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This novel is exceptional, a one-of-a-kind thing, both extremely dense, emotionally strong and deeply enjoyable. Summaries often represent it as a historical romance, featuring a love triangle between a woman and two men, the three of them of different faiths; however I found it to be much more complex than that. For one thing, the romantic subplot is far from being the focus of the story. It is hardly even problematic: the heroine isn't 'torn' by her feelings, just moves along as they become part of her life. Nobody fights over anybody. Instead, the relationships between the three protagonists have a more symbolic value, as they represent the fragile balance that was once achieved (more or less painlessly) in the Spanish peninsula (I'm referring to real historical Europe because aside from the name and timelines having been changed, the book is a completely transparent account of the end of Moorish Spain). The point of the book isn't 'Will they or won't they?' rather than 'Will this love resist the pressures of opposite ideologies and nationalisms?' No spoilers... although if you're familiar with that historical period, you can already guess how much of it will end.

In my mind, this was the greatest success of the book: binding together relatable characters, powerful emotions and strong symbolism, without ever sacrificing one for the other. You can, if you choose, read this as a romance (both in the contemporary sense and in the older sense of epic story). You can also read this as a metaphor for the end of Al-Andalus, the roles played by religions, private interests, ideologies and conflicting idealism and cynicism in the end of a country that retains a mythical aura to this day. I particularly loved the fact that there is no easy message; if you're looking for a definite thesis about who/what was to blame for the fall of the last Moorish kingdoms in the Spanish peninsula, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything. Pure-hearted idealism ends up playing a tragic part, and does as much to precipitate the war as greed and obscurantism. This is probably what makes this book feel like a tragedy: you couldn't pinpoint a single event, misunderstanding or villain that you could eliminate in order to solve everything. It's not a perfect world ruined by the evil intentions of some bad apples, it's an imperfect ones that ends up collapsing under the weight of its own imperfections.

The characters, main and secondary, all show a whole range of nuances, without ever falling into an easy pattern of universal villainy (a trap that 'gritty' fantasy often falls into, when attempting realism). The fact that they are all, unabashedly, larger-than-life characters may throw readers more accustomed to post-GRRM fantasy off-balance. These are not necessarily realistic characters, in the sense that they are all exceptional, one way or another. Nonetheless, the Mary Sue trap is systematically averted by the fact that, although you would rarely find such a concentration of exceptional people in the same place in real life, their relationships to one another and to the world around them are never easy. They are not universally adored (or adored by the good guys and reviled by the villains), nor do they succeed in everything they do, or even have it easy. On the contrary, they are often powerless in the face of larger mechanisms. Thus they remain relatable to the end.

The ending has been much discussed, and it's impossible to go into detail without spoilers, but it's incredibly strong. And so... spoilers :) (view spoiler)[When the two heroes fight to the death, you may feel that Ammar is the one who is going to die, because after all, it's his civilisation that lost this particular battle. He doesn't, and instead gets to enjoy a relatively happy life with Jehane, the heroine, which might feel like a relief, originally. Until you think about it some more, and realise that this means that Rodrigo, one of the last people at the court of the king who genuinely knew Al-Rassan and would have helped establish a sort of continuity with all three faiths living together in relative peace, is dead. And with his death, not only is there no one left to preserve the continuity of what made Al-Rassan great, his son also turns into a merciless warrior, who will destroy the last remains of Al-Rassan instead of even trying to make peace with them. The ending may be a less painful one for Jehane, but it turns out to be a far more tragic one for the whole peninsula. (hide spoiler)]

I've rarely read anything where emotion was so powerfully used in order to make readers think; books often either rely on emotion with little intellectual content, or on more detached intellectual musings. It takes rare talent to blend the two to that degree, to write a book that could make you weep AND think at the same time.