A Fan's Playground

Series consists of: Pagan's Crusade, Pagan's Exile, Pagan's Vows, Pagan's Scribe, and Babylonne aka Pagan's Daughter

This is a series of children's books about a Templar knight (Roland) and his Palestinian-born squire (Pagan) and, eventually, Pagan's scribe and Pagan's daughter. The books are written in an extremely distinctive style - it's like, the most immediate possible version of first-person, the first three books especially - and it's very effective at making things feel in the moment, but I do not actually like it. BUT I care about the characters enough that I don't care. And the period feel and the earthy historic details are wonderfully well done too. The author is apparently a medieval scholar and it shows in the best possible ways.

The degree to which Roland and Pagan care deeply about each other, and work to take care of each other, despite the two of them being very different people who often do not understand each other, is wonderful. And it's a main focus of the series, their relationship with each other.

( spoilers for the fourth and fifth books )

This is not the kind of book I ordinarily would have chosen to read, but my mom gave it to me years ago and so I kind of felt obligated to get around to it eventually.

It's a very odd sort of book and I'm not quite sure how to categorize it. Somewhere between memoir, writing advice, ode to the power of stories, and Christian witness, I guess? The genre that it seems most similar to me personally is the sermon, actually: using both personal experiences and biblical stories to illustrate a point about Christianity.

L'Engle wrote this book in her old age, after a very serious car accident where she was significantly injured. So she talks a lot about that, of course, but also uses illustrations from throughout her life.

I found it largely a pleasant sort of book to read; not particularly mindblowing or anything, and there were some parts that were tedious, but mostly it feels like just hanging out with the best kind of elderly church lady. Her overall theme - of story (and particularly the Christian story) as truth rather than fact - is good, as is her general loving approach to religion and life.