Book Review: Pathfinder Tales: The Crusader Road by Michael A. Stackpole

The Crusader Road by Michael A. Stackpole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first time reading a Pathfinder Tales novel, and I have DNFed this book before, mostly because I didn’t have to read it. But this book was kinda homey and good, nothing to run home about.

It’s about a family who’s been kicked out of court, and they are moving someplace in the woods to start over. It has a boy named Jerrad who is called “mouse” all the time, and he’s basically training to be a wizard, even though he didn’t think there were magic users in his family. In this book, we see Jerrad grow from the so-called “mouse” he was called multiple times by his sister, to someone who’s learning magic and would defend his family from the usual goblins and ogres. Even in the book, he kept putting himself down each time someone called him a hero, saying that he’s not like his father, who turns out, is a Broken Man (he doesn’t know it yet). He does fall in love with a girl named Nelsa Murdoon, and he saved a sprite from a cage. Honestly, I liked Jerrad’s growth, but throughout the book, he started to get on my nerve about “not being a hero” when he’s learning and doing these incredible things, but at least he stood up for the village to Lord Blackstone, and everyone got the whip (ow).

His sister, Serrana, got on my nerves as well. She complained the first part of the book, wanting to go home, believing that she doesn’t belong here. But after the goblins attacked, everything just…changed for her. She stopped complaining, picked up a bow and arrow, and became an archer. She fell in love with Creelisk’s son, and the two are becoming leaders in their own right.

Lady Tyressa, the star of the book in my eyes, is more of a leader than the two people that tried to over throw her. She took everything seriously, thinking of her people as they settled in Silverlake. She thought about everything carefully, and fought hard. She thought about her husband in this book as well, even though he came at the end of the book, but the way she took out the ogrekin was beautiful.

Now that bad guys were sneaky, typical bad guys that only wanted to take the Vishov family down. One kept lying, but he died in the goblin attack, and another was a lord that got the Vishov family lands who got poisoned by another lord (Lord Blackstone). All in all, this was a okay book, and I enjoyed it. I wish that Jerrad did more magic in the book, and I wish there was a book two, to see how the family is doing, but other than that it was good and I enjoyed it.

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