New Book from John Snow

Terje Hillesund aka John Snow is writing a
new book about Sigve the Awful, the
fifth book in The Viking Series

I am glad to tell that I'm writing a new book in the Saga of Sigve the Awful. It's the fifth book in the series, but I haven't decided on the title. War is building in the northern countries, and King Harald Greycloak of Norway sends Sigve to spy on his uncle, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark. In the brewing struggles, the opponents are many, and everyone seems ready to betray everyone, even their closest kin. In the the bed chambers, powerful women are inciting their men to fight, and Queen Gunnhild, The Bitch Queen, is an active player.

I've thought of calling the book "Vikings at War", but I'm not sure yet.

Everyone who writes historical fiction does a lot of research. In my stories, I describe Viking environments and events (buildings, weapons, food, ships, battles) as accurate as possible, and to do so, I travel to important museums and historical sites, I visit reconstructed Viking houses, I follow the building of longships, I search the Internet, but first of all I read books.

Here, I'd like to present some of the these books. As in my stories about Sigve the Awful, love, warfare, history, and mythology are themes in the books below .


Vikings at War by Kim Hjardar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Vikinger i krig meaning "Vikings at War" is a very good Norwegian book about Viking warfare; now coming in English. It tells about the Vikings as raiders and conquerors, and the book describes how they established long-lasting realms in Ireland, Scotland, England, France and Russia. The book is beautifully illustrated with a wealth of informative photos, drawings, maps and graphics. It describes Viking war strategies at sea and on land, and it contains an especially interesting chapter about Viking weapons: their use and the weapons mythological and religious significance.

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok: The End of the Gods is a great book: well-written, interesting, exciting. I read it twice.

Ragnarok is about a little girl. Evacuated from Sheffield, she grows up in the English Second World War countryside. Here she starts reading the English version of the German book Asgard and the Gods. Digging into the mind of the child, Byatt simultaneously tells the girl’s life, her experiences with Asgard and the Gods, and the story of the Norse gods and Ragnarok. It’s elegant.

I don’t understand the end of the book. Does it give a stripe of hope? I don’t know. In Voluspå (the great Edda poem telling of the World’s beginning and end), a new and cleansed Earth rises after Ragnarok. But I prefer to believe that the Vikings and Byatt see Ragnarok as the ultimate destruction. Humanity lives and dies. End of story.


Sven Tveskæg - Danernes sidste viking by Preben Mørkbak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book a few years ago, and I found it interesting and well-researched, but a bit slow. In my opinion, the most exciting part was the descriptions of the difficult relationship between Svein Forkbeard (Sven Tveskæg) and his father Harald Bluetooth.

When I read it again, it is to get some inspiration for a book I'm writing in which Svein Forkbeard is but a boy, but in which Harald Bluetooth plays a decisive role. My book is fifth in a series, and it follows The Bitch Queen in which Gunnhild Kingsmother is a major character. She is Svein Forkbeard's aunt and Harald Bluetooth's sister, and like all writers I'm stealing from others. So, thank you Preben Mørbak for your portrayal of Bluetooth!

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New edition of The Slayer Rune

A second edition of The Slayer Rune is now available on Amazon (with The Lethal Oath soon to follow). The new edition of The Slayer Rune is thoroughly copyedited by Karen Conlin, who has done wonders to my text. The book has also got a new cover designed by Stephen Mulcahey who has made covers for Lee Child, Frederick Forsyth and other great authors. Stephen has also made new cover for The Lethal Oath and the third book in the series: The Red Gold.

BUY THE BOOK AND ENJOY!

The Slayer Rune on Amazon.com
The Slayer Rune on Amazon.co.uk

Viking sheep of many colours

When I look out my windows, I see sheep of many colours grazing in the fields around a replica of a Norwegian Iron Age farm from the centuries before the Viking Age. In my Viking stories the hero Sigve the Awful wears woollen clothes, usually woven from natural wool, which of course doesn't mean that Sigve's cloaks were colourless. If Viking sheep only remotely resembled the sheep that are pastured in my neighbourhood, Sigve's clothes would have been very colourful indeed.

Harald Hardrada in book trilogy

The last couple of years I've read a lot of British historical fiction with action from the Viking Age: Bernard Cornwell, Robert Low (my favourite), Giles Kristian, Tim Severin and others. For a Norwegian (used to the Scandinavian heroic view on the Vikings) it is very revealing to get the Viking Age interpreted from a British and often English perspective.

Among the many professional authors there are also some indie authors writing from the Viking Age, and here on my blog I've previously reviewed A.H. Gray and now Peter C. Whitaker.


Review:

  The War Wolf by Peter C. Whitaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The historical fiction novel The War Wolf is the first in a trilogy about the events in England in 1066. In The War Wolf the author, Peter C Whitaker, tells the captivating story of The Battle of Fulford, which marked the beginning of an extremely consequential chain of events that would change the history of England and the World.

According to the author, the Battle of Fulford Gate is the forgotten battle, overshadowed by the more famous battles of Stamford and Hastings. The Battle of Fulford is nevertheless an important part of history and its outcome was important for the following actions and events. In the battle Harald Hardrada and a huge Norwegian army crushed a Northumbrian army lead by Eorl Edwin and Eorl Morcar.

In the novel we meet King Harald Hardrada (the war wolf), the Northumbrian earls Edwin and Morcar, the brothers (and enemies) Tostig and Harold Godwinson (King of England) and a lot of other historical and fictional characters, with the Northumbrian commander Coenred as the most important of the fictional characters.

A great number of characters is usually no problem in a book, but when many persons are made into point-of-view characters, such as in The War Wolf, this may be demanding on the reader. At least this reader finds the many POV characters and frequent shifts of perspective rather problematic, especially since so many of the shifts are done with little warning or indication as to whom is now thinking and perceiving. I often miss a central point of view from which the story is told and find the third-person narrator is only one of a plethora of perspectives fighting for prominence.

The writer often uses long sentences that usually runs smoothly, but when such sentences are brought into the dialogue, I feel the dialogues rather stilted.

This said, most of the descriptions of weather, landscape, weapons and fighting is engaging and after some time you get to know the characters. As the story unfolds (and you get used to the strange shifts in perspectives) the events take you and the books becomes very exciting. The description of the Battle Fulford is very engaging and all in all The War Wolf offers a good read. I look forward to the second book in the trilogy. I guess that book will be about the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

Harald Hardrada dies at the Battle of Stamford Bridge

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Congratulations Tone Almhjell!

Norwegian author Tone Almhjell 

Tone Almhjell is a Norwegian author who has written the children fantasy book The Twistrose Key. The debut novel has been praised by Amazon.com and the Kirkus review begins in this way: "Skillfully blending facets of classic high fantasy, this debut novel will captivate readers with its rich plot and detailed worldbuilding." Tone Almhjell writes in English, and being a Norwegian writer who does the same, Tone's success is definitely an inspiration for me. Again: Congratulations!


The publishers book description:

"Something is wrong in the house that Lin's family has rented; Lin is sure of it. The clocks tick too slowly. Frost covers the flower bed, even in a rain storm. And when a secret key marked 'Twistrose' arrives for her, Lin finds a crack in the cellar, a gate to the world of Sylver.

This frozen realm is the home of every dead animal who ever loved a child. Lin is overjoyed to be reunited with Rufus, the pet she buried under the rosebush. But together they must find the missing Winter Prince that night in order to save Sylver from destruction. They are not the only ones hunting for the boy. In the dark hides a shadow-lipped man, waiting for this last Winter Prince to be delivered into his hands.

Exhilarating suspense and unforgettable characters awaits the readers of this magical adventure, destined to become a classic."

The Twistrose Key

Buy The Twistrose Key on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

FROST (from the writer of Valhalla Rising)

When I looked at my reviews of books at Goodreads the other day, I discovered that I almost exclusively give the the books a rating of four or five stars. But the reason is obvious: I only review books that I have finished reading, and I only finish books that I like. Frost was such book.


Frost by Roy Jacobsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Roy Jacobsen

Valhalla Rising

Frost (2003) is a historical novel from the Viking Age written by the Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen, who also co-wrote Valhalla Rising (2009), the popular movie starring Mads Mikkelsen. Frost is translated into Russian and several other languages, but not into English. This is a review of the Norwegian original.

The book is about Gest (Torgest Torhallason), who as a 13 year old boy or man, to avenge the murder of his father, kills Viga-Styr, one of the greatest chieftains in Iceland. He has to flee Iceland, and in Norway he hides among friends. But even in Norway he cannot escape the powerful friends of Viga-Styr.

Gest is a very short and small man, but with cleverness and aggressive surprise attacks, he kills several of his pursuers. He thus gets even more enemies but befriends Eirik Hakonson, the earl of Hladir. After Olav Tryggvason's defeat in the Battle of Svolder, Eirik has become ruler of Norway. The novel tells how Eirik of Hladir, with Gest as adviser, joins up with Cnut the Great to conquer England in 1013.

What strikes me when I read Frost is how Jacobsen manages to create a genuine Viking feel to the story. Jacobsen writes in a variant of Norwegian called Bokmål (Book language), which over the centuries has received strong influence from a lot of foreign languages (German, Danish, Latin, French, English), but despite this influence Norwegian has preserved a large vocabulary based on Old Norse (and Germanic roots). Many more or less forgotten words from the old language have also been vitalized through modern Norwegians translations of Icelandic sagas and old poems. Modern authors thus have a lot of Norse-rooted words at hand when they need to denote and describe old objects, people, customs and actions. Jacobsen knows how to utilize this vocabulary in giving his story a trustworthy Viking tone.

What I dislike in Frost is the author's dealing with religion. When Gest meets Christianity in Norway and later in England, he starts thinking about the Christian faith and wonder if he is going to let himself be baptised. All this musing, however, has to have happened on the background and very much in contrast to his former Old Norse world-view, dominated as this must have been with gods like Odin and Thor and experiences of invisible creatures and forces, such as land-spirits, elves, dwarves, and the Norns that were weaving his fate. This Old Norse way of experiencing life Jacobsen ignores. Which of is too bad.


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Why give books away for free?

For some days copies of The Lethal Oath were
 available at Amazon for free.

Two weeks have gone since the period of free copies of The Lethal Oath ended. Afterwards I've been asked why I gave e-books away for free. The short answer to that question is: promotion. However, in a Google+ post one of my friends answered that he had downloaded at least fifty free e-books without reading any of them.

Claiming that the chances of reading a book is  greater when you have paid for it, he wrote: "I think it is because I have so many print books and e-books that I have actually paid for and rewarded the author for their efforts. I think if you pay for something you want to get your money's worth out of it, whereas if you don't pay for it, it doesn't matter if you never read it."

I tend to agree with him. I believe we are more likely to start reading a book we have paid for. But we don't read in order to satisfy the author, but to reassure ourselves that the book we bought was worth the price; that it will give us a good read.

On the other hand: How many free books haven't we read over the years? Books we have got from others, presents, books lent from friends, or at the library, or classics downloaded from the Internet?

Caught in A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones

So much is said and written about A Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire that I will tell about my reading of the books. I thought I'd never heard about George R.R. Martin when I first read about HBO's TV series on the Web. This was in autumn 2011, and in USA the first season of A Game of Thrones was over, but in Norway, where I live, it hadn't started. When I discovered that all of the four books in A Song of Ice and Fire were among the best-sellers on Amazon, and that fans anxiously awaited A Dance with Dragons, I got curious and bought the four-book bundle for Amazon Kindle for $13.49.

And that was it. I felt ambushed, caught in a trap and imprisoned, with no way of escaping. A Song of Ice and Fire has so many fascinating and complex characters, so many parallel and intertwined plots, so many places and customs, and so much action that I was totally caught. I have never had such a captivating reading experience in my life.