Book Review: Shield of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman

This was a very good book. I enjoyed it from the first sentence to the last, and that isn’t usual for me. The story isn’t all that demanding, in a “try to pull all the pieces together” but it is enjoyable, funny, serious, scary, thoughtful, and interesting.

The main character, 11-year-old Alix/Alex sneaks away from her home, Wanthwaite, with her friend to see the traveling players on the day that her castle is sacked and her parents and all their knights are killed. The lone survivors of the sack are her wolf, Lance, who was locked in a storage shed, and the cook who was hiding in an underground tunnel. The rest of the novel is Alix/Alex’s adventures to get the land back.

In order to do so, she must dress as a boy for her protection and mobility. This allows her to travel unchaperoned, though she does happen upon a protector, Enoch a wily Scot, who sticks with her throughout the novel. She expects to meet King Henry in London only to find out he has recently died, so she must then figure a way to get to King Richard on his crusade to Jerusalem. She manages to do that, and the king is so taken with the boy Alex that she is made a page and the king personally agrees to be her protector and provide her land upon her majority.

The tension in the novel resides between Alix and Enoch, who also wants Wanthwaite. The two are constantly parlaying to gain access to the land, and this tension resides up until the very end of the novel. There are some really great, comic moments between these two characters due to the fact that Alix doesn’t really know anything about being a boy but must rely on her intelligence and wits to get her through. Her innocence also allows for some misunderstandings to take place—some of which aren’t funny because they cause problems as Alix acts inappropriately and causes danger for herself or others as a result.

STL is the first in a trilogy about the character Alix and her love of her property and the experiences she must go through to keep and maintain her inheritance. In a time when women are seen as chattel and have few, if any, legal recourses, this is a rather daunting task, but the Alix is strong. I cannot wait to see what happens in the next two books!