This book is...interesting and intense. Basically, Eco uses the lens of a murder mystery to explore the controversy surrounding the birth of the Franciscan monastic order, Pope John XII, and Emperor Louis the Bavarian. The abbey becomes a microcosm of the 1327 European political world and through these mere 500 pages the reader gets it all. It's a heady experience, particularly since it interacts with my own religious history, and masterfully and fluidly penned. And the writing: at times dense, but ultimately very clever and smooth. I respected and really cared for William and Adso, eagerly following their arguments and investigations. I can see why THE NAME OF THE ROSE is considered a medieval historical fiction classic, and it fully deserves to be called so.

Despite the amazingness though, I had quibbles. While a huge point in the story was how academia and scholarly argumentation can shrivel compassion, joy, and love, I found myself wanting an ever firmer, lived refutation of this point in the lives and choices of William and Adso. While the nature of setting made the character sausage fest inevitable, I was VERY annoyed that the only female character was not named, consistently referred to in non-human terms (creature, flesh, animal), treated like a sex object, and, when she was threatened, no attempt was made at saving her. While a few LGBT characters were present, literally all of them died and ye olde Catholic sodomy condemned over and over and over. This homophobia and sexism kept me from giving the book a 5 star rating. On the plus side, the character descriptions didn't touch on color much, so I was free to imagine as varied skin tones as I liked.

All and all, though, if you like medieval historical fiction that's heavy on the history, I would highly, highly recommend.