Viking tales
|
I agree with the first review. It started very slowly and it seemed like one of those books that you could put down and easily forget about. But I didn't give up and after the first 8 or nine chapters the story got much better and the life of the mine charector began to unfold. Once past the slow start it gets much better and by the end of the final chapters you just have to order the next to books so that you get find out what happens.
All together it is quite a good read. And I would recomend it to anyone who likes a good historical novel.
|
|
Short on story, long on education.
|
I'm in total agreement with the other three star reviewers here. I'd write this book up as Fictional History rather than Historical Fiction! For example, Bernard Cornwell, with whom Severin bears comparison, creates and intriguing character and sets a great quest against a compelling historical narrative. Severin seems to do the opposite - the historical detail is marvellous (and it's obvious that Severin has a genuine knowledge of the Viking era), but the quest and the character just aren't there. Everything else is great - his writing is great, dialogue is good, settings are excellent, but the paucity of plot is very evident.
Case in point - what does Thorgils want? Err, dunno! He seems to just be a passive observer in the story. He gets shunted from one place to another, but what he wants and where he's going simply don't exist. Severin sems to have just dropped in a few scenarios to beef up the 'story' - a war scene, some supernatural goings-on, a shipwreck etc etc, but these seem to be there just because they can be and not for any real plot development. The meat of a plot is desire - what does the character want and how is he going to get it? Thorgils just seems to get blown by the wind, and as such, so is Severin's plot.
In short, for educational reading, this is outstanding. It's like a enjoyable historical textbook, but there is barely meat on the bones. I will read the other two in the trilogy, but that's only because I've already got them. However, if I hadn't, this first effort wouldn't have me rushing to Waterstones to get the next two. Difficult to choose stars here - 3 seems a bit harsh but 4 is flattering. Three and a half!
|
|
|
It's different
|
This book was an enjoyable read an i will be buying the next two books in the series. However i have recently been reading the Roman Legion series by Simon Scarrow, The Caesar series by Conn Iggulden and the Alexander series by Valerio Masssimo Manfredi and i much preferred these books to Severin's effort, and would recommend those books before reading this one. Maybe it's because the story is wrote in first person that causes a distraction. however, the stroy seems to be accurate and is very interesting to read about the vikings in a fiction story as there is not to many about at the moment and it does make a nice change to read about other stuff than romans. This first volume does not have much fighting action in compared to Igguldon or Scarrow, so that is going to be your choice whether that is good or bad, personally i found the story a bit dull at times and needed a couple more fights in, but thats just my opinion. The first main struggle with the book is the amount of names that are thrown at you in the first 100 pages or so which is extremely confusing, as many of the characters are not mentioned again throughout the rest of the first novel (i hav'nt read the others yet so the may show up in there).
I would recommend reading this book as it was an enjoyable read after the first 100 page struggle, however if you haven't tried reading Manfredi, Scarrow etc, i would try there first as their books are more enjoyable, but still give this book a chance.
|
|
|
A good book, an interesting read, but not spectacular!
|
Odinn's child is the first in Tim Severin's Viking series featuring the character Thorgils Leifsson. The book is a fascinating account of Norse culture and beliefs. It gives great insight into the way of life in Northern Europe at the beggining of the eleventh century. The tale follows the central character's rootless early years through growing up in Iceland and Greenland, attempted settlement on the North American coast and slavery in Ireland.
Although Severin goes into great depth and detail in this novel, he fails to grip the reader in the same way that Bernard Cornwell and Robert Low do, in their Viking tales. At times the book even threatens to bore the reader, but it generally just manages to save itself in the nick of time with brief moments of intriguing action.
On the whole this book is worth a read, but it is a huge distance away from being the greatest Viking saga written in recent years.
|
|
|
Great Moments in the Norse Sagas
|
Tim Severin has cobbled together great scenes from Norse saga history to construct a novel which takes his fictionalized protagonist, Thorgils Leifsson (illegitimate and somewhat mysterious son of Leif Eriksson, according to Erik the Red's Saga), from his earliest days as a babe in Orkney and Iceland to childhood in Greenland and Vinland and then back to the European world in the last days of the Viking era.
From carefully selected and fleshed out scenes from Eyrbyggja Saga, when the mysterious, uncanny and somewhat overbearing Thorgunna comes to live briefly among the Icelanders, to the various North American expeditions described in the two extant Vinland sagas (Erik the Red's Saga and the Tale of the Greeenlanders), Severin manages to insert young Thorgils into a series of big moments in viking history. We follow him back to Iceland, where he insinuates himself into the final legal battle in the escalating feuds of Njal's Saga, and then takes up with the shrewd Icelandic chieftain, Snorri the Priest, and gets to participate in one of Snorri's famous escapades when he cleans out a nest of local vikings by force of arms (recounted in Eyrbyggja Saga). Then our hero, Thorgils, hooks up once more with Kari Solmundarsson from Njal's Saga. Kari is the sole survivor of the attack which burned Njal and his wife, along with their sons, daughter, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren to death in Njal's farmhouse. Kari, who alone escaped the carnage in the black smoke of the flames, swears vengeance on the burners and Thorgils gets to go along and witness some of the famous viking's feats of arms as Kari pursues his single minded objective. Then it's on to the Battle of Clontarf, from the Orkneyinga Saga, as King Sigtrygg Silkybeard, Norse king of Dublin, casts his lot in war against Brian Boru, High King of the Irish in yet another famous viking moment. Along the way, Thorgils manages to cross paths, albeit briefly, with the infamous Grettir the Strong from Grettir's Saga who is, of course, Iceland's most renowned and admired fugitive, the hero cum anti-hero par excellence.
If you know the sagas, there are few surprises here though Severin does a nice job of fleshing out details and patching the disparate episodes together in a convincing narrative skein. Unlike Severin, of course, the saga writers were famously sparing with words and Severin makes up for that with lovingly layered on detail all his own. To make it all hang together Severin must naturally make some choices and so he changes the details here and there to suit his story. Fredyis' famous killings in Vinland, for instance, are altered slightly though Severin provides a very plausible description of how these come about.
He also chooses to accept the reference in Erik the Red's Saga to Thorgils' presence in Iceland "a year before" the Frodriver Marvels, thereby equating the Thorgunna identified as Thorgils' mother, Leif's summer paramour in the Hebrides, with the Thorgunna who came to Iceland a few years later and was supposedly responsible for the hauntings remembered in the Frodriver Marvels described in Eyrbyggja Saga. That the Thorgunna of Frodriver fame is apparently a much older woman than a young man like Leif might have been attracted to, and is not mentioned as having a son, Thorgils, in Eyrbyggja Saga, is disregarded as Severin sticks with this somewhat questionable reference in Erik the Red's Saga. Still, he makes his decision convincing by suggesting this Thorgunna might have been something of a nymphomaniac.
Overall, Severin does a more than creditable job and his writing is solid, though I thought the story started falling apart after Clontarf when our hero finds himself on the loose in Ireland for a number of years. The Irish episodes felt too didactic to me, even compared to the episodes lifted from the sagas. Indeed, in the end the story is little more than a series of these famous saga events strung together through the artifice of an old Norse monk who apparently wrote it all down as a personal memoir, while hiding out in a Christian monastery, and who secreted his manuscript among the official ones in the scriptorium. Well, it's an interesting notion and it provides a credible basis for the story's otherwise remarkable coincidences.
Overall I liked this one though I found it slowgoing in places, particularly in the final third of the tale, and could often predict what was next as one great saga scene was telegraphed into the next. If you are not that familiar with the sagas and you like Norse tales, this one is probably a good choice.
(If you've an interest, at all, in the saga-as-novel, here are a few quite good ones -- Saga: A Novel Of Medieval Iceland by Jeff Janoda; The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley; Two Ravens by Cecelia Holland; Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard; Styrbiorn the Strong by E. R. Eddison; Gunnar's Daughter by Sigrid Undset; and, probably the all-time best, The Golden Warrior by Hope Muntz. And one more if you still want more, this one by me, The King of Vinland's Saga.)
SWM
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada