Pope Joan

I was very impressed with Pope Joan. I finished it about a week ago, but got lazy in immediately writing up a review.

In 855 AD, there is a legend that a woman rose to the highest honor of Pope; born with the name Joan, this fictitious rendering arguing for her existence brings her from the forests of modern, I think [??], Germany to Rome under the guise of her recently killed brother John. This is the only way that she can continue to learn as much as her heart desires in a world where a woman is considered only born to serve men and reproduce.

I appreciate the brutality that makes the story honest. Living in that time as a woman truly was hell if you had a brain and wanted to keep growing it, let alone any other independent desires. You are continually scorned, can end up in violent situations with the more deep you go in learning the harsher the punishment. I do not know the real facts behind some of the details, but the fact that it was an abomination for a woman to learn and yet most men within the inner circle of the papacy could not even read and speak Greek and Latin, two of the key languages that the Bible was written.

I do not know how I feel about Joan being written as what I would call the modern Mary Sue, the independent woman who gets everything she wants in success and gets to have the really handsome man on top of it as her sidekick. I mean, yeah, he is her only ally in knowing her true identity as she climbs the papacy ladder, but to me it seems cliche. At the same time, in the long run, the story ended up being very engaging and encouraging. I enjoyed her moments of intellectually schooling her opponents.

I think I would read this again. It was a different time period than what I have read before, giving another perspective into history. If you would like to read Pope Joan, you can find it here.

8/10