1636: The Vatican Sanction

1636: The Vatican Sanction   Author Eric Flint Cover artist Tom Kidd Publisher Baen Publication date December 2017 Preceded by 1636: Mission to the Mughals Followed by 1637: The Volga Rules |} Published in 2017, 1636: The Vatican Sanction is a sequel to 1635: The Papal Stakes. It centers around Pope Urban VIII in exile in the city of Besançon and the attempts of the agents of Borja, led by assassin Pedro Dolor, to eliminate him. Urban VIII is under the protection of Ruy Sanchez and Sharon Nichols. Publisher's description It’s spring in Burgundy. The flowers are out and so are the cardinals—of Pope Urban’s renegade papacy, now on the run from the Vatican’s would-be usurper Borja. Most of the Church’s senior leaders have converged upon the city of Besancon, where the Pope plans to offer an ecumenical olive branch to the other Christian denominations with which Rome has been at war. Fortunately, Urban has up-time help. He can rely upon Cardinal-Protector Larry Mazzare's theological savvy, Sharon Nichols’ medical skills, and her husband Ruy Sanchez’s keen-eyed experience as a body-guard-in-chief. And even though Urban has a new Papal Guard in the form of Owen Rowe O’Neill’s Wild Geese, Mike Stearns has loaned the Pope a small contingent of the Hibernian Battalion—just in case. Which is prudent, since Urban and his peace initiative are not merely at risk from Borja’s assassins. There is another, more deadly, team of professional killers in town, directed by the man who almost killed the Pope before: lethal Spanish mastermind Pedro Dolor. Dolor hasn’t come to confess murder—he’s come to commit it.