The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson
The last two books I read sucked, so THE HIGH CRUSADE by the late Poul Anderson was a pleasant contrast.
The book begins in an English village in 1345. The local lord, Sir Roger, is gathering his men to join King Edward III for the Hundred Years’ War in France.
And as his men prepare to leave, a spaceship lands outside the village. An alien emerges and vaporizes one of the villagers, quite certain that the primitives will scatter in terror of his superior technology.
Needless to say, things do not go according to plan.
After a short battle, Sir Roger and his men find themselves in control of the alien spaceship. Sir Roger gleefully plans to take the ship to France, defeat the perfidious French in the name of the King, and then take the alien ship on to Palestine to liberate the Holy Land from the Saracens once and for all.
Things quite promptly get out of hand.
I really liked THE HIGH CRUSADE, in part because of its constant action and keen characterizations, and in part because it gleefully overturned one of my least favorite cliches in fiction. Namely, the idea that the medievals were ignorant and stupid, hobbled by superstitions, unlike we oh-so-clever 21st century Americans. If you were to drop a 14th century peasant into 21st century Chicago, he would adapt much more quickly than a 21st century graduate student dropped into 14th century England. Sir Roger and his men prove this to dazzling effect.
I quite recommend THE HIGH CRUSADE, and definitely will be reading more Poul Anderson as I find the time.
-JM
Ah, The High Crusade, one of my favorite Anderson tales! It’s a classic for a reason!
Agreed on all your points, especially the overturning of the lame “medievals=fools” cliche! Anderson never deals in that kind of thing, thankfully! I’m actually kind of surprised you just got around to reading that book now, for some reason I imagined that you had already read it and other PA fantasies (I think I mixed you up with someone else).
Was this your first PA novel? You said you wanted to read more, do make time for these especially:
-The Broken Sword
-Three Hearts and Three Lions (the hero of the book also appears in”A Midsummer Tempest”)
They are two of his best. Very much worth your time if you have not read them yet.
As for more recent stuff, I did enjoy his “Mother of Kings” and “War of the Gods”, they are not fantasy books though, more like Anderson’s take on old norse legends.
“If you were to drop a 14th century peasant into 21st century Chicago, he would adapt much more quickly than a 21st century graduate student dropped into 14th century England.”
That just makes me smile 😀
I want to try “The Broken Sword” next, I think.
Good choice! It’s usually regarded as his best fantasy (well technically it’s dark fantasy, where as Three Hearts and Three Lions is high fantasy).
Sadly alot of Poul’s stuff is hard to come by nowadays (unless your okay with buying used books). I’m still waiting for his stuff to be put in the ebook format, that way I can read some of the other hard to find stuff (I’ve seen sites that offer his stuff in ebook format, but they always are limited to region outside the US…why this is, I have no idea).
I think some of his stuff is getting reprinted – I picked up High Crusade new recently.
There’s a fairly decent used bookstore nearby, so I think I will stop by and see if I can find The Broken Sword there.