From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–There have been few characters in recent historical fiction more vibrant than the street-smart, fast-talking protagonist of this series. In
Pagan's Crusade (2003),
Pagan in Exile(2004), and
Pagan's Vows (2004, all Candlewick), orphaned Pagan joins the Knights Templar in a desperate attempt to escape the mean streets of Jerusalem and becomes squire to Lord Roland. He follows his master back to his home in southern France and joins him in a monastery when Roland renounces his crude family. In this fourth volume, a young, bookish clerk, Isidore, takes up the narrative. Pagan is 20 years older, now Archdeacon of Carcassonne, and enlists Isidore to serve as his scribe. Pagan's acerbic wit and sharp logic are needed by local lords to argue their case before a marauding army of frustrated Crusaders, turned against their own countrymen to search out heretics. Isidore's breathless description of the often-violent and chaotic world around him creates a page-turning epic. Readers who already know Pagan will be fascinated to see him as an adult, with the same fierce loyalty for his friends and caustic anger that he exhibited as a teen. He develops a protective fondness for Isidore, helping him cope with the epilepsy that is too little understood in medieval France. Pair this book with Kevin Crossley-Holland's
King of the Middle March (2004) and Frances Temple's
The Ramsay Scallop (1994, both Scholastic) for a multifaceted view of 13th-century Europe.
–Connie C. Rockman, Stratford Library Association, CT Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. Readers expecting the fourth and final book in the Pagan series to take up where Book 3 ended are in for a couple of surprises. Not only does the new volume take up the story 20 years after
Pagan's Vows left off, it also has a new narrator-protagonist: Isidore, a 15-year-old boy plagued with seizures. He's a scribe for Pagan, who is now the Archdeacon of Carcassonne. The intervening years have increased Pagan's wisdom and authority, and he finds in Isidore a youth as impetuous and strong-willed as himself, but without his experience of the world. The narrative approach is similar to previous books, recording Isidore's thoughts as well as conversations and events; even the voice sounds familiar. When Isidore gains the friendship and protection of Pagan's beloved mentor, Lord Roland, at the terrible siege of Carcassonne, the story comes full circle. Though many writers present the pageantry of the Middle Ages, Jinks portrays the period with great realism, here dramatizing the siege in all its stench and gore. The book ends with an epilogue and a glossary. A fitting conclusion to a well-researched, idiosyncratic medieval series.
Carolyn PhelanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
