Review: The Scribe

Elizabeth R. Andersen, The Scribe (Haeddre Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58586385-the-scribe?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=wjisF9pIqF&rank=1

Damascus 1277. Tamrat lives with his wife Sara and son Dejen.
In the Amanos Mountains, Emre trains with the other captive Mamluk boys, but he longs for home. He is selected by Amir Qalāwūn to train as Bhadir’s right hand man. Sarangerel picks her way through the wreckage and takes in an orphaned girl.
Acre 1279. Abdülhamit and Nasir play with the half-Saracen boy Henri Jean-Rogier Maron. King Henry and his sons Amalric and Henry are with Henri’s father Lord Rogier.
Tamrat invites 6-year-old Sidika to cut his moneybag every morning.
The sultan Qalāwūn wants to drive the Franj out of Acre. He decides to marry his sons to Mongol wives.
His father murdered, Henri inherits the title, but the servants are not happy. Henri is spoiled and tyrannical. He is not attentive to them as his father had been. He marries his widowed mother to the unpleasant Mafeo.
Acre 1290. Tamrat works as a scribe, the adopted Sidika helping him. She is out hunting one day and rescues a tall Franj, Lord Henri. He asks her to join his household as maidservant, and she very rudely refuses.
Having no other men-at-arms, Henri joins the Templars on patrol. They apprehend ‘a spy’. It is Tamrat, and Lord Henri knows he’s innocent. He makes a decision, the only humane option, and yet it’s not an easy one.
There are multiple story lines and a plethora of characters. This makes interesting reading, but it was hard to keep up. It’s well written and has a mediaeval ‘feel’ and sense of place. Andersen captures well the social interplay in a complex society comprising Templars, Frankish nobles, Bahri sultans, Mamluk slaves, Arab servants.
The ending, ‘to be continued’, is simply unacceptable. I know it’s Book One in a series, but I still want each book to have a proper ending.