Customer Reviews

Lord Conrad's Crusade

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The latest Conrad Stargard book is an enjoyable read, but it's not Frankowski's best work. It was some typos and editing problems, but they don't detract from the story.

Conrad is bored; he hasn't faced any new challenges in years, so he decides to go on "Vacation" to points unknown, alone. Not even Conrad Stargard can foresee every possible problem and he finds himself sick, maimed, and enslaved. He always felt that slavery was a crime against God, and being slave didn't change his mind. So Conrad did the sort thing that Conrad does, I don't want to spoil the story, but we get another classic Conrad Stargard book out the situation.

Before Conrad left Poland, the Pope (Ignacio) and the King (Henryk) were trying to order him to "Re-Take" the Holy Lands from the "Infidel Moslems". He refused pointing out that they had Polish Citizen's who were Moslems, so he couldn't see attacking someone based on their religion, and that the Christian Church couldn't "Re-Take" property that they had never owned. He suggested that they "Take" the Holy Land through trade and good works instead. Ignacio and Henryk became very upset about this, and in my opinion forgot who put them on their thrones, so they started the Crusade while Conrad was on "Vacation".

The novel wraps up these loose ends and gives "Uncle Tom" a challenge to overcome that may make life interesting for him and may give us a new book in the future.

I'm a huge fan of the Conrad series. I was more than happy to buy this book off the author's personal web page, just to see how Conrad was doing. Unfortunately there are many glaring problems with this latest installment.

First, this is not a finished product, apparently due to lack of a publisher. There are uncountable errors throughout the text, not just typo's but also the wrong word, pronoun, or character's name. Some events are disjointed, unexplained, or just don't make sense. Some sections are fully fleshed out, and bring the reader right into the action and the character's motivation, while other sections are the merest outline, with just bare facts listed in chronological order.

Still, these technical problems could be overlooked if that was the price we had to pay to enjoy another Conrad adventure. Except that Conrad has changed. He's become pompous, conceited, and spoiled. He refuses to listen to the Pope, a personal friend of his who saved his life repeatedly earlier in the series. Conrad goes to a neighboring kingdom and makes a point of being as rude as possible to the king, who never did him any real harm. In fact, the whole "I need a vacation from all this" seemed pretty petulant and spoiled.

One of my personal pet peeves though is with geography. Conrad travels along a river for a large part of the book. This is a significant river that is featured prominently on any globe of the world. Conrad follows the river to a mountain range that in actual fact is over a thousand miles from the river. There's a big difference between walking along a river full of water, and walking a thousand miles where water may be hard to find.

Basically, I cannot recommend this book to any but the most addicted of Conrad junkies, and those should be forewarned.

If you liked Frankowski's other books, you will love this one. Conrad Stargard, anti-feminist, woman degraging, pig of the universe, strikes again. This is pure man adventure stuff. A great hero swings his mighty and magical sword laying waste to all around him and reluctantly agrees to pleasure all of the ex slave girls begging for his attention.

Unfortunately, Woman Hater Frankowski's writing is good enough, and his stories interesting enough, where I read the book all the way through, complaining, and enjoying as I went. Mr. Frankowski's world is exciting and his characters, other than the women, are noble enough to be interesting.

As a woman I do not know if want to shake his hand if we meet, or if I want to use it to break his arm off at the shoulder and pound some respect for women into him - but I keep buying and reading his books and I have to be honest enough to say that he is a good a writer, and this was a good adventure.

Leo Frankowski new Conrad adventure Lord Conrad's Crusade is an exciting action pack story about his capture and escape from slavery. In this story Conrad decides the only way to escape slavery is to attack and to conquer his way across North Africa. Freeing slaves along the way become habit forming for Conrad as he builds a new African Corp army of conquest and freedom. Great story and a must read.

The story is moderately good, classic Conrad Stargard. The characters are interesting. The plot moves a little slowly. If spelling errors annoy you, the book will drive you crazy. The text is full of errors in spelling and diction.

I was very happy to find that anouther of the Conrad Starguard books has come out. This book is a pre-publication version, so be aware. Trouble with publishers has caused Leo Frankowski to sell his own version.

That said, I have always enjoyed the Starguard series. Many wonderful adventures, told from several perspectives. I was glad to see a new book from the eyes of Lord Conrad. Being a fan I am aware of the story line and the way in which the books have progressed to this point. I did have some misgivings with the way our hero has developed. Maybe if the book was longer with more atention paid to filling out scenes it would have been better. It seems that Conrad has become more jaded, not just with women but with the average "little" people. He found no problem with killing everyone in villages due to their having slaves. I don't want slavery either, but this had been the world he was in. I would have liked to see some other way for him to win over people, rather than killing everyone. Some of his dialougue seemed similar to the words used by the Mongols in earlier books.

Over all though, a good read, I hope he can continure to provide us with more adventures. I also hope Leo's home and life in TVER Russia go well for him

Read all of the "Conrad" books! I thought in the "Search for Rubber" things changed a bit, but story held its own! So I picked this up! Story line has potential, but the continuing characters are no longer the same as the ones we saw developing all along in prior books! They have no depth whatsoever! More annoying that the lack of consistency is the lack of editing! Yes, the prior use of the exclamation points is not by accident! Every other sentence Conrad says is finished by an exclamation point! To the point it becomes annoying and distracting from the story line!

This book is in serious need of both proofreading and a decent editor.

Where the other books took the concept of an engineer going back in time and working to improve his situation and the world around him, this book has no such goal. The technology is tossed in needlessly as if the author is trying more to impress us than advance the story line.

While I never really liked how women were treated in these books, and attributed it to the time period in which they are cast, in this latest story it seems to be getting more offensive. In earlier books, the author at least had the women working to improve themselves or expressed displeasure at treating women as objects.
This is now blatantly gone. In this story women are little more than toys and objects for the men. As a husband and father, I found this new treatment just offensive.

Short version: If you liked the series, don't read this one and keep liking it. This one may well ruin it for you.

A great addition to the story of Lord Conrad. Make sure to reed the series from the beginning to get your full enjoyment. A definite addition to my personal library.

Great book spent a while tracking it down but found it easily and cheaply on Amazon. Thanks for an easy to use system with quick and efficient postage.

I enjoyed this as much as most of the Conrad books better than the Quest for Rubber a touch lower than early books. People have noted typos, but I did not notice any until late in the book (they may be there, but they didn't distract me from enjoying the book). For fans of the series it is a worthy installment. If you haven't read the series don't start here, it will be confusing, and Conrad will seem annoying if you don't have the context of the previous books.

On a sad note, I was in the process of buying two copies on line (one as a late Christmas gift), when I received an e-mail that Mr. Frankowski passed on Christmas day. We can hope that his co-author will finish the tales of Conrad Stargard.