Ok, so looking for some interesting sci-fi novels to read, your humble fabulous stumbled upon Leo Frankowski's epic tale of Polish engineer who accidentally travelled back to the 13th century Poland (more specifically, to the year of Our Lord: 1231) and decided that he'll use all of his technical expertise to try and thwart the evil Mongol plot to invade and annihilate his country in ten years' time. Will he succede? I haven't read all the novels yet but it was already mentioned in the first or the second book that yes, he succeded... and anyway, the novels are not really about ''will he'' or ''won't he''.
Our main protagonist is Conrad Stargard (or Conrad Schwartz, as he's called in the 20th century, a name he doesn't want to keep in the Middle Ages as it sounds too German and Polish folk might not like it). You can see pretty soon that he's a typical Mary Sue type of a character, though, some minor redeeming qualities still make him somewhat a bearable one.
What Works
The author, Leo Frankowski, an American of Polish descent was a successful engineer and inventor, so he obviously knew what he was writing about. English not being my native tongue and me not being well versed in technical matters, it was often hard to follow the protagonist dicussing this or another device that had to be manufactured for the first windmill in the world and other technical wonders he wanted to build, but I'd always been fascinated with stories about modern people going to the past to change the course of history and as I'm a big fan of Mark Twain and I've read his novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", the grandfather of such stories, I found a familiar joy of discovery seeing how Frankowski's Medieval Poland was gradually turned into a fairly modern country and how the lives of people were improved.
That's probably the biggest strength of the series. Frankowski never intends to give much social commentary on modern or Medieval society (though there is some) as Twain did, he never intends to develop characters or explore their interactions much- he gives us a straightforward manual of how to change 13th century Poland into at least a 19th century world superpower just by using an engineer's brain and, as a result, allows us witness the transformation of society as a whole. We know that he'll defeat his Mongols but the happy ending is not what's important here, the characters are not that important too. What's important is that we have a possibility to look and marvel at how the series ooze ingeniutity and intelect.
Another good thing is that the author knows his history, there aren't many gaffes in that respect too. He understands the time period and doesn't try to portray Middle Ages as either filled with filthy idiots with rotten teeth or charming princes dancing polka with well dressed and cheerful peasants as Disney would want you to believe. Though, there are some small points I'll eave to touch upon later.
Overall, Leo Frankowski is a good storyteller and the novels are easy to read, the language used by the characters coresponds to the time period and you can see that Frankowski has a really great imagination.
What Doesn't Work
The most serious flaw, as I already mentioned, is that Conrad Stargard is obviously a man Leo Frankowski wants to be himself. Conrad is not a character, he's an ode to the engineer Leo Frankowski. Conrad is all that Leo wants to be- tall, strong, great with women, adored by everybody, saviour of his homeland, Poland. It's not like that's a bad thing that an author wants to write a book about his ancestors' homeland becoming the world superpower, that he wants his character to be adored and praised by everybody, but after a while it becomes tiring as you wish someone would come along and make things really difficult for his Conrad, make him admit that he's not perfect, make him more like a human being and not like a future superhuman accompanied by a genetically engineer intelligent horse and a sword made by using technologies from future (and by future I do mean future, not the 20th century).
Additionally, the author has said that his works are hated by ''homosexuals, liberals and feminists'' and it's no surprize why. The fact that he's an old sexist bastard, God rest his soul, is clear already from the beginning. It's one thing to say that in the Middle Ages 14 year old girls were forced to marry or have sex with grown men and the knights could take any commoner for their sexual pleasure (and it's true). Another thing is to put Conrad, a man from the 20th century, in bed with a 14 year old and then state that it's ok because of Medieval customs. Sure, if the story requires your 20th century man to have sex with a 14 year old in order not to offend some nobles there or whatever, I'm not against it- after all it's literature, it's art but IMHO, after the said act one should at least express the feeling that it's not quite right, while Conrad fully embraces and advocates the lifestyle, bedding every teenage girl he comes across. Women, in general, are stock characters there. It's hard to find one woman in the series that wouldn't be a dumb damsel in distress...
To continue about sexism in the series, Conrad says that there was no ''nudity taboo'' in 13th century Poland, that people of both sexes often bathed together and walked around semi-nude, humping like rabbits all the time. Now, I'm not an expert on Medieval Poland but in the 13th century Poland had already been baptized for 2 centuries and Catholic Church was pretty strong there. Even if pagan customs still survived among peasants (and maybe there really was no nudity taboo among Polish pagans) the nobility would surely follow Church's rules and yeah, it was possible that some lord would have naked ''wenches'' run around in his castle but I found it hard to believe that it would be a normal situation among 13th century Polish nobles. Also, later on in the series Conrad ''invents'' semi-legal bigamy, that was as if accepted by the Church, but that's obviously pretty far fetched. All in all this only shows that in Frankowski or Conrad's mind, woman's place was and still is in the kitchen... Sort of funny, if not tragic, is Conrad's introduction of bare breasted virgin waitresses on high heels to the inns he owns... I guess a thing like that was a real improvement and would no doubt help him beat his Mongols and make Poland the most civilized country of the time.
There are some other minor historical quibbles, for instance the appearance of Castilian inquisitors in Poland in 1230s, who killed some villagers because they thought they were witches. The problem with this - the witch hunt was never that widespread in Poland or Eastern European countries and it only started in Southern Europe around the time so it's hard to imagine that some Castilian knights or whomever would roam through Europe and stumble upon Poland just to burn some witches there (on who's authority?). The Mongols were amped up just to show the reader how cruel and successful they've been and how hard a task awaits Conrad. Well, no doubt Mongols were a great, brute force at that time, but given the fact that Conrad started to build his industrial base to make future weapons (like introducing cannons and early guns) and the historical fact that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania successfully defeated Mongols already in 1333 and 1339, it's clear that the great enemy was defeatable even using real life 13th century military forces not having any future technologies.
What surprized me is how little resistance his ideas had among Polish nobility. There was a local baron who didn't like him or his inventions and called our hero a "warlock" but Conrad (and not even him but others conveniantly, as not to harm the image the of great and noble Conrad Stargard) got rid of him and his son. Also, people generally had no problem accepting that he's from future and it's funny as time travel would be a fairly new concept in Middle Ages. He defended his attitude towards women and established order in the way that if he tried to change the society, there would be resistance and it's understandable but at the same time there was a surprizing lack of real, big resistance to his new ideas and technologies. The mob usually doesn't like any big change, be it for better of worse...
In any case, there are still some novels to read and I don't know if I'll read them all. The novelty is starting to wear off and sexism and Conrad's God-like stature is, at times, too ridiculous to ignore. Conrad (and Frankowski) also believe in military and that's understandable taking into account that he has to stop his Mongols, but accidental kiling of recruits during the training process and super-soldier mentality building are not the things I like that much.
The first book was great and it didn't contain that much ridiculous sexism and Conrad as an all-knowing demigod, the following books gradually become worse and worse, at least in that aspects. The novelty of Conrad's new inventions is wearing off and more ridiculous sexism and patting oneself on the back is on the way... Sorta hard to rate it, on the one hand one can learn a lot about engineering process, Medieval customs and the series certainly have a distinct feel, on the other hand there are these already mentioned not that pleasant things that bother me.
7/10
