A student recommended the first book to me, and it quickly became one of my most recommended historical fictions for my students because it’s one of the most thoroughly, perfectly researched books I’ve read in the genre…and it helps that it has a soap opera drama which also happens to illustrate major contextual details and themes for the time period.

It’s one thing to tell people how massive an undertaking, how violent a process, how often disastrous the result, how through transformed a region could be by, and how politically tricky it was building cathedrals in the middle ages, but having this character driven story makes that lesson intensely human and relatable - which is exactly what historians do, find the human story in the details.

I’m waitlisted (and I got on the list about a month before it dropped… That’s how popular it is) for the latest book in the series on Libby and I just can’t wait, lol. I’m number 8, so hopefully in the next few weeks.