...an inspired piece of literary gymnastics...The Relic Master is a smart, tart, well-researched romp into one of history’s most irresistibly grubby and outrageous periods of excess.
[T]here’s plenty of fighting and fakery, deceit and rationalization, to go around. The political posturing, religious hypocrisy, and some of that old-time self-satirizing humor should entertain everyone.
This scene — it being the age of miracles — is actually and finally funny. But it has taken well over 300 limping pages to get here. Some fast-paced, relatively engaging action provides a conclusion, but it is small recompense for having slogged through so many, many pages of pro forma humor, rackety plot and inane chitchat.
[A]s the foolhardy little group in The Relic Master marches toward Chambery and a nearly impossible mission, Buckley hikes up his satiric skirt a tad to show a bit of his tender side. Yes, he demonstrates — hilariously — how abusive religious institutions can be, how bad things can get when church and state are intertwined and how cruelly humans can act at their worst. But he also longs for justice and peace. He especially wants rest for the weary, and readers will cheer when that occurs, but they won’t be weary of reading this lively, entertaining and occasionally educational novel.
Buckley comes by his right to satirize politics honestly: His father was conservative columnist William F. Buckley. The same is true for his right to talk about the Church: The author was raised and educated as a Catholic. Buckley’s stake on religion makes The Relic Master a witty, deft and often surprisingly big-hearted pleasure.
