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A review by lory_enterenchanted
The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
3.0
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
Sort of interesting as a picture of medieval, pre-Christian Norway, but I didn't much enjoy spending time with the characters, or the fact that in their society robbing, killing, and raping everyone in sight was a way of life. The author strained to make her lead characters a bit nobler than that, but that only made them seem too good to be true, and I could not see what was so great about Harald to inspire such devotion. He just seemed like a megalomaniac.
The battle scenes generally left me confused as to what was going on, but I don't think this was a fault of the author's; I always have a hard time visualizing all the maneuvers and usually end up skimming. The writing style was decent and did not jolt me out of the story, as a lot of historical fiction does. I am somewhat curious to try the sequels and see how things develop, but they're not available from my e-library and I'm not interested enough to seek them out otherwise.
Sort of interesting as a picture of medieval, pre-Christian Norway, but I didn't much enjoy spending time with the characters, or the fact that in their society robbing, killing, and raping everyone in sight was a way of life. The author strained to make her lead characters a bit nobler than that, but that only made them seem too good to be true, and I could not see what was so great about Harald to inspire such devotion. He just seemed like a megalomaniac.
The battle scenes generally left me confused as to what was going on, but I don't think this was a fault of the author's; I always have a hard time visualizing all the maneuvers and usually end up skimming. The writing style was decent and did not jolt me out of the story, as a lot of historical fiction does. I am somewhat curious to try the sequels and see how things develop, but they're not available from my e-library and I'm not interested enough to seek them out otherwise.