The Heirs of the Kingdom

Heirs to the Kingdom by Zoe Oldenbourg is a pretty fascinating read, a tale of a young French couple who get caught up in the First Crusade after hearing a charismatic sermon by Peter the Hermit. At the point I am at, they have taken the Cross and are bout to embark on their long trip to Jerusalem. From what I know of the People's Crusade it's all going to end rather badly. Some might consider this a dry read, but Oldenbourg writes with such a strange, dream-like intensity that you can't help but get caught up. I don't know much about the genre "magical realism" but I think that's the kind of duck I'm plucking here. There is little attention paid to linear storytelling, the present and flashbacks blend together but the narrative never show more becomes tedious. I must say that I'm learning quite a lot about Medieval life, particularly about the ins and outs of French weavers; there are many interesting tidbits about the garment-making industry and urban feudalism in general (such as the putting-out system of economics), what it's like to be of the poor merchant class in Tenth Century Europe. show less

This was in some ways a devastating book. It follows a crusade from the point of view of French weavers and their clergy who came with the poor. There was no resorting to the point of view of anyone else in the army, church, or government, so your view becomes in some ways as politically narrow and religiously grand as theirs. I did feel the ending was anticlimactic, as the endings to grand novels often are. But otherwise it was a throughly satisfying and thought provoking read.

One of the very few works of fiction that I have read that, when I was done, I thought, "I wish I had written this"