Reader Question Day #6 – the Middle Ages and the best ebooks

The New Year is upon us, and that means it's time for Reader Question Day to return!

Manwe writes:

And considering our prior comments, don't let this song fool you, as much as I enjoy the Total War series, it's history is biased and deeply flawed, especially when the series deals with the Middle Ages, all the tropes come out to play! It's sad too, but the game is made by Brits, and if one understands modern british (pop) culture, than you kniow there is not much chance for a nice or even accurate view of the medieval era.

Yes indeed. The Middle Ages are very often maligned unfairly. I believe this started with the humanist writer Petrarch in the 14th century – he liked to portray classical Greece and Rome as a golden age of rationalism, followed by the groaning darkness of the Middle Ages, and then the rediscovery of Roman and Greek thought by intrepid humanists such as himself.

Granted, the Middle Ages were not all sunshine and roses – a brief overview of say, the Albigensian or Aragonese Crusades, or Philip IV's rather Nazi-like suppression of the Templars, will put that to rest. And medieval Jews consistently got the raw end of the stick. But modern science grew out of the medieval university (an organization sponsored by the medieval church, which rather puts the lie to the notion of medieval churchmen as gimlet-eyed inquisitors, hunting down bright-eyed pagan Greek women on the verge of inventing the steam engine), and the High Middle Ages saw technological advancement unprecedented in human history, something that has only accelerated in the centuries since.

And we clever moderns have invented many new forms of evil that the Middle Ages simply did not have. No one in medieval Europe had, say, nuclear weapons, or concentration camps, or well-organized police states like the old Communist bloc.

So the Middle Ages, like any other historical era, had its good sides and its bad sides. But to portray it as a thousand years of groaning, fanatical ignorance is simply incorrect.

Kallinikos writes:

Which of your books do you think are the best?

I think CHILD OF THE GHOSTS and SOUL OF SERPENTS are, so far, the best things I have written.

Many Google searches to my site ask:

jonathan moeller reading order

Ah. Good question.

The DEMONSOULED series goes like this:

#1 – DEMONSOULED

#2 – SOUL OF TYRANTS

#3 – SOUL OF SERPENTS

#4 – SOUL OF DRAGONS (coming Feb/March 2012)

THE GHOSTS series goes like this:

#1 – CHILD OF THE GHOSTS

#2 – GHOST IN THE FLAMES

#3 – GHOST IN THE BLOOD

#4 – GHOST IN THE STORM (coming late summer 2012)

Finally, THE THIRD SOUL goes like this:

#1 – THE TESTING

#2 – THE ASSASSINS

#3 – THE BLOOD SHAMAN

#4 – THE HIGH DEMON

The first book in each series is free, so either DEMONSOULED, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, or THE TESTING would make a good starting point.

That's Reader Question Day for this week. If you have a question, leave it in the comments or send an email to jmcontact at jonathanmoeller.com, and I'll answer it next week.

-JM