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Conrad Stargard #3
Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior
CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY—OR DIE!
One moment Conrad Schwartz was suffering from a severe hangover as he hiked through the mountains of present-day Poland, the next he was running for his life from an angry Teutonic knight. Things went downhill from there, and he finally had to face the disheartening fact he had somehow been stranded in 1231 A.D.
He would have been happier if he had known less history. But there was very bad news in his new future, so he set out to turn Medieval Poland into the most powerful country in the thirteenth century. It wouldn't be easy. He would be investigated by the Inquisition (he should have expected that), be knighted, round up vassals, build a city, survive armed combat with the Champion of the Teutonic Knights, invent the steam engine and cloth factories, establish universal education, and organize an army.
He needed that army most of all, because he knew that the Mongol hordes would attack in only ten years and destroy medieval Poland—and that would really mess up Conrad's life.
Three novels in the Locus best-selling series in one volume.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (DRM Rights Management).
One moment Conrad Schwartz was suffering from a severe hangover as he hiked through the mountains of present-day Poland, the next he was running for his life from an angry Teutonic knight. Things went downhill from there, and he finally had to face the disheartening fact he had somehow been stranded in 1231 A.D.
He would have been happier if he had known less history. But there was very bad news in his new future, so he set out to turn Medieval Poland into the most powerful country in the thirteenth century. It wouldn't be easy. He would be investigated by the Inquisition (he should have expected that), be knighted, round up vassals, build a city, survive armed combat with the Champion of the Teutonic Knights, invent the steam engine and cloth factories, establish universal education, and organize an army.
He needed that army most of all, because he knew that the Mongol hordes would attack in only ten years and destroy medieval Poland—and that would really mess up Conrad's life.
Three novels in the Locus best-selling series in one volume.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (DRM Rights Management).
752 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 14, 1989
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185 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
January 14, 2024
This is the third in the Conrad Stargard series, about a Polish engineer who travels back in time to medieval Poland. Like the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's court in Twain's story, Conrad finds himself in a situation where he can use his knowledge and skills to jump-start a medieval society into modern times. He introduces the steam engine and a cloth factory and-with the help of a Muslim alchemist--gunpowder and guns.
It seems to me he gets too much support from local lords and churchmen. Some of the lords would see that he is undermining their authority over medieval society and remove the threat that a modern man would represent to them. But it's interesting to see how author Frankowski develops this story ( this book was published in 1989).
It seems to me he gets too much support from local lords and churchmen. Some of the lords would see that he is undermining their authority over medieval society and remove the threat that a modern man would represent to them. But it's interesting to see how author Frankowski develops this story ( this book was published in 1989).
January 7, 2026
The Radiant Warrior is the third book (though a prequel appeared some years later, which I suppose makes this one the fourth) in a series about a man who's swept back in time from the present to 1231, ten years before the Mongol invasion. Conrad Stargard got drunk in a bar and passed out in the storeroom, which happened to be a time machine. It's similar to de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and Flint's 1632 universe and, heck, Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. This one picks up pretty much where the second one, The High-Tech Knight, ended. Conrad has resolved to save Poland and Europe from the Mongols but keeps getting sidetracked. It is, after all, more important to open Playboy Clubs and staff them with underaged topless teenaged girls and other such impedimenta. Some of Conrad's plans and developments are quite clever, and the plot is obviously well thought-out, though this one seems more slowly paced than the previous books. His horse, Anna, is bio-engineered and is many ways smarter than he is, luckily, and he seems ready to begin mass production of his modern weapons. The character's character continues to reveal him to be an insufferable and smug pedophile, though Frankowski continues to try to present him as a charming rogue. Frankowski wasn't a great writer, but he was a pretty good storyteller, and this one is another interesting volume for history buffs.
February 8, 2024
An improvement over the second book in a number of respects. To catch you up, the setting is this: Conrad Schwartz, an itinerant engineer, is accidentally transported back to twelfth century Poland, 10 years before he knows Attila is going to sack the country with his Mongol horde. He proceeds (with a little seed support of the anonymous time travel agency) to rise in status, position, wealth and prestige within the local nobility as he works hard to modernize the country's infrastructure in the hopes of preparing to fight off the Mongols.
The first two books established the setting and what his goal was - to prepare Poland to repulse the Mongol invasion - but they moved at a very slow pace, often going into great detail describing the engineering challenges of recreating 20th century technologies without the industrial and machining infrastructures as well as the solutions to those challenges. After two books, only two years have passed, which led me to anticipate gritting my teeth for another eight volumes. But in The Radiant Warrior, Frankowski finally picks up the pace a bit: three or four years pass during the course of this one book. For most of that time, Conrad works to get the war production economy in motion. This involves so many tasks over such a long period that most of the tasks we are thankfully spared from an in-depth presentation, by the introduction of some Khazakh refugee artisans who are able, eventually, to train teams of people to do the necessary tasks that either Conrad or Frankowski doesn't know how to do and so are necessarily glossed over in the narrative. But Conrad is very busy in that time: first he creates a new base 12 numbering system and a system of standard measures based on the new numbers (Frankowski doesn't short-change us here; he's actually drawn up detailed charts&graphs of all the measurements - with conversion tables! - which he thoughtfully includes in ten pages of appendices after the narrative). He designs hot air balloons, creates the Boy Scouts organization, sets them to creating fixed-wing aircraft, creates the post office (expanded from the couriers serving his Playboy clubs), designs and builds a copper mine/refinery/forge, designs and builds a coal mine, a mechanism for mass-producing coal, and coal-burning stoves, designs and builds settlements to serve both of these installations as well as a separate community for the Khazar refugees, designs and constructs battle wagons with mounted swivel guns, and designs and implements a military base and the army training to go with it. In the midst of all that, he slays a bunch of Inquisitors who were about to burn a bevy of women accused of witchcraft, is given one of the Khazar's daughters (described as easily the most beautiful woman he's ever seen) as a slave after she dances the seven veils for him, marries off a bunch of his ladies-in-waiting, provokes his primary detractor into having a fatal heart attack, sees a priest's wife naked (she's the second most beautiful woman he's seen) after she slaughters her husband but before he essentially gifts her to his liege, learns a bit more about the genetically engineered intelligent dog-horse Anna as she starts to asexually reproduce, and is promoted to Baron. The fast pace, while necessary, is also somewhat frustrating, because the glossing-over of various details feels cheap at times.
The closest thing we get to an unified narrative is actually told from Piotr's point of view. Readers of earlier books will recall that Piotr is a skinny short kid who is a natural with numbers (apparently the base-12 numbering works well for him, too) and who has long been working as Conrad's accountant and money manager. Piotr is completely besotten with Krystyanna, one of Conrad's ladies in waiting who has been sleeping with him since she was a pre-teen. Throughout the book, Piotr tries to get the affection and approval of Krystyanna so they can be wed, but she repeatedly rebuffs his advances with apparent revulsion, and three of those times she immediately goes off and gets knocked up by Conrad.
But a lot of the book - and most of the second half - is concerned with how well the first class of the army training school is developing into trained, obedient killing machines. Piotr ends up joining them, and he - clearly the least of them - manages to survive basic training and ends up getting in a contrived fight with a fully-armored knight while he is stark naked. Of course he wins that fight, aptly demonstrating that Conrad's efforts are succeeding at revolutionizing combat. The "Radiant Warrior" of the title refers to the graduates of the first class, who have a graduation ceremony involving a vigil and the graduates going up on a hill above a foggy valley so that they can witness their glory.
This third book still suffers as the previous ones did from a lack of a sense of the protagonist - Conrad - as a real person, with any kind of emotional reality, but it has improved on The High-Tech Knight in its presentation of women...at least a very little bit. Years pass in this book, and by the end of The Radiant Warrior, the girls are now all fully-grown women of fifteen, sixteen, maybe even seventeen whole years of age. Conrad marries them off, one by one, to the men who become his vassal knights, and - here's the improvement - no mention is made of Conrad shipping in new pre-teens to replace the older girls in his household. For me, that was a significant change and made the whole book a lot more bearable. You still have to cross your eyes and hold your nose to stomach the idea that this man never had any qualms about sex with girls who would be severely underage in his 20th century origin. It's apparently easier to revolutionize the entire infrastructures of science and industry than to improve the social and physical conditions of women.
The book does an accomplished job of imparting urgency to deal with the Mongol invasion: both that Conrad is mentioning it daily, and that, with the Khazars, we have eye-witness accounts of the implacable merciless savagery of the Mongols. Those things go a long way to help us deal with the breakneck pace of the book: "Yeah, yeah, you've had it rough. Tell me again about how one Mongol lined everyone up in a queue, and then proceeded to go down the line, beheading each in turn, with everyone so terrified of him they couldn't act to defend themselves." The Mongols are bad news, indeed, so we're begging Conrad to get on with it and complete his preparation work so that he can defeat the Mongols when they invade.
There comes a time in every good role-playing game campaign where the game is no longer about character promotion - further "leveling" your character so that you access better and cooler powers - but is instead about building: building a fortress, founding a village, creating an empire, developing new trade routes, designing a new spaceships, and so forth. The part of me that finds that kind of game really compelling is the part that really enjoys these books, because they're all about that kind of creation. They're often fun, and mostly quick reads.
The first two books established the setting and what his goal was - to prepare Poland to repulse the Mongol invasion - but they moved at a very slow pace, often going into great detail describing the engineering challenges of recreating 20th century technologies without the industrial and machining infrastructures as well as the solutions to those challenges. After two books, only two years have passed, which led me to anticipate gritting my teeth for another eight volumes. But in The Radiant Warrior, Frankowski finally picks up the pace a bit: three or four years pass during the course of this one book. For most of that time, Conrad works to get the war production economy in motion. This involves so many tasks over such a long period that most of the tasks we are thankfully spared from an in-depth presentation, by the introduction of some Khazakh refugee artisans who are able, eventually, to train teams of people to do the necessary tasks that either Conrad or Frankowski doesn't know how to do and so are necessarily glossed over in the narrative. But Conrad is very busy in that time: first he creates a new base 12 numbering system and a system of standard measures based on the new numbers (Frankowski doesn't short-change us here; he's actually drawn up detailed charts&graphs of all the measurements - with conversion tables! - which he thoughtfully includes in ten pages of appendices after the narrative). He designs hot air balloons, creates the Boy Scouts organization, sets them to creating fixed-wing aircraft, creates the post office (expanded from the couriers serving his Playboy clubs), designs and builds a copper mine/refinery/forge, designs and builds a coal mine, a mechanism for mass-producing coal, and coal-burning stoves, designs and builds settlements to serve both of these installations as well as a separate community for the Khazar refugees, designs and constructs battle wagons with mounted swivel guns, and designs and implements a military base and the army training to go with it. In the midst of all that, he slays a bunch of Inquisitors who were about to burn a bevy of women accused of witchcraft, is given one of the Khazar's daughters (described as easily the most beautiful woman he's ever seen) as a slave after she dances the seven veils for him, marries off a bunch of his ladies-in-waiting, provokes his primary detractor into having a fatal heart attack, sees a priest's wife naked (she's the second most beautiful woman he's seen) after she slaughters her husband but before he essentially gifts her to his liege, learns a bit more about the genetically engineered intelligent dog-horse Anna as she starts to asexually reproduce, and is promoted to Baron. The fast pace, while necessary, is also somewhat frustrating, because the glossing-over of various details feels cheap at times.
The closest thing we get to an unified narrative is actually told from Piotr's point of view. Readers of earlier books will recall that Piotr is a skinny short kid who is a natural with numbers (apparently the base-12 numbering works well for him, too) and who has long been working as Conrad's accountant and money manager. Piotr is completely besotten with Krystyanna, one of Conrad's ladies in waiting who has been sleeping with him since she was a pre-teen. Throughout the book, Piotr tries to get the affection and approval of Krystyanna so they can be wed, but she repeatedly rebuffs his advances with apparent revulsion, and three of those times she immediately goes off and gets knocked up by Conrad.
But a lot of the book - and most of the second half - is concerned with how well the first class of the army training school is developing into trained, obedient killing machines. Piotr ends up joining them, and he - clearly the least of them - manages to survive basic training and ends up getting in a contrived fight with a fully-armored knight while he is stark naked. Of course he wins that fight, aptly demonstrating that Conrad's efforts are succeeding at revolutionizing combat. The "Radiant Warrior" of the title refers to the graduates of the first class, who have a graduation ceremony involving a vigil and the graduates going up on a hill above a foggy valley so that they can witness their glory.
This third book still suffers as the previous ones did from a lack of a sense of the protagonist - Conrad - as a real person, with any kind of emotional reality, but it has improved on The High-Tech Knight in its presentation of women...at least a very little bit. Years pass in this book, and by the end of The Radiant Warrior, the girls are now all fully-grown women of fifteen, sixteen, maybe even seventeen whole years of age. Conrad marries them off, one by one, to the men who become his vassal knights, and - here's the improvement - no mention is made of Conrad shipping in new pre-teens to replace the older girls in his household. For me, that was a significant change and made the whole book a lot more bearable. You still have to cross your eyes and hold your nose to stomach the idea that this man never had any qualms about sex with girls who would be severely underage in his 20th century origin. It's apparently easier to revolutionize the entire infrastructures of science and industry than to improve the social and physical conditions of women.
The book does an accomplished job of imparting urgency to deal with the Mongol invasion: both that Conrad is mentioning it daily, and that, with the Khazars, we have eye-witness accounts of the implacable merciless savagery of the Mongols. Those things go a long way to help us deal with the breakneck pace of the book: "Yeah, yeah, you've had it rough. Tell me again about how one Mongol lined everyone up in a queue, and then proceeded to go down the line, beheading each in turn, with everyone so terrified of him they couldn't act to defend themselves." The Mongols are bad news, indeed, so we're begging Conrad to get on with it and complete his preparation work so that he can defeat the Mongols when they invade.
There comes a time in every good role-playing game campaign where the game is no longer about character promotion - further "leveling" your character so that you access better and cooler powers - but is instead about building: building a fortress, founding a village, creating an empire, developing new trade routes, designing a new spaceships, and so forth. The part of me that finds that kind of game really compelling is the part that really enjoys these books, because they're all about that kind of creation. They're often fun, and mostly quick reads.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 18, 2025
Yah, let me train a medieval army with guns and modern tactics, add in a healthy dose of religious fanaticism and point them at the Mongol Hoard. What could go wrong?
December 15, 2020
This book is a good read about 95% of the time. But the remaining 5% do nothing but reveal what kind of a sh!tstain on humanity the author is. A certain level of Misogyny can be endured when you read a story taking place in 13th century Poland (they were), but openly glorifying pedophilia and sexual abuse (even though that was a part of daily life back then and there) is disgusting.
I would have preferred this story had been written by someone slightly more grounded in reality with the rest of us since that would have had a completely different and critical approach to these topics.
I would have preferred this story had been written by someone slightly more grounded in reality with the rest of us since that would have had a completely different and critical approach to these topics.
January 27, 2013
I actually find the stripclubs less believable than the genetically engineered horse that has the intelligence of a human and reproduces asexually on-demand. Even so, this was as enjoyable as the first 2 books. My favorite part was how he started building the army by putting medieval riff-raff through boot camp.
July 22, 2019
Ugh, can't get past the sexism anymore. And I am getting eye strain from all that eye rolling, so it is time to let it go.
June 1, 2024
Not my favorite Conrad Stargard book so far, it gets a little too bogged down in his magical skill of constantly reinventing things. The army element was interesting, though that was more so due to how interesting Conrad "supernatural" elements were in the end. The low rating is for how much I hated what they made Krystyana go through, she deserves so much better.
September 6, 2021
Still great!
I love this series. I read it years ago and now reading it again it is still as good as the first time.
I love this series. I read it years ago and now reading it again it is still as good as the first time.
January 25, 2016
Incredibly good series. The baisc man-out-of-time story line but very involved. Excellent characters and story. Highly recommended.
August 25, 2023
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.
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.
December 31, 2018
The third instalment of the series, The Radiant Warrior, carries on from the first two quite nicely. The time of the Mongol invasion is getting closer and Conrad’s social preparations are almost in place.
With his industrial base almost complete, Conrad turns his attention towards building an army, starting with the Invincible Order of Radiant Knights, who will be his cadre to train the others.
This book was interesting in that Conrad meets a group of Moslem artisans who help him learn several trades that were lacking, such as paper makers, glass blowers, and several others. As well, he is “gifted” the leader’s beautiful daughter, Cilicia, who helps bridge the communication gap between the two societies.
One nice plot twist was that while Conrad fathered three children by his first love interest, Krystyana, in the end, it was his faithful accountant, Piotr Kulczynski, who ended up getting knighted for killing Conrad’s nemesis, Baron Stefan. In a clear demonstration of the value of his training program, a naked Piotr, the runt of the litter of trainees, kills an armoured and mounted Sir Stefan.
Conrad is getting closer to the series climax and is starting to develop the mass produced armour and weapons that he will need to fight. It should be fun.
Overall, the series is a fun read. The only issue that I see is that the sex and sexist parts will not appeal to everyone and is clearly a bit dated. But it is a bit tongue in cheek, so I thought that it fit in with the story.
Worth the the time spent reading.
With his industrial base almost complete, Conrad turns his attention towards building an army, starting with the Invincible Order of Radiant Knights, who will be his cadre to train the others.
This book was interesting in that Conrad meets a group of Moslem artisans who help him learn several trades that were lacking, such as paper makers, glass blowers, and several others. As well, he is “gifted” the leader’s beautiful daughter, Cilicia, who helps bridge the communication gap between the two societies.
One nice plot twist was that while Conrad fathered three children by his first love interest, Krystyana, in the end, it was his faithful accountant, Piotr Kulczynski, who ended up getting knighted for killing Conrad’s nemesis, Baron Stefan. In a clear demonstration of the value of his training program, a naked Piotr, the runt of the litter of trainees, kills an armoured and mounted Sir Stefan.
Conrad is getting closer to the series climax and is starting to develop the mass produced armour and weapons that he will need to fight. It should be fun.
Overall, the series is a fun read. The only issue that I see is that the sex and sexist parts will not appeal to everyone and is clearly a bit dated. But it is a bit tongue in cheek, so I thought that it fit in with the story.
Worth the the time spent reading.
March 31, 2020
I've read all three in the series so far and I have liked them but I believe I am the exception. This is not so much an adventure as it is an exercise in ingenuity. Sir Conrad, the hero, creates an industrial kingdom (including mills, mines, presses, machine shops etc) from essentially nothing. He is marooned with the clothes on his back and some seeds. I like his descriptions of inventiveness but I think most people would find them boring after a while. Also I'm not an engineer like the author so I have no idea if any of his ideas would actually work. One other proviso: the hero has a penchant for young girls. How young? Statutory rape young these days. But of course the story takes place in the 13th century so it's ok (but also boring).
October 2, 2018
A good continuation of the series although the fact that Conrad can design just about anything is starting to get unbelievable. No one can figure out that many different things. Building lightweight engines for airplanes that far in the past is quite out of belief. The army system of shouting at people until they give in and do what you want really doesn't work in my opinion. It is done in the belief that that is the only way that people learn and in a society like this one, people would desert. It is still an okay story and if you are okay with Anna, you might buy the rest.
September 7, 2021
I tried
I tried to leave a 3 star rating for this book it would have been a 4 star but one chapter near the end ruined the book for me.
It left such a depressed feeling in my gut that I couldn't sleep and had to come back hear and change my rating from a 3 down to 1 star.
I tried to leave a 3 star rating for this book it would have been a 4 star but one chapter near the end ruined the book for me.
It left such a depressed feeling in my gut that I couldn't sleep and had to come back hear and change my rating from a 3 down to 1 star.
October 6, 2024
Amazing tale
What an amazing book. Of course there are other, similar time travel stories, I’ve read quite a few of them, but this one seems to be one of the best. What a shame,e that Leo is not able to continue his writing. I encourage you to read some of his other amazing tales.
What an amazing book. Of course there are other, similar time travel stories, I’ve read quite a few of them, but this one seems to be one of the best. What a shame,e that Leo is not able to continue his writing. I encourage you to read some of his other amazing tales.
July 16, 2017
Fun book. Not nearly as sexist as portrayed by some. Some will be offended though.
Interesting time travel bit. Includes the first 3 books.
Interesting time travel bit. Includes the first 3 books.
March 21, 2018
What a fun book, loved it every second.
January 10, 2020
Again a fun read.
February 27, 2020
Could not get into it. After spending an entire page describing the buxom bartender, I couldn't go on.
June 20, 2020
The preparations continue. The key"center" book showing the years of prep toward beating the Mongols. Exciting episodes of dram mixed in.
January 30, 2021
I did not enjoy the start of the book and this did not finish. I felt that female characters were treated very poorly and did not enjoy the main characters perspective.
August 31, 2021
The story of Conrad Stargard continues in this, the third volume of the series. In this book he continues to build his resource base in 13th century Poland in preparation for the expected Mongol invasion, increasing the number of people in his settlement and establishing a military training academy. He deals with some of his more persistent enemies from the earlier books and is promoted from Knight to Baron. All of which is interesting reading and kept my attention. Unfortunately the more unsavoury elements of the previous books are also present, and indeed become worse. So, while I (mostly) enjoyed the book and am keen to find out what happens next, I am really in two minds about recommending it.
October 20, 2022
Though very obviously similar to previous works, it was enjoyable to see how things extended. I enjoyed carrying this on.d
January 3, 2024
Should have purchased the rest of the series, when I bought book 2, so I had to wait and all I could think of was the end of book 2 for 2 weeks.
September 16, 2012
The third book has some of my favorite scenes and kicks off the work to get to the battle with the mongols. My one complaint is the third book starts off a little slow, but makes up for it in the last third of the book. Still, that slow start cost it a start.
Awesome parts:
-The love story that starts out with Boris Novachek losing his hands. I guess I am a romantic at heart.
-Hell...the warrior school is started.
-Piotr's fight with Baron Stefan. I love the fight and what comes after.
-Piotr's love for Krystyana finally gets realized. The "fight/love" scene after he is knighted is one of my favorite parts of the third book.
I am looking forward to re-reading the next set of books, but I am not looking forward to the pain in the butt of getting them onto my devices from Baen books. What a horrible design. Just sell them as a .mobi file please!!!!
Awesome parts:
-The love story that starts out with Boris Novachek losing his hands. I guess I am a romantic at heart.
-Hell...the warrior school is started.
-Piotr's fight with Baron Stefan. I love the fight and what comes after.
-Piotr's love for Krystyana finally gets realized. The "fight/love" scene after he is knighted is one of my favorite parts of the third book.
I am looking forward to re-reading the next set of books, but I am not looking forward to the pain in the butt of getting them onto my devices from Baen books. What a horrible design. Just sell them as a .mobi file please!!!!
October 5, 2014
I love books that take a character and move him out of his time and place such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or The Chronicles of Narnia. This is one of my favorites. I love the world building. I could do without all the sex with nubile young women, but I'm not offended by it.
Time for Conrad to get a modern army and weapons put together. The mongols will be overrunning Poland very soon.
Time for Conrad to get a modern army and weapons put together. The mongols will be overrunning Poland very soon.
April 19, 2015
With the author taking the unusual step of dispensing with a plot entirely and just droning on about factories all the time, there's nothing to distract from the increasingly rabid misogyny and bizarre obsession with very young girls. Going back in time and opening a bunch of topless bars staffed by teenage girls makes you an arsehole in my opinion, not a hero. Gave up 4/5ths of the way through. Ugh.
June 23, 2016
I loved the first book, enjoyed the second and am struggling to finish the third.
I didnt mind the Gary Stu aspect because its escapism but we've got the point where you only have to read the first and last paragraph of every chapter to follow whats because there is no struggle, no interference from the church, the public, the aristocracy, he never doesnt know what to do. There's no story anymore.
Also when he gave the new girl to the Duke, make me feel a bit icky.
I didnt mind the Gary Stu aspect because its escapism but we've got the point where you only have to read the first and last paragraph of every chapter to follow whats because there is no struggle, no interference from the church, the public, the aristocracy, he never doesnt know what to do. There's no story anymore.
Also when he gave the new girl to the Duke, make me feel a bit icky.
April 7, 2013
Third book in the Baen omnibus ebook edition Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior.
Stranded in 13th century Poland, Conrad uses his 20th century engineering know-how to prepare the Poles for the Mongol invasion. Humor and danger are frequent as Conrad does his best to adapt to the times and make the culture a little more egalitarian.
Stranded in 13th century Poland, Conrad uses his 20th century engineering know-how to prepare the Poles for the Mongol invasion. Humor and danger are frequent as Conrad does his best to adapt to the times and make the culture a little more egalitarian.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews