Queen Laiya and the Circular Minute

"Queen Laiya and the Circular Minute" by Shivo Paliterri, in Italian, 1901, Casa Editirce Onero Belozzo, Catanzaro, Calabria, Hardcover, 644 pages, no graphics. This historical novel seems to be one of a series written by Paliterri, a baker by trade, autodidact historian and author by vocation.  The book deals with the last days of the last ruler of Batruria, Queen Laiya, from the moment the nine ships carrying Duke Moditereo's army land on the western shore, followed by the two battles (Batruria won the first, the second was undecided but horrifically cruel and bloody, both combatants losing upwards of half of their soldiers) until the capturing of the Queen betrayed by her own guard. The cause of the invasion was Agate, the curse and blessing of the kingdom that has the only known world deposit of indigo Agate of exceptional quality said to have mysterious and miraculous powers. Queen Laiya is a well-drawn character with actions of clear motivation, she is made on purpose attractive to the reader but so is, strangely, the Duke, her supposed antagonist. The main narrative is spiked with too many subplots (mostly romantic entanglements of some secondary characters) but remains a pleasant and entertaining read. The descriptions of Batrurian landscape, military equipment of that era and Agate mining and processing are fascinating. The reward for the treacherous captain of the Queens Guard was a wagon on which he could load as much Agate as it would hold with the condition to make it out of the kingdom by nightfall. Of course, in a totally predictable act of poetic justice, the captain falls to his death when the wagon proves to too heavy for the plank bridge he used as a shortcut to the border. His girlfriend, who travels with him,  clings to a rope and is rescued by a goat Sheppard who hears her screams (they later marry and have nine children of which one is the great-great-grandfather of the author).

I read and reviewed this volume as part me cataloguing and creating an inventory of the books found as part of the "The Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation" (see first entry of this blog).