The Nameless Day

by Sara Douglass

Book Overview

The Black Plague. The Pestilence. Disease and death haunt every town and village across 14th century Europe and none are immune from its evil. Some see the devastation of their world as a sign from God for Man's wickedness. But Brother Thomas Neville sees this swath of death as something much more. Neville is a man beset by demons. Or is it angels? He has had a visitation from none other than the Archangel Michael, who commands Thomas to a mission...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765303620
• ISBN13: 9780765303622
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

well researched and written

I am astonished at the anger portrayed by several reviewers regarding Douglass' corrupt church in these books. The truth of the matter is that the church WAS corrupt in the fourtheeth century. There WERE three different popes and friars and priests and nuns took their vows of chastiy none to seriously. If you don't believe me go read Chaucer or Boccaccio or Dante. These writers satyrize the very corrupt church and share this disillusionment with most of the western world. This was a time of crisis for Europe in many ways, not just religious. Douglass goes a long way in portraying that. Before the plague people were content with the way the world was ordered out. God had a plan for everyone and as you were born you lived. You could not move out of your class and that was that. But the plague changed that. Sinners and saints died alike with no rhyme or reason and people began to see that perhaps this order wasn't god blessed. The church couldn't save them and the common idea the one must suffer in life in order to reach heaven in death began to wane. In the fourteenth century that's what the church was. Everyone was born a sinner and so must suffer to repent. These books delve deep into the medieval mind and give a modern reader a glimps into the past. The line between evil and good is not so easliy defined as people like to think. That's what I love about this book and the following book. Douglass makes you wonder and I've switched my alliances several times. She also did an amazing amout of research to recreate the medieval world very accuratly (except torture wasn't widely used until the spanish inquisition, exile was the most common form of punishment but she has literary license). Read these books with an open mind and you will find that they are amazing. A little slow to start but once you get into the heart of them you find that they have snared you.

Keep Reading

Contrary to many other reviewers, I enjoyed this book. It started a little slow, thus the 4 stars, but after Thomas met up with the Black Prince and Henry Bolingbroke in France, it picked up. I love reading historical fiction, and I need the characters to be believable. Other reviewers complained about the misogyny, but I think they are missing the fact that Thomas is a priest, and has been trained for many years to believe that women are whores or saints. Women were believed to be lesser beings at this time, and it would ruin it for me if there had been a PC whitewash to the story. Thomas has used narrowmindedness and hatred to cover up his deep wounds, and it will take alot to chip away at his shell. This is the first part in a trilogy, so of course everything is not going to be spelled out in the first book. I didn't like Thomas' character for most of the book, but it was interesting to see the cracks in his shell. I just finished reading the second in the series, The Wounded Hawk, and I think it is even better. I cannot wait for the third book to be released in the US.

Tempting

I have read the first 3 books of the Wayfarer series, waiting impatiently for them to come out, and then my husband finds this at the library for me. It is somewhat frustrating how slowly Douglass' books come to the US. I found this book hard to put down, with so much going on that at the end I was looking for the other books! If she can pull this together as she did the Wayfarer, this series will make a fascinating and obviously contraversial story. Though she points out that this is fact mixed with fiction, it inspired me to read a little more into this time period and get a taste for the "real" characters. There are some parts in the book which I did not like, but they were few. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed previous Douglass books or enjoys Lackeys books as well. They are both excellent writers!

The End of All Things Is Nigh, Right?

The Nameless Day is the first novel in The Crucible series. In an alternate timeline very much like our own, forty-five years after Clement V moved the Papacy to Avignon, Brother Wynkyn de Worde left his friary, Saint Angelo's in Rome, and traveled to Nuremberg as he had done twice a year for fifty-three years. As the Select, it was his duty to open the Cleft in the woods and to throw the semiannual crop of abominations into the Fires of Hell. Unfortunately, he has caught the Black Plague and it has sapped away his strength, so he fell into convulsions as he summoned the children to him. They arrived just in time to see him die.In this novel, seventy years after the Papacy moved to Avignon, Gregory IX returns to Rome, at least for a while. The city goes wild and people dance in the streets. That evening Brother Thomas Neville also enters Rome. After being shown his cell in Saint Angelo's and paying his respects to the prior, Thomas leaves for Saint Peter's Basilica to pray before the altar there. He is totally engrossed in his prayers when the Archangel Michael appears and informs him that he has been chosen as the Beloved of both the Lord God and the angels.The Archangel Michael does not speak again to Brother Thomas for over a year. Of course, Thomas has much to do to prepare himself for his role as the Beloved. He spends much of his time at prayer, more than his fellows, as well as study. On the afternoon of the Saturday following the Annunciation, Thomas is studying friary records in the library when the novice Daniel approachs him for advice concerning some information he has overheard. Daniel had taken messages to the Secretary of the Curia when a Benedictine monk burst in and blurted out the news that the Pope was dead. Thomas sends Daniel to the lower marketplace to spread the word that Gregory is dead. Thomas himself spreads the word in the main market square. Just as the Curia is sitting down to vote on a new pope, the Roman mob bursts into the Hall of Conclave and threatens the Cardinals for their attempted betrayal of the people of Rome. The Curia readily agrees to delay the selection of the new pope until after the official funeral.While everybody is awaiting the Papal election, Thomas is tracing down an inconsistency in the friary registers. One friar, Brother Wynkyn de Worde, left the friary twice a year, each time for eight weeks and had done so since 1295. Thomas asks Prior Bertrand about the man and is chastised for his arrogance and is then assigned the daily penance of praying from Prime to Nones and of washing the feet of prostitutes in the streets around the marketplace after dinner until just before Vespers. Brother Thomas has struck a nerve.After the funeral, the fearful Cardinals elect Bartolomo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, as the new Holy Father, Urban VI. They give the mob an Italian, as was demanded. Urban VI pledges never to take the Papacy from Rome again. After several weeks, the Curia, still l

will appeal to lfanss of horror, fantasy romance and history

Thomas Neville was born into one of the most powerful families in England during the reign of King Edward III. He spends his time fighting, drinking and wenching until his actions kill his mistress, her children and their unborn child. Remorseful and penitent, he turns his back on the secular world and joins the Dominican order of the Catholic Church. He goes to Rome to study, a pious and obsessed priest who is visited by the archangel Michael.He is chosen to be the Select, the only priest who can throw the demons that walk the Earth into the Cleft, the entranceway to Hell. When he journeys to Nuremburg where the entranceway is located, demonic magic plants his seed in a woman name Megie and gets her pregnant. When he learns that a book of incarnations that will send the demons back into the pit is in England, he joins the Black Prince and other English nobles he once called friend. With them is the woman who is carrying his child, a person he refuses to acknowledge for fear she carries a demon taint. The demons show themselves to England's nobles so that when Thomas tells them his story, they believe him. Thomas doesn't know who to trust because the demons can shapeshift into the image of anyone. The final confrontation is coming with Thomas's soul as the battleground.THE NAMELESS DAY is a fantastic historical fantasy that takes place on an Earth almost similar to our own in the middle ages. The protagonist is a man possessed by the need to atone for his sin, a man torn between the religious and the secular world. Sara Douglass makes the reader believe that the events in this book took place, and the audience will wait breathlessly for the next book in The Crucible series as Thomas continues to search for the book of spells. This haunting and memorable work is a definite keeper; a novel that will appeal to lovers of horror, fantasy romance and history.Harriet Klausner