The Radiant Warrior

The continuing story of Conrad the involuntary time-traveller, who found himself stranded in 13th century Poland and is trying to prepare the country for the Mongol invasion that he knows is coming.

In this volume, he's still working hard on his industrialization programme, but now he also starts the beginnings of an army. Partially by accident, he's promoted from knight to baron, which means that he gains more land and is entitled to knight people himself.

The story remains mildly entertaining in parts, if you like this kind of thing: Leo Frankowski (1943–2008) was a literary pigmy and politically incorrect, but a competent storyteller.

For most of this series, he avoids explicitly condoning rape, by the simple device of assuring us that most 13th century Polish females were remarkably willing. However, this book includes a rape that he seems to condone, and what's more it's not essential to the plot, he could easily have avoided it. Most authors would have avoided it, to save themselves some hate, but I suppose Frankowski was thick-skinned and didn't care about antagonizing people.

Overall, I find these books sufficiently entertaining to reread them occasionally, when I can't find anything better to read; but I wouldn't normally recommend them to other people. The scenario is genuinely interesting, and Conrad's attempt to gear up Poland to resist the Mongols is worth reading about and not badly handled. However, here we have a hero (and probably an author too) whose main preoccupations are engineering and sex, which doesn't suit me well; I don't know about you. The writing style is unsophisticated and characterization is perfunctory.