I picked up Bernard Lewis's
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam as research for this game. His writing style's not too bad but on the dry side and extremely dense with information - a little too much so. I kind wish it were more like William Manchester's
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age, where it reads more like a deep, epic story and you're gripped and the richness of the historical facts permeates you instead of intimidating you with its weight. But Lewis is, after all, a scholar, and I'll have to put up with that.
Anyway, it's a good book, and ultimately just shows the common denominator of how great societies behave - and how they never behave. So lots of little stories on how frissons develop from the disagreements between religious groups over who, for example, was the rightful spiritual heir of Mohammed, who should rule them all, and the very violent and bloody clashes that resulted. The Hashshashin as a sect were birthed in the midst of it all, evolving to what it is today.
Seriously looking forward to experiencing Assassin's Creed.
