Pagan's Scribe (Pagan Chronicles, #4) by Catherine Jinks

Pagan's Scribe (Pagan Chronicles, #4) Reviews

• 
  Lady Knight

  Wow!
  
  I was initially disappointed that Jinks decided not to use Pagan as the narrator here, but after a while Isidore grew on me. He is almost the polar opposite of Pagan's personality, but that is mainly due to his inexperience and innocence. Isidore is also epileptic and since being abandoned at a monastery at a young age, has always believed that his fits are the work of a devil. With Pagan's help he will come to see that his fits are no such thing, that the world is not as black and white, right and wrong, as he believed and that book learning will only get you so far.
  
  We often see Pagan through Isidore's eyes (who sees him as arrogant, disrespectful, and anything but the archdeacon he is), but I can't help but wish we could see Isidore through Pagan's eyes. Set fifteen to twenty years after "Pagan's Vows", "Pagan's Scribe" tells of how Pagan, now an archdeacon set to try and convert Cathars back to Catholicism, takes Isidore as his scribe (Pagan, now in his thirties is loosing his eyesight and can no longer read or write) and sets off to try and act as intermediary in the coming Crusade within France.
  
  While I was reading the book I honestly thought that it wasn't as good as the others, but then the final battle comes, and OH MY LORD! I won't spoil anything but get out the tissues and prepare to walk away from the book heartbroken, feeling wrung out, and wowed. Catherine Jinks is clearly a master!
• 
  Sophie Yorkston

  Decades on and here we are with Pagan again.
  
  But this time, we look at him through the eyes of another orphan, Isidore, who to start is a self-righteous, but cringing and tormented boy. You might be too if you had been told your whole life that your seizures were demonic possession.
  
  Pagan's older and wiser but his tongue-in-cheek wit has not faded. And yet again, we find him in the centre of a war zone.
  
  I'm not going to go too much into this one, because the exploration and growth of the new narrator, and how we the reader urge him to see Pagan for all his redeeming qualities, is part of the beauty of this book. But it's also part of the drawback: Pagan was just such a fantastic narrator.
  
  I think it also a kindness that we are not in Pagan's head when the climax hits. But I can tell you that I wept.
• 
  Shannon

  What!?!?! No fun having a new narrator! Pagan's too serious. I mean, sure, I understand it's twenty-some years later and Pagan's grown older and wiser, but the fact that his entire character changed--no more sarcasm, no more wit. Just a semi-stoic, semi-high-tempered scholar travelling with a redheaded version of a young Pagan...not quite the same feel.
  
  
  
  The story does delve into more history about the Crusades, however. A great way to soak up some medieval history, rather than plow through a dry-as-dust history textbook. Wasn't a waste of a summer afternoon, although I miss the old Pagan. Maybe I'll go ahead and re-read the first novel again, for old times' sake.
• 
  Lisa

  I wasn't as much of a fan of this last book int he Pagan Chronicles. I didn't find the main character as interesting as Pagan, and Isidore definitely wasn't as witty. I also got tired of people telling him what a find he was.
• 
  Tessa

  I love this series very very very much.
• 
  Crowinator

  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.
• 
  Achoo

  This is the first in the Pagan series that I'm marking down as four stars rather than five. But to be completely honest, it's more for personal reasons rather than an objective, detached judgement of the book. Catherine Jinks does a wonderful job writing from the perspective of the very religious, sheltered, Isidore, even if I preferred Pagan's more "modern", flippant observations. It's fun to see Roland, Pagan, and Jordan twenty years on and how they've evolved. The story is as refreshing and enjoyable as the others in the series, but I do have one complaint. Catherine Jinks has proved over and over that in spite of the witty, lighthearted Monty Python-esque style of writing and humor present in each book in Pagan's Chronicles, she takes the time period and setting extremely seriously. She is dedicated to placing complete priority on maintaining realism over our own personal desires for happy, feel-good resolutions.
  
  ***Spoilers onward***
  
  Pagan in Exile sees Esclaramonde, the only woman Roland's loved to our knowledge, get trampled to death in a sudden attack. We don't see her die, we don't hear her final words - Pagan just suddenly finds her dead. Pagan's Vows has Roland become a depressed shell of his former self at the monastery while Pagan's relentlessly toils to expose a child rapist. Pagan is successful, but not before his friend is killed, before Roland almost fasts to death, and before Pagan is also almost killed in retaliation. The story even ends with them separating in tears, with Pagan leaving to study canon law. Pagan's Scribe somehow tops this by killing off Roland with a stray arrow - and again, he doesn't even die in front of Pagan. The novel ends with Pagan devastated, and then we get a brief epilogue about how the rest of their lives went. Had I initially read this when it came out in the 90s rather than in 2011, after the decade-later release of Pagan's Daughter, I probably would've cried. What a way to end a series! The tragedy is somehow more painful because of the lighthearted writing style and vibrant, cartoony cover art. It's a little like getting hit with a baseball bat, only the baseball bat is decorated with little smiley face stickers. Still hurts.
  
  Even if it's not realistic and maybe a little childish, I genuinely wish Catherine Jinks hadn't - at the very least, with regards to all the rest of the tragedy in the series - killed off Roland. Make him lose an arm, or make Pagan blind - but don't just kill Roland in the literal last 10 pages of the book. That's too sad :(
• 
  Kiersten

  Not quite up to par with the rest of the series, I felt. I absolutely loved the first three books, and I think the major setbacks here were the change of narrator (Isidore's voice and his portrayal of Pagan as a monk in his thirties was really funny for the first chapter or two, but didn't really hold up over the course of the whole story), the short time span (I feel like it moved too quickly too make the emotional connections really believable), and…a sort of sense of anticlimax. I was hoping for a bit more dramatic finish to Pagan's story in the epilogue. (I was also hoping for a clue as to how he ended up with a daughter, as is implied in the title of another of Jinks' novels?)
  
  I felt like I didn't really get anything out of the plot. It seemed less complex and witty and "deep" than when Pagan was the narrator twenty years earlier. and as much as I can relate to Isidore's obsession with books, it got a bit tiring after a while.
  
  In any case, it was still a great read, still stamped with Jinks' trademark style, and definitely not a waste of time for anyone who read the preceding books. I just think it was a less-than-stellar finale.
• 
  Elizabeth

  When I began to read this book I thought it was going to be awful. First because it is 20 years later than the last book, and second because it's not even Pagan narrating, it's his scribe Isidore. So you can begin to understand my disappointment in how this fourth book of The Pagan Chronicles is not entirely a story about Pagan.
  This book is more about Isidore and his view of the world in 1209. Through his eyes we see how the characters we knew from previous books have changed. Even so, the Crusades are still a constant threat to the common people, as they were when Pagan was a boy. Isidore is a good character, except he's basically a replacement for Pagan in this story since Pagan isn't young anymore.
  Over all it was a good ending to the series, though it could have been better without Isidore being in the main role. It's "The Pagan Chronicles," not "The Pagan & Isidore Chronicles."
  
  
  
• 
  Allison

  For me, a book is all about the ending, but a series is mostly about development. And this final entry in the Pagan series delivers. I don't know if I'd recommend this to anyone other than people who like YA books with a setting in medieval Jerusalem/France, though. The whole series is an easy, fast read, with a good deal of wittiness, but it didn't grab me. It's pretty violent and brutal. I enjoyed seeing what became of Pagan in his lifetime, and what kind of man he turned out to be. I'm glad I finished out the series.
• 
  Sarah

  Perfectly captured a medieval setting in all its rough crudeness. Though he is certainly a creature of his time, the main character's voice is very modern and his narration adds a humorous, sarcastic tone to the story. The plot itself was pretty complex and political with a lot of places and characters that were a little difficult to keep track of. Based on the first half I'd have given the book 5 stars, but by the end the violence and filth had become too vivid and brutal.
• 
  Jenny

  archedeacon Pagan Kidrouk needs a new scribe, fast. Isodore is available, even if he does have fits. Suddenly thrust into a siege he barely understands, Isodore only wants to be near the Archdeacon and read a good book. But the siege isn't going well, and Isodore will face hard choices in the days ahead.
• 
  Katherine

  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.
• 
  Kaitlyn Visser

  The last of a series that was enjoyable and griping from start to finish. A great easy read for any person who just wants a fun adventure set in the middle ages with wonderfully rendered characters who come alive in front of your eyes.
• 
  Gloria

  I think I liked this one the best. But I do think it imperative that you have read the first three.
• 
  Ashley

  I just can't bring myself to give it the five stars I gave the other three.
• 
  Autumn

  Sooo good - love Isidore, love the history, cried at the end, wanted much much more of these characters.
• 
  Terry

  A rather brutal depiction of the Crusade in France proported to be against the Cathar heretics but in reality a justification for a "land grab". Pagan has become an even more interesting character.
• 
  Melanie H.

  The final book of the Pagan Chronicles. Told from Isadore's point of view,Pagan's scribe.
• 
  The Third Place A Teen Library

  F JIN pagan bk. 4
• 
  Kbryna

  more like three and a half stars...
• 
  Bronwen

  I read the first four Pagan novels when I was younger and loved them, although this one a little less than the first three for some reason. I'd love to read them again some day.
• 
  Karen Desmond

  4
• 
  Rowena Daniells

  This was the first of Catherine Jinks' books that I read. It is fresh, funny and perceptive. A real winner.
• 
  Katherine (DirectorKat)

  A wonderful way to end the series.
• 
  Esme

  I read this series as a teenager in the mid-2000s and loved it. I thought it was funny, and even had its heart-breaking moments.
• 
  Fatima Sarder

  “Only because books are better than people, Father. ... Because they are masters who instruct without a rod. If you approach them, they are never asleep; if you are ignorant, they never laugh; if you make mistakes, they never chide. They give to all who ask of them, and never demand payment. ... All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, if God hadn't provided us with the remedy of books.”
  
  - Isidore
  
  My heart. Right in my kokoro! How could Roland die like that? And Pagan, poor Pagan.
  
  The book opens with Isidore instead of Pagan; and already I'm missing the sarcasm and witty views of the world. Unlike Pagan, whose commentary is tainted with curses and graphic descriptions of the surrounds and leans somewhat to the heretic side of things, Isidore is pious and god fearing and you can only read so much "By the blood of the Lamb of God," till it gets tiring.
  
  I still can't get over the last two chapters, Pagan, proud, acidic, Archdeacon Pagan, reduced to a howling mess. How he cried for Roland, how he wailed. How the Crusades trampled the city... What a glorious, messy ending