This was a surprisingly good book! I'm usually not really interested in historical fiction, but I picked this up because of a school project, and it turned out to be an interesting story with wonderful characters and good plots. ( )

This is the fourth novel in the Pagan series, after Pagan's Crusade, Pagan in Exile, and Pagan's Vows. This one takes place about 20 years after the last book, and it's also the only one not told from Pagan's point of view, which is why it took me so long to pick it up. But when I saw Jinks had published Babylonne, about Pagan's sixteen-year-old daughter, I had to read the final one before I could read it.

In Pagan's Scribe, we meet Isidore, a young scribe who suffers from epilepsy in a time when people believed that meant he was cursed with a devil inside him. Pagan, now Archdeacon of Carcassonne, hires him as a scribe after seeing him in a tiny village where the boy's natural intelligence and love of books are being wasted. There are a lot of parallels between Isidore and Pagan as a child -- both are outcast, both intelligent, both outspoken, and both looking for someone to believe in them and someone to believe in, in turn. Isidore, on the other hand, is much more serious and straight-laced, which provides a nice contrast to Pagan's irreverent attitude. Pagan is off to help the local lords in southern France negotiate with the Crusaders encroaching on their lands, looking to burn out the heretic Cathars and Catholics harboring them, and Isidore is dragged off into a religious conflict he barely understands and violence the like of which he's never seen.

I don't know why I was surprised by how good this book was, considering how much I loved the other three. It was interesting to get a look at Pagan as an adult from outside his character, kind of like seeing Eugeniedes from a distance in King of Attolia. (Yeah, I promise eventually there will be a book I don't liken to Turner's Queen's Thief series. Seriously. This is the last one.)

This series is so, so good, and so unknown, and I wish I could make everyone read it. It's unusual in that it's extremely well-researched and rooted in the period -- you really get a sense of what it's like to live in the 12th and 13th centuries in Jerusalem and southern France -- but also contemporary in tone and wildly funny. Pagan in the beginning of the series is smart-mouthed, irreverent, intelligent, angry, and emotional, and by the fourth book he's developed and matured but retains those significant elements to his character. Pagan's devotion to God and his more worldly understanding of people has only grown and he's turned into a learned and effective orator. It's fitting that he takes in a boy who is similarly outcast, like he was, and tries to teach him like he was taught. Through Isidore, we also get to see how Roland's and Pagan's devotion to each other has aged and how strong it remains.

Despite all the sarcasm and humor, however, this series has always been one with a lot of sadness -- terrible things happen to the characters because the Crusades were terrible, war is terrible, and ultimately all they can do is try to save the ones they love, and sometimes they can't even do that. Still, they endure, because they have too much heart to give up. The ending to this one is heart-breaking, but that's not a reason to avoid it; it's a reason to run right out and read all four. ( )

All Isidore wants is to be allowed to read. However, the backwater village has no books and he believes he is doomed to misery. That is, until chance brings a very unusual Archdeacon and his sick scribe to his village. When Archdeacon Pagan Kidrouk discovers the intelligent young Isidore he is more than happy to press the serious young man into service as his scribe. However, serving Father Kidrouk is harder than Isidore could ever imagine. And Isidore has a secret, a devil inside that could jeopardize his new position and cause the Archdeacon to return him to where he started, which is the last place Isidore ever wants to be again.

Although I immensely enjoyed the first three books of Pagan's adventures, unfortunately Isidore's narrative wasn't quite as compelling. Where Pagan's inner voice was delightfully sarcastic and quick-witted, Isidore's is more pious and unforgiving. Also, it seemed as though the author allowed Pagan more opportunity to grow and learn through his experiences. Although I liked Isidore as a character, it was primarily his observations of Pagan that I enjoyed the most about this story, and not he himself. In that, I really enjoyed watching Pagan and his relationships with other familiar characters through a stranger's eyes. I also felt that the ending of the story seemed very abrupt, almost as though it had been chopped off and bandaged with the addition of an epilogue.

Generally I thought the story was very good, perhaps only suffering by comparison to what I felt were three exceptional predecessors in the series. I was very absorbed in it and I had no problems sticking with the reading (which lately is something I've had a lot of difficulty with). However, inasmuch as I do plan to go back and read the first three books at some point, I’m not sure I would do the same with this one. ( )

Much richer than the earlier books, in terms of showing emotions (rather than just telling us about them). It also nicely rounded off the story, disposing of Roland and Pagan appropriately and thoroughly and giving Isidore a good place. I just found out there's a fifth one in the series...I'll keep an eye out for it (doesn't seem to be out in the US, yet). ( )