This is a book club episode. In it, Travis and Amanda will discuss and analyze the first half of Nicked by M.T. Anderson. You should expect full “spoilers,” discussions of rhetorical elements, and celebrations / critiques of style and substance.
From the cover: “The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus. Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for ‘liberating’ holy relics from their tombs…What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous…”