(no subject)

fahye recommended me Catherine Jinks' Pagan books a while back, and, as I have now read Pagan's Crusade and Pagan in Exile and am planning on acquiring the rest, I think it is safe to say that I liked them!

Pagan is the irreverent, pragmatic squire of a Heroic Templar Knight, and a lot of the fun of the books comes from his first-person narrative - the writing and voice actually remind me a fair bit of L.A. Meyers' Jacky books (and in my secret heart I want a crossover EVEN THOUGH Pagan and Jacky are separated by around six hundred years of history. What logistics? Maybe there can be TARDIS adventures!). The other driving force of the books is the Odd Couple partnership between Pagan and his master Lord Roland, who is pure-hearted, devout, Extremely Heroic (I said this already but it bears repeating), etc. etc. and prone to going into fits of disbelief and despair when confronted with the Evil of the World, which is when he needs Pagan to kick him out of it. I do wish we got a few more recurring sympathetic characters; the focus is very often on Pagan And Roland Against The World, and you all know my thing for ensemble. On the other hand, I also have a thing for snarky sidekicks, so it mostly balances out!

Also, the author is actually really good about portraying all the twisty politics of the era; even though our protagonists are obviously on the side of a Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, the text makes it pretty clear that it's a lot more complicated than that. And I really like how explicit she makes Pagan's alienation in the second book, when he follows Roland to Norman France - Pagan is half-Arabic, and not only looks different from everyone else, but is used to a very different culture and (higher) standard of living than the ones common in Europe at the time.

(Also, unspoilery, but: the second book contains some truly beautiful moments of AWKWARD.)