Something I've noticed in this forum and reviews is that some readers didn't rate the book as high due to certain tropes. Such as hiding your sexuality, and the false pope's antisemitism. Now before you lose it on me, just stay with me for a moment longer. This is feudal, medieval EUROPE. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this stuff really happened. Gay men did join religious orders to escape persecution. If this is how you learn Catholic popes weren't all nice dudes, then the education system has failed (whichever one you attended). These things are all still happening, unfortunately. I read this book as an accurate description of this timeframe, with the addition of magic and monsters. I am not encouraging anyone to take this as a blueprint for the future (lets have some common sense here), but sometimes it irks me when people read historical fiction/stories with aspects of historical fiction and get mad when things they don't like happen. Could Buehlman been a little more chill with the negatively accurate historical facts? Absolutely. But that's not what Between Two Fires is about, in my opinion. It's the story of being lost, and then found.

Reading this book and liking it for the storyline does NOT mean you agree with what happened in the past that is depicted in this book.