Booklog 70/2017 - Jan Guillou: The Road to Jerusalem – Knight Templar 1

[jacey]

This is the first part of a trilogy, translated from the Swedish. It’s a fictionalized story of real-life historical character Arn Magnusson, based around historical events before Sweden was a united single country. This is Arn’s early life, much of it set in a monastery where Arn grows up to be both pious and naïve, so when he’s sent back to his family he knows so little of the world that he manages to sleep with two sisters (consecutively, not together – it’s not that sort of book) which gets him into hot water with the church, especially since the first one is a scheming minx and the second one turns out to be the love of his life. The pace is measured (OK, OK, it’s slow) but there’s interesting detail and the Nordic background is fascinating.