The War for the Heart of the World: the Last Crusaders will be the first in a series of novels telling the story of the generation-long struggle for control of the Mediterranean. On one side, the Ottoman Empire under its greatest ruler, Suleiman the Magnificent. On the other, a squabbling group of warring kingdoms, city states and military orders: the Habsburg Empire, straining at the seams under the pressure of the Reformation; La Serenissima, the Republic of Venice, fighting to retain control of its life blood of maritime trade; and the Knights Hospitaller, last order of military monks, searching for a new role in a world where the Age of Discovery has begun.
It is a story of sea battles and spying, of true love and filicide, of science and magic. For this was a time when the old certainties were breaking and a new world was being made. It was a war fought by men such as Gabriele Tadino, the Italian military engineer and Suleiman, the Shadow of God on Earth, who aspired to dominon over the whole world. It was a war fought at sea and on land by Barbary pirates and Albanian spies. It was the last medieval war and the first modern war, a war in which knights in armour manhandled cannons into place and musketeers fired from siege towers.
It was the war that shaped the modern world as it was being born: it was the war for the heart of the world.
