Mongoliad Book 2

As if the first book hadn't introduced enough, this book chooses to make it even more complicated by introducing a plot regarding the election of the Pope, which actually was a rather notorious event that happened to coincide with the Mongol Invasion. In this book it is only tangentially related by two survivors of the Battle of Mohi, the base event setting the entire story in motion, ending up in Rome and one being Father Rodrigo, a priest with connections to the OMVI or Shield Brethren managing to get into the papal conclave and give us semi-relevant eyes into the whole situation. Meanwhile, the other survivor is Ferenc a Magyar hunter who only knows his unique regional dialect and is entirely unable to communicate with anyone else in Rome, except a young Binder named Ocyroe who can communicate using Rankos Kalba, a form of sign language as fictional as the Binders themselves. We still aren't given much information on these Binders, they are an all female order of messengers with a secret language, but beyond that we know nothing. A large portion of the book is dedicated to these events, but nothing is said of what this has to do with anything else beyond a shared starting point and time.

Meanwhile, in Poland, the story of the circus of swords is elaborated upon following Andreas and Rutger against the Knights of Livonia and Ongwe Khan and their alliance with Kim Alcheon and Zugokaitso no Yama. Farther East, the main heroes get very little coverage as they follow the Silk Road to Mongolia in an attempt to assassinate Ogedei Khan, a plot prolonged primarily by simply being ignored for most of the book. The most consistent story is that of Gansukh and Lian who travel beyond the walls of Karakorum to the borderlands of China.

The story, or rather stories are rather good, but the pace at which the authors switch between them can be annoying, you get started enjoying one story and it switches to something else. In my attempt to write a fanfiction for Kindle Worlds I was very interested in following the story of Hakkon, but after a chapter or two he is mostly forgotten- not dead though, the last mention is that Ongwe Khan delivered him to his father and he is now on the road with the Khagan and Gansukh and Lian, but with the focus in that area shifted off of him, he becomes invisible background. I started reading this thinking I was going to mainly get a story of the fighting Shield Brethren, but this ended up being more about the political intrigue in the Vatican and the romance of Gansukh and Lian and woefully little was said about the people I wanted to read about. Also, the back cover blurb once again has a false sell, suggesting more of a connection between the people in Rome and the travelers on the Silk Road than is actually demonstrated. I can only hope the third installment brings everything together better than this book did.