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Jul. 4th, 2023 12:24 amI forget who it was who was tweeting (rip) about The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, Three Magical Children And Their Holy Dog several years ago, but thank you to whoever it was, because I have had it in the back of my brain all these years and just recently got finally around to reading it.
The format of this one is quite charming -- the narrator is in pursuit of Three Miraculous [Medieval] Children [ahead of the forces of France, which are also, unfortunately, in pursuit of them] and has gone to an inn to Find Out Information about them. Then the various folks at the inn, who have encountered these three kids at a various different times, all take turns chiming in with the bits of the story that they know, Canterbury Tales style, until Then catches up with Now and it's the narrator's turn to do a ride-along with the Miraculous Youths and have his own narrative as a result.
Also charming are the illustrations; almost every page has a variety of illustrations round the borders, with the stated intent being to echo medieval manuscripts where sometimes the pictures are direct representations of the content and sometimes they are just cool doodles. (For example, the book does have a significant dragon, but does not actually contain any two-headed cats.)
The central youths are (respectively) a peasant girl whose village has been worshiping her dead dog as a saint and has just accidentally raised said dog from the dead; a mixed-race monastic acolyte with unrelated super-strength; and a Jewish boy with healing powers whose village has just been burned down in a show of anti-Semitic antagonism. The main plot thread centers around the mass burning of copies of the Talmud by Louis IX (the kids are not fans of the book-burning) (the kids have complicated feelings about Louis IX).
The book operates to a certain degree under medieval-theological rules, in that it takes the existence of some kind of divine as a starting premise for its plot and miracles definitely occur -- at one point a character strongly considers murdering the three possibly-saintly children so that miracles can be performed from their martyred relics, and one gets the sense that this is a dick move but it would probably work. The book is interested in the classic medieval religious debates like 'what is God' and 'is God the same thing as a sense of justice' and 'why does God let bad things happen' but, fortunately, is not at all interested in answering them, just in letting its characters bat them around as they attempt to find a righteous method of surviving in the world. Fun to read! Fun to look at! Definitely recommend finding a physical copy to experience if possible as I don't know how well the illustrations would survive the ebook transition and I definitely don't think they'd make it through to audio.
The format of this one is quite charming -- the narrator is in pursuit of Three Miraculous [Medieval] Children [ahead of the forces of France, which are also, unfortunately, in pursuit of them] and has gone to an inn to Find Out Information about them. Then the various folks at the inn, who have encountered these three kids at a various different times, all take turns chiming in with the bits of the story that they know, Canterbury Tales style, until Then catches up with Now and it's the narrator's turn to do a ride-along with the Miraculous Youths and have his own narrative as a result.
Also charming are the illustrations; almost every page has a variety of illustrations round the borders, with the stated intent being to echo medieval manuscripts where sometimes the pictures are direct representations of the content and sometimes they are just cool doodles. (For example, the book does have a significant dragon, but does not actually contain any two-headed cats.)
The central youths are (respectively) a peasant girl whose village has been worshiping her dead dog as a saint and has just accidentally raised said dog from the dead; a mixed-race monastic acolyte with unrelated super-strength; and a Jewish boy with healing powers whose village has just been burned down in a show of anti-Semitic antagonism. The main plot thread centers around the mass burning of copies of the Talmud by Louis IX (the kids are not fans of the book-burning) (the kids have complicated feelings about Louis IX).
The book operates to a certain degree under medieval-theological rules, in that it takes the existence of some kind of divine as a starting premise for its plot and miracles definitely occur -- at one point a character strongly considers murdering the three possibly-saintly children so that miracles can be performed from their martyred relics, and one gets the sense that this is a dick move but it would probably work. The book is interested in the classic medieval religious debates like 'what is God' and 'is God the same thing as a sense of justice' and 'why does God let bad things happen' but, fortunately, is not at all interested in answering them, just in letting its characters bat them around as they attempt to find a righteous method of surviving in the world. Fun to read! Fun to look at! Definitely recommend finding a physical copy to experience if possible as I don't know how well the illustrations would survive the ebook transition and I definitely don't think they'd make it through to audio.
