Melmoth the Wonderer

Melmoth the Wonderer is a gothic genre story that approaches many important themes such as love, religion, society and compromises people make to be successful. Although the story has a slow pace kind of action, it is very good for a quiet cozy afternoon when you feel like sinking into another world. The author pays a lot of attention to details and builds up the atmosphere very slowly and gradually. Before you know it, you feel like you're living in the middle of the events.

However, there are also multiple storylines and the complex web of narrations comes to a common point only to diverge again and to bring more light into the past, to give a glimpse of future events. Though fictional, the book has many interesting insights to real life and it is amazing to observe the everyday issues of today, mostly love and religion related, being projected in a middle age European society.

Moreover, the decisions the characters in the book face are usually life and death kind of decisions. Through these kind of critical situations, the author manages to show the true human spirit in its raw form. The author is also a very subtle philologist of human nature and presents the most probable thoughts and lines of action that people would take in very extraordinary and threatening situations.

All in all, this is a great book and if you appreciate a mysterious atmosphere carefully built around the European society where the Church was the supreme power in every country, you should surely give it a chance.