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Devil's Bargain #1
Devil's Bargain
National bestselling author of Pride of Kings and World Fantasy Award nominee conjures a fascinating world of sorcerers and warriors in this dramatically powerful tale. Led by Richard the Lionheart, king of the English and count of Anjou, the armies of the West are conducting a crusade against the sultan Saladin. In Cyprus, the king’s mother, Eleanor, has struck a devil’s bargain with the sorcerer Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, to grant Richard victory at any cost. Only Sinan knows that victory will cost the king his immortal soul. Sioned, an illegitimate child of a princess of the Celts and the late king of England, is heir to twofold the faery Sight of ancient Wales and the demonic powers of the Devil’s brood of Anjou. Summoned by her brother Richard to save both the Crusade and his soul, Sioned receives help from two unlikely allies—a prince of the infidels and an army of the jinn—as she races against time and the powers of the darkness. But with the extent of her abilities still untested and only her instincts to guide her, will she be able to swing the sorcerous struggle back toward the powers of the light?
404 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2002
About the author
Judith Tarr
113 books425 followersAKA Caitlin Brennan, Kathleen Bryan.
Judith Tarr (born 1955) is an American author, best known for her fantasy books. She received her B.A. in Latin and English from Mount Holyoke College in 1976, and has an M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University. She taught Latin and writing at Wesleyan University from 1988-1992, and taught at the Clarion science-fiction-writing workshops in 1996 and 1999.
She raises and trains Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona. The romantic fantasies that she writes under the name Caitlin Brennan feature dancing horses modeled on those that she raises.
Judith Tarr (born 1955) is an American author, best known for her fantasy books. She received her B.A. in Latin and English from Mount Holyoke College in 1976, and has an M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University. She taught Latin and writing at Wesleyan University from 1988-1992, and taught at the Clarion science-fiction-writing workshops in 1996 and 1999.
She raises and trains Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona. The romantic fantasies that she writes under the name Caitlin Brennan feature dancing horses modeled on those that she raises.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 9, 2025
A historical fantasy written in quite a traditional way. Witchery and magic spread between the druids of North Wales and the mystics of the Middle East fight or combine behind the scenes of the Third Crusade in the Holy Land. The history is only partly real. It is after all a parallel Earth, as the author makes clear at the end of Chapter Fifteen as Sioned returns to her room after speaking to Queen Eleanor:
“Sioned staggered a little as she made her way to her room. The floor seemed steady underfoot. For a moment the world wavered and flowed. She was still in Acre, but there was no queen here; Eleanor was far away in England, and the Crusade, with all that it had hoped and fought for, was crumbling rapidly into nothing. A world of what-ifs, she thought; a world as it might have been. A world she neither wanted nor sought, nor ever wished to live in.”
It is only when that point is reached that it becomes clear what is going on. The French speaking anglophobe and psychotic warmonger King Richard and the old war horse and aristocratic Kurdish charmer Saladin do not have magic and live in an existence not far removed from our own Richard and Saladin – only the author's Richard wins Jerusalem. Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor, his illegitimate daughter Sioned, Saladin's brother Saphadin, and Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, are soaked up to their eyeballs in divination, clairvoyance, illusion and wizardry. They each have their games to play, variously championing victory for their earthly masters, peace for everyone, or destruction to benefit themselves.
There is one obvious point to make. Why are the Christian priests and the Muslim imams so tolerant of all that spell-casting and summoning of spirits and djinns? Is the absence of blasphemy and blood-curdling retribution an element of this parallel Earth the author has pushed to one side? Perhaps later in the series she brings in some religious firebrands to stir things up.
The shape of the story looks back to pulp fiction times. There are plenty of skirmishes, abductions, plotting and killing on the way to the big fight climax at the fall of Jerusalem. Love is in the air too as Sioned and Saphadin get the hots for each other. The sex is muted and thoroughly inoffensive, in fact it's surprising it results in a pregnancy. In the end Sinan steals the show. Possibly he has looked into the future and wants to be a twelfth-century Sauron, or could he have modelled himself on Conrad Veidt in The Thief of Baghdad? Whatever he's done his hashish addled brain has produced as nasty a piece of work that has ever skulked to his own Armageddon.
It is a very good, intelligent and well written piece of storytelling, but forget about medieval history – it's a fantasy of high adventure.
“Sioned staggered a little as she made her way to her room. The floor seemed steady underfoot. For a moment the world wavered and flowed. She was still in Acre, but there was no queen here; Eleanor was far away in England, and the Crusade, with all that it had hoped and fought for, was crumbling rapidly into nothing. A world of what-ifs, she thought; a world as it might have been. A world she neither wanted nor sought, nor ever wished to live in.”
It is only when that point is reached that it becomes clear what is going on. The French speaking anglophobe and psychotic warmonger King Richard and the old war horse and aristocratic Kurdish charmer Saladin do not have magic and live in an existence not far removed from our own Richard and Saladin – only the author's Richard wins Jerusalem. Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor, his illegitimate daughter Sioned, Saladin's brother Saphadin, and Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, are soaked up to their eyeballs in divination, clairvoyance, illusion and wizardry. They each have their games to play, variously championing victory for their earthly masters, peace for everyone, or destruction to benefit themselves.
There is one obvious point to make. Why are the Christian priests and the Muslim imams so tolerant of all that spell-casting and summoning of spirits and djinns? Is the absence of blasphemy and blood-curdling retribution an element of this parallel Earth the author has pushed to one side? Perhaps later in the series she brings in some religious firebrands to stir things up.
The shape of the story looks back to pulp fiction times. There are plenty of skirmishes, abductions, plotting and killing on the way to the big fight climax at the fall of Jerusalem. Love is in the air too as Sioned and Saphadin get the hots for each other. The sex is muted and thoroughly inoffensive, in fact it's surprising it results in a pregnancy. In the end Sinan steals the show. Possibly he has looked into the future and wants to be a twelfth-century Sauron, or could he have modelled himself on Conrad Veidt in The Thief of Baghdad? Whatever he's done his hashish addled brain has produced as nasty a piece of work that has ever skulked to his own Armageddon.
It is a very good, intelligent and well written piece of storytelling, but forget about medieval history – it's a fantasy of high adventure.
March 28, 2021
This was a free book on Audible. I enjoy historical fiction but this was not a well-researched history more of a fantasy. The narrator was excellent, and for that reason I kept hoping the story would improve. I've read enough about Eleanor of Aquitaine to know that she didn't accompany her son Richard on his Crusade. There is too much magic to even call this book historical fiction. I listened (skipping the magic) to 16 of 46 chapters and could've take any more. I'll try to find Lionheart by Pemberton which I think will be more accurate.
March 16, 2020
I just couldn't get into this book. I love historical fiction, but historical fantasy just isn't for me.
February 6, 2022
I'm not sure what to make of this book. Does it want to be a historical novel or a fantasy-ish book?
I finished it more out sheer determination than interest, because none of it was making sense to me anymore by the end.
I think I prefer my Crusader novels without magic, djinns and demonic dealings. Stories like that come with enough blood and gore as it is.
I finished it more out sheer determination than interest, because none of it was making sense to me anymore by the end.
I think I prefer my Crusader novels without magic, djinns and demonic dealings. Stories like that come with enough blood and gore as it is.
July 24, 2018
Liked a lot - a new take on Richard the Lion-Hearted & his crusade.
July 14, 2010
The historical part was good. TOO much magic!!!! Richard The Lionheart and the Third crusade(1191-92). There were 9 crusades. Jerusalem had been lost back to the infidels in 1187, in the battle of Hattin. Isabella, Jerusalem's queen was living in Tyre. She married Richard's nephew Henry of Champagne.A political move that made him King of Jerusalem. Richard intercepted Saladin's caravan from Egypt at the Round Cistern. A major victory.
December 15, 2008
A pretty good entry in the historical fantasy genre. It's all about Eleanor of Acquitaine, her son, Richard the Lion-hearted and the use of magic during the Crusades.
March 31, 2011
Richard's bastard pagan sister on crusade
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews