The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley

By: Dan Yang

The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley is a historical fiction novel that I recently started reading after finding it in the bargain section at Barnes & Noble. Although things like the cover
design and genre didn’t exactly appeal to me at first, once I started skimming through short bits in the book, my dad and I thought that it might be worth the $4.95 that the store was asking for. 

The book is set in 1517 and follows Dismas, a relic hunter. Dismas is tasked by wealthy clients to procure authentic (and not so authentic) religious relics. One of his clients, Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz has an insatiable ambition to collect many impressive relics. When Albrecht’s desire for more relics increases, Dismas and his old friend Durer conspire to manufacture Christ’s “true” burial shroud to sell to him. However, Albrecht soon discovers their plan to trick him and Dismas and Durer are put in the custody of three mercenaries who will make sure that the two steal the real Shroud of Christ from Chambery. The problem is that they aren’t the only ones attempting to steal the shroud.

Like my last blog post, I tried to keep the summary brief because I do think this is a pretty interesting read that’s worth checking out. It has many positive aspects that I don’t tend to see in many books I read, mostly due to the fact that I rarely read historical fiction. To start, the author’s writing style in this book is pretty unique. The entire story is narrated in the 3rd person, and it almost sounds like the narrator is someone from the 16th century. You’d imagine 16th century narration to be old and boring, but Buckley often makes witty statements or sets up quirky scenarios and overall makes the writing feel old, but new at the same time (if that makes sense).

In addition to the writing style, I found that the overall premise of the book was really interesting. I usually read a lot of stories that are set in futuristic or fantasy worlds that focus a lot of the plot around action scenes in them. However, to read a historical fiction novel like this that focuses more on describing characters, ideas, and especially items, such as various relics, which eventually all leads up to one big heist of a relic of such importance is really intriguing.

Although I did enjoy this novel a lot, there are some downsides to it too. I think the main downside of this book is that in some places, the book can feel slow and drawn out. This is a problem, considering that I think the beginning of the novel is one area in which events happen really slowly. The book mainly captivates you with its interesting main idea, but because the beginning opens up very slowly, I can see why some people may not want to read this book. The other problem that I found was that although things like character and setting were established well, the plot felt disconnected at times. Though the plot came together well in the end, in some rare small spots, I just felt like it didn’t make sense. I’d have to backtrack and figure out what was going on before a certain event in the book and it just disrupted the flow of the book a bit. However, this didn’t happen a lot so it doesn’t bother me too much.

Overall, I would probably give The Relic Master 8.5/13 bologna slices.