling epic. Recurring tensions and responses proliferate through history. Well over a month was spent with Q, a month occupied otherwise by the World Cup and numerous intrigues into the depths of Derrida and Foucault. The baggy novel concerns millenarianism but in the befogged era of the religious wars and the Reformation. Street Fighting Men battle princes and papal guards, while revolutions orange and velvet give way to failed Springs and betrayed Thaws. The narrative as such concerns two men, equally unknown with protean noms-de-guerre: they act observe and operate for the opposing forces in this weird rethink of early modernity.

Luther Blissett is the pseudonym for four politically radical Italian novelists who will later in another incarnation be known as Wu Ming. This creative endeavor finds its historical subject in a most messy marriage, one that gleams even as it oozes.

( )

After news articles about people appearing at Trump rallies with T-Shirts for QAnon, I was curious to learn what this "Q" was all about and found a free copy for download on the internet. The book was nothing like I expected.

The main story concerns a German who manages to appear at many of the key bloody events of the Reformation like the Peasants War, Münster, etc. His story interests with that of "Q" who is working for the Inquisition as an agent provocateur stirring up trouble among those in the Reformation. This agent is regularly reporting back to his "master" at the Inquisition with letters signed only "Q". These letters are supposedly what attracted today's right-wing conspiracy theorists to the idea of QAnon although I find their attraction still very puzzling.

The book itself is somewhat difficult to follow and, in order to enjoy it, requires some level of knowledge of the Reformation. It is also difficult to follow the various characters and the storyline. I did not find it particularly well written.

That said, reading a novel about the Reformation brings the time period to life in a way that a normal history book does not. It also leaves you thinking about the events in the book. ( )