Baudolino

Rating:
Summary: Great read, sit back and enjoy the ride
Review: It was an entertaining read. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Interesting insights into the Byzantine way of life as well as original interpretation of the various events that occured during that time. We find a Baudolino in every century, unfortunately we never get to hear his story when we read our history books.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonder of Historical Fantasy
Review: This is a book for the lover of literary fiction. For one who can appreciate an alternative story for an historical event, as well as fantastical stories about faraway lands, and creatures whose faces are in their torsos. Eco is likely one of the most learned of contemporary writers and the encyclopedic historical detail he puts into his novels and non-fiction prose bears witness to this fact. In Baudolino, a self-professed liar tells the story of his life in a burning city. Raised by King Frederick; educated in France; pilgram to the kingdom of Prester John, Baudolino tells his story such that we want it all to be true. But we are sure it is not.

That's all i have to say. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A crazy journey
Review: This took me awhile to become invested in the characters (due to plot decice mostly, as it's a story about someone telling a story) but once I did I was hooked. Eco has a very clever turn of phrase and it's amusing to see all the things whose invention/creation/discovery he is attributing to his main character (I just wish I knew more medieval history cuz I'm sure I'm missing some of it). The journeys in the land of Prestor John were quite strange but very interesting. At times the Italian names began to weigh me down, but still enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Really is two books
Review: As a fan of historical fiction I really like the first 25 chapters, especialy the alternative history of Emperor Ferdericks demise and the sacking of Constantinople. However after Baudolino leaves Armenia and enters the unknown land it turns in a fantasy book ala The Lord of The Rings. In the end the book returns to historical fiction for a great ending. However my struggle to get through the fantasy sections was as hard as Baudolino's search for the Kingdom of Prester John.

Rating:
Summary: Bring me the (seven) heads of John the Baptist!
Review: Umberto Eco returns with great success to the Middle Ages with a tale of a talented Italian peasant who becomes a favorite at the court of Frederick Barbarossa. Baudolino becomes the adopted son of the Emperor after helping him when lost and impressing him with his skill for languages, story telling, and prophecies. Baudolino attends school in Paris, participates in many military campaigns especially in his native Italy, and ultimately sets out on his own to discover the lost Christian empires of the Far East. Fortunately for us, he ends up in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade sacking, and relates his life story to an emminent historian. Unfortunately for Baudolino and history, his story is so infused with outrageous lies that the historian decides to disbelieve it all.

There are two very good stories here. The first is Baudolino's life long friendship and relationship with a group from his school days. They are a diverse group by nationality, religion, and occupation, and ultimately set out on a homeric journey to the East to link up with the fabled Prester John. Along the way and after, they become merchants and manufacturers of religious artifacts, unsurpassed counterfeiters, reluctant crusaders, diplomats, and persons of great influence in the court.

The second story, probably less interesting, is the mystery surrounding the death of the emperor. There were many with motives and means to kill Frederick, and somehow the quest for the Holy Grail and other antiquities gets tied up with the murder.

Eco has returned to the successful style and formula he employed in The Name of the Rose. By design, many of the characters are flat and one-dimensional, including one whose real name can not be rememebered, to focus more on the relationship between Baudolino, his women, and Frederick, and the historical context. A very clever literary device is employed, whereby Baudolino tells his story to a respected historian, who is familiar with some of the later events, while the two are engaged in hunkering down during the sack and then ultimately fleeing their common enemies.

Rating:
Summary: Charming, Difficult, and Wonderful
Review: This is very much a novel about language and meaning -- for those who don't know, it comes as no surprise to learn that Eco is a semiotician. If questions of truth, or faith, or history are impossibly boring to you, then there are other novels of medieval times that you will enjoy far more than this one. If you find such questions even slightly appealing, the novel will most likely have entrance you and get you thinking about things you never thought of before. Baudolino, the protagonist and narrator, is a marvelously complicated character: he has little regard for what we would call objective truth, and sometimes fails to do the right thing, but he is brave, and charming, and clever, and his motives are (mostly) noble.
The first part of the book takes place in Barbarossa's Europe, which Eco paints as a colorful, dynamic, dangerous world in which Baudolino maneuvers his way through the hypocrisies and good intentions of court and church. In the second part the action moves more into the world of myth, which at first seems a marvelous adventure but turns out, like the court Baudolino left behind, to have a darker side. There is a good deal mentioned about the development of Christian doctrine and the identification of various heresies, but most concepts are explained well enough that anyone vaguely familiar with Christianity will be able to follow along (and while it goes deeper into ideas than, say, the Da Vinci Code, it doesn't get completely bogged down -- there's still quite a lot of action.) Because Baudolino tells his audience (and us) at the beginning that he is a great liar, we don't know how much of his story to believe. This matters quite a bit to Master Niketas, who is listening to Baudolino's tale in the book, so it's obvious to ask ourselves whether it matters to us. I don't think so -- at least, you can enjoy Baudolino's story whether you believe him or not. Some people who have read Eco's non-fiction works may find the ideas Baudolino grapples with to be more of the same, but for people like me who have only read his novels, this is probably his best since The Name of the Rose. Both Baudolino and the other characters are well developed and multifaceted, and the plot is a good balance between the intellectual drama of searching for (and creating) truth and the physical-world drama of war, romance, court intrigue, and adventure. It's a beautiful story, and I am glad Eco has written it down.