I first read this as a teenage boy. Maybe 13 or 14. I wouldn’t say that the characters are three dimensionsional or anything. I wouldn’t say the plot is any great innovation in literature, but I do reread it about once a year.

But what the book does is to tell a fish-out-of-water story and tell it well. It also plays on actual historic events to make a great hypothetical history of a popularly unknown era.

Oh. And I secretly hoped this would happen to me.