Reviewed by Grant Leishman for Readers' Favorite

A Quest for God and Spices by Dean Cycon is a wonderful historical novel that takes us back to the Crusades when Christendom was at war with Islam and the Holy Church was riven by a division between Rome and Constantinople. Nicolo is the second son of a minor Genoese merchant. Always operating in the shadow of his successful and favored elder brother, Nicolo dreams of showing his talents, abilities, and cleverness to their father and finally besting his brother. When a new Pope seeks to send a Crusade to the Middle East to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Muslims, he is desperate to locate and convince the fabled Eastern Christian King, Presbyter John, to join forces with him to retake Jerusalem for Christendom. He enlists an elderly monk, Brother Mauro, and Nicolo to not only find Presbyter John but also to convince the renegade Byzantium Church of Constantinople to reunite with the mother Church of Rome. These two unprepared and naive travelers embark on an impossible journey through dangerous lands and political turmoil. For Brother Mauro, it is a quest for God. For Nicolo, it is a quest for the source of rare spices and untold money and power. 

A Quest for God and Spices is a wonderfully well-written historical novel that captures the era perfectly. Author Dean Cycon has created two vastly differing personalities in Brother Mauro and Nicolo and woven their motivations into a seamless journey across most of the known world of the time. As a history buff and an avid reader of the period covered, I appreciated that the author took considerable pains to explain and discuss the nature of the split that had resulted in two branches of Christendom, which, by the start of the thirteenth century, did seem insurmountable. It was intriguing to realize that even then, the Pope still held out hopes of some reconciliation. The author uses the story to show us that even the supposedly most loyal of the Pope’s emissaries in Constantinople had their own agendas and were only interested in protecting their positions of power and wealth. The many differing story arcs gave much-needed depth and provided intriguing clues as to the future directions of the story. I’m not usually a fan of cliffhanger endings but the story promises so much more to come that I understand the author’s purpose in employing this technique. History tells us in broad terms what comes next but readers will be so invested in these two characters that they will be more concerned with how Brother Mauro and Nicolo will cope. I will be lining up to read the next book. I highly recommend this novel and its follow-up, The Emerald Scepter to all readers, especially history buffs.