I admire everything this book was trying to accomplish! The storytelling is so fun and apparently based in much factual evidence. I love that this author has brought something to my knowledge that I had never heard of.

A group of very interesting, diverse and eccentric characters team up to get our young monk to save/steal/recover (whatever you choose to call it) the bones of Saint Nicholas, patron Saint of children, prostitutes, merchants, sailors, among other things…

I am not personally sure what is fact and what is fiction, but I am aware the author based a lot in strict fact-based evidence. But there is still so much animation and whimsy among these characters.

I highly recommend this funny, adventurous, sweetly queer tale so deeply rooted in history.

Tone and pacing were odd, and I couldn't fall into the story like I wanted.

The setting is Italy in 1087 AD, but world-building is light on details.
The pacing is fast when I wanted it slow and slow when I wanted it fast.
The humor (because I think this is meant to be a comedy?) is dry and modern, yet disharmonious at times with the scenes.

I don't know what to think. There's definitely an audience for this book, and Anderson is an excellent writer and storyteller. I don't think I'm the right person for this specific book. Or maybe I'm not in the right mood or headspace to enjoy this book properly at this time.

There are people I would recommend this book to, but they'd have to be particular people looking for something that's precisely this book. If that's you, then you're going to love it!

Story: 3 stars
Character Development: 3 stars
Writing: 3 stars

The description and cover of this book was what held my interest so when I was approved for this review I was elated. I’m not going to lie, at first I was nervous about the content, because I don’t know how to explain that this a book like no other Ive read before. It was funny, but in a way that made me think. As someone who doesn’t fully follow religion too closely, it was a little hard to stay engaged with that aspect being so present, but the action within these pages made it worth it.

I read this book in two days, and was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it.

3.5 rounded to 4. High adventure in the Middle Ages with a healthy dose of dry wit. If you’re not a history buff, prepare to either gloss over some details or do a bit of research. Will definitely be recommending to the history nerd in my life!

3.5 stars, rounded down
I’ve been a big fan of Graham Brack’s Master Mercurius series, so I thought this one might also work for me. Nicked involves an Italian monk in 1087. The citizens of his town of Bari are falling victims to the pox. When he has a dream about St. Nicholas, he interprets it to mean the monks should be helping the sick. But others have loftier ideas and think it is a call to “rescue” the 700 year old full body relic of St. Nicholas from the town of Myra in what is now Turkey. But they aren’t the only ones with a plan to take the relic from its current abode. A Venetian prince has the same idea.
The monk, Nicephorus, is tasked with joining the relic hunter Tyun and his crew so that he can verify the remains. This is based closely on the true story of the removal of Nicholas. It provides a close up perspective on the religious beliefs of the day - the willingness to believe in miracles and other fantastical stories.
It’s an uneven story. At times humorous, other times slow and dry. And at other times, it comes across as an epic tale filled with mythical creatures. The ending is heartwarming. I did get a kick out of the blurbs about Nicholas’s life and miracles and the morals of those stories.
My thanks to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for an advance copy of this book.

Weird, gay, and surprisingly accurate historical fiction. The concept of relics & people stealing, displaying, and trading the bodies of saints is generally a fascinating one. It’s inherently gruesome, a fact definitely alluded to in this book. But Nicked takes such a lighthearted approach, telling the story of a heist of a saint’s body through non-stop bumbling action and misfortune, with elements of whimsy right alongside murder. The somewhat naive monk who cannot tell a lie is a perfect foil to the hardened pirate.

I did find it a little hard to feel too emotionally invested at times; the story is written with a sense of detachment which doesn’t lend itself to feeling like you are experiencing the events in the moment. Instead, it feels more like someone telling you a story of something that happened years ago. It’s hard to know who to even recommend this to—people who know a lot about Christian history and have a very irreverent sense of humor? Fans of gay pirate historicals? It’s sort of Our Flag Meets Death x 10th century cozy monks; there is lots of violence but generally it’s not a heavy tone.

Review posted to Goodreads and StoryGraph on 7/13/24. Review will be posted to Amazon on release day.
When a sickness is spreading through town in the 1000s, Nicephorous and the other monks in his order pray to Saint Nicholas for days on end. Nicephorous has a dream about the saint which leads the town to decide they need to go and steal the saint’s body from where it currently rests. With the help of Tyun, the saint hunger, and his crew the journey begins to bring the body back home for all the blessings it can provide.

I had a lot of fun with this book. We’re out on a pirate like adventure to steal a saint’s body with a crew full of big characters. I enjoyed watching the journey of arriving where the body was and the hijinks that ensued. I laughed quite a few times during this book and found myself sad when it was over.

This was just a cute little queer historical fantasy. I was intrigued by it the entire time and laughed out loud at several points. I honestly expected this book to be serious, but instead it was just hilarious and thought provoking.

Thank you NetGally and the publishers for the advanced ebook. Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me at all which pains me to say because I’ve been excited about it since i heard about it. I really tried to push myself through but only got 36% in before I simply had to DNF. I will say if you are heavy into history and have a good idea of how this time period would have been I think you will have fun with this but I was struggling so hard with names and places it kept pulling me out and I would even have to go back a reread some stuff because I would get so confused. I’m sad this wasn’t for me but I can 100% understand the 5 star reviews and will be suggesting to people who are more interested in historical fiction.

First off, thank you to the publisher and MT Anderson for providing me an advance copy of Nicked for review.

The plot and characters were very promising. Unfortunately I DNF'd this book at 20%.
I wanted and tried so hard but I just couldn't get into the novel.
The writing felt unnecessarily cluttered and I found it difficult to follow.

I'm not super familiar with the time period in this book so it felt like some of it went over my head in regards to locations, names, etc. But I really did like the heist storyline!

Thank you so much to Pantheon for the free copy of this book— both physical and via netgalley.

Nicked is such an enjoyable book, when you are able to get into its rhythm. It’s filled with fun wordplay, as with the title— which I love, but a problem for me was getting and staying into the flow of this one while reading. I loved the way that this was semi-written in old English, but it caused me to have to reread a number of paragraphs for clarity. Byzantine historical fiction is also NICHE, and I was unfamiliar with a number of the references contained within the book. Frankly, it is rare that I say this, and I hate to say it, but I think the novel could’ve benefitted from some dumbing down. The wit and humor was so sharp, but it just got a little lost in everything else that was going on.

I truly don’t know how to rate this, but I’m going with 4 stars because a lot of this went over my head, but I still really enjoyed the reading experience. I love a unique read and always respect an author that takes risks at the expense of mass-readability. Plus what an audacious and wild story to be based on!

Theft of holy relics was once a common occurrence, so the basic narrative is surprisingly plausible. The novel is clever and amusing, but not as whip-smart funny as it could have been. Based on the description, I was hoping for more sword fights and sarcasm.

I've long been a fan of MT Anderson's young adult literature. He's truly made a contribution that has elevated the entire YA space. I was ecstatic to read Anderson's adult debut, Nicked. The historical event this novel was based on was fascinating and not one I'd ever heard, and the premise of "historical heist" is such a good one. Once the actual heist began in the latter half of the book, the story felt gripping and exhilarating. I also felt a much better grasp of the characters by that point. Having said that, I had a bit of a tough time with the beginning and middle of this novel. There seemed to be more telling than showing, and I didn't feel very connected to the characters or the story's stakes. When the two main characters developed into a queer romantic relationship, I was happy (the story was working at its best around this point) but surprised since there had been no indication prior to that moment that either character might be queer. What could've been an excellent slow burn romance seemed a little out of left field. The complexity of the author's word choice also presented a bit of a problem for me as a reader. This is a list from my Notes app of words within a two-page span that I had to look up: Garrulity, Phlegmatic, Cynocephale, Suzerainty, Souk, Thaumaturge. Stylite. I love that Anderson clearly has a massive vocabulary, and these words could all work if they were placed in a context that the reader could use to determine meaning without having to look them up in a dictionary. As it was, the many $100 words got in the way of my comprehension of the story and weren't explained in context.

MT Anderson has a singular perspective, voice, and artistic taste that you just don't find anywhere else. While Nicked didn't resonate with me in the same way as Anderson's YA titles, I'd still eagerly anticipate any future adult projects.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and Netgalley for providing an advanced copy.

This book is a wonderful, adventurous summer read! I enjoyed the characters and world are both well developed in this medieval heist.

It's the year 1087 and the city of Bari has two problems: (1) an epidemic of the pox; (2) insufficient tourist revenue. Inconveniently for himself, the monk Nicephorus has a dream about St. Nicholas, which he takes to mean that he should go into the city and tend the sick, but which the Barese powers that be decide, conveniently for them, signifies that they should hire the Tartar saint-hunter Tyun to [euphemism incoming] collect the saint's bones from the city of Myra, where they have lain for hundreds of years giving off a sweet ichor that has some beneficial effect or other, such as for example being saleable.

Nicephorus is sent off with Tyun in the good ship, I kid you not, Epiphany.

The subsequent adventures have a picaresque quality -- road trip, mayhem, more mayhem, yet more mayhem. I'm not, in general, a fan of the picaresque; Lazarillo de Tormes et al. bored me to tears. Nicked did not bore me for one single solitary second, however. It's funny, for starters, with just the right touches of bitterness and salt. Take, for instance, the account of how St. Nicholas saved the city of Myra during a famine, by performing a variation of the loaves-and-fishes miracle. It ends like this:

So Myra was saved. I am not sure what they did about the famine down the coast a few miles at Antiphellos or Phoinike.

God’s mercy is infinite— an infinite eye— which, seeing all, favors none, and makes no particular distinction in quality between those who eat and those who starve.


Nicephorus is dryly observant, honest, and kind-hearted (and he mostly manages to hang on to his moral compass throughout -- I say mostly; he's surprisingly good at lying by telling the strict truth). Tyun the saint-hunter is harder to describe; he's amoral, he's out for the shiny shiny ducats, and he tells Nicephorus awful stories about his childhood that he later claims he made up, except that occasionally he finds himself unable to maintain a blithe tale-telling air, which suggests that some truth is creeping in around the edges. I was fascinated by the way Anderson depicted the growth of their relationship, with minimal direct narration of their feelings. They talk; they touch each other more than necessary, though only Nicephorus appears to be at all disconcerted by this; most tellingly, we see other people seeing them -- only that; we're not told exactly what they see, only that they see. It's not a "romance" as a 21st-century reader expects a romance to unfold. Rather, Anderson uses storytelling and characterization in a way that feels authentic for the period. (I don't mean that it is authentic, exactly, but it's well suited.)

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Nicked is that it hews closely -- Tyun's dog-headed pal/crewman Reprobus aside -- to real historical events. Medieval Europeans got up to a lot of shady shenanigans with respect to the touristic value of holy relics, this I knew, but I would have said the story of St. Nicholas's leaky bones was preposterous if Anderson's afterword hadn't set me straight.

A marvel of a book on every level. Thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is like if you mashed up your favorite heist, with Our Flag Means Death, and heap of Mel Brooks.
It's a tongue-in-cheek, sacrilegious, queer, strange adventure right from the jump. Brother Nicephorous, the lowest of the monks at Bari, has a dream about Saint Nicholas. The Abbot decides the dream MUST be prophetic and how wonderful would it be if we brought the bones of St Nicholas here, to our church, no no not for any selfish or economical reason, but obviously because the young monk has foretold that St Nicholas WANTS to be in Bari.
And so Nicephorous is teamed up with a thief, a mercenary, and a wide cast of characters to sail and bring the bones of good ol St Nick 'home.' The adventure that follows is a wild romp, and absolutetly surprising. There were moments where i had to stop reading and shout WHAT out loud. I found the ending incredibly satisfying too.
While the prose, incredibly rooted in the medieval time the book is set in, lead me to needing to look up a lot of things, and sometimes got confusing because we referred to every character by like 3 different descriptors that I sometimes lost track of, the book was just FUN to read. It doesn't take itself seriously and that is clear from the very jump. It also had a lot to say about the reaching arms of the church and the fallibility of the fact that it is run by humans that i really enjoyed.

Honestly one of the most funnest books I've ever had the pleasure to read this year.
Sacrilegious theft? Epic tales of heroics and thievery? QUEER romance slowly simmering - the treasure hunter shamelessly flirting with the dreamer monk while everyone just stares at them.

PLEASE. The way I ate this book up and immediately went searching on where to pre-order this for a signed copy (Bear Pond Books!)

This story takes place in the 11th century where two cities in Italy race to steal the deceased body of Saint Nicholas. Our two main characters are a monk who had a seemingly prophetic dream of Saint Nicholas and a charismatic flirty treasure hunter who just wants to serve whoever gives him the biggest paycheck. Both are tasked to retrieve the corpse for the city of Bari.

Do you like high-strung adventure and heroics both on land and sea? Do you love sitting by the fire and telling tales of ancient relics and dreams of saints? Did you wish Bilbo and Thorin kissed at that one scene where they hug after Bilbo saves Thorin's life from Azog?

The history in this book was incredible along with all the religious stories interweaved. The twists in this adventure kept me at the edge of my seat throughout the whole book. I'm giving this book 5 perfect stars - I loved the romance, the action, the history, the medieval (kind of confusing) prose, and the characters (even Matteo!!).

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon Books for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

A clever, ambitious novel rife with interesting queer characters and re-imagined history - however, the novel was also denser than most classical literature and difficult to find my footing in. I wish I had more experience with the type of books this is clearly riffing off of - tales of early modern monks and relic hunters not being common on my bookshelf. Still, I found I enjoyed the literary conceit even if the the text was very slow-going at times. I saw many reviewers describing this novel as humorous - perhaps this brand of humor flew over my head, but I didn't find it especially witty.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book! I was super intrigued by the premise but unfortunately this one just didn’t work for me. I felt the dialogue was a bit stilted and the story a bit hard to follow. I would absolutely give this author another try.