I defy anyone to read this book without wanting to immediately strap on some sandals, find a time machine, and head off to tramp around Central Asia in the 13th century. It's a favourite book of mine from childhood, and I was happy to find that it stands up well to a re-read.

I love it most for:
1) Its sensitive portrayal of the relationships between people of different faiths. For a book nominally about a crusade, this is something it does very well.
2) The author's fantastic depiction of characters. To pick just one example, I could read an entire book about Li Pao the courteous, pacific, Chinese commissar of the westward-bound Mongol army who the travellers encounter in perilous circumstances on the steppes.
3) The gorgeous sense of place in the descriptions of the places and peoples Thomas, Brother James and Aubrey meet along their journey.
4) Thomas's quiet snark in his narration:

It was well known that Franks had an incurable habit of describing (for example) any army that could not be taken in at one glance as a confident ten thousand, by which sensible people understood something over five hundred men not in full retreat.

The book ends on a minor key, and I can't help wishing the journey could have continued (

Spoiler

I would have loved to see what Thomas made of Western Europe, if he'd had to take the diamond back to France

), but I was more satisfied with the quiet, happy ending this time than when I first read it over twenty years ago.