The Longships

The Longships is an older book, written in Swedish originally by Frans G. Bengtsson, and, at times, it feels its age. The Longships is a work of historical fiction in which we follow the exploits of Rode Orm, a Viking, and his crew on a series of “adventures”. I use quotation marks around “adventures” because, frankly, several events barely qualify as even interesting. There are not very many historical fiction books about the Viking age, however, and if for that reason alone this one is worth at least listening to. If I had to describe this book in one sentence I would call it: Game of Thrones, the Beta version. You can tell what the author is going for but at times it really lags. There are many characters you simply do not need to know about and whose names are so close to other characters that even if one tried to remember them all you would be hard-pressed to do so. More than anything this reads like an updated version of Beowulf: characters consistently make long-winded speeches about their virtues and conquests while overall description is light, to say the least.

So if I was going to do this book I would pick up the audio version. It is well done and much easier to get through. Frankly, you could just skip to part four because the search for the gold is interesting and you do not need all the preceding back story. (I could have done without the quasi-magical portage beer, however.)

But, in the end, if you are a fan of Vikings you will find parts of the story enjoyable.

Score: 3/5

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