The Half-Drowned King

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An unusual Viking saga. Most such fiction is written by men and tells largely of blood-soaked battles, the lopping off of limbs and disembowellings. Hartsuyker's book has its share of violent action as it relates the story of its hero Ragnvald Eysteinsson, who survives a near-drowning by his enemies to hitch his fortunes to the rising star of Harald Fairhair, a teenage warrior and would-be king of all Norway in the ninth century. It also has several strands of narrative - mostly focused on Ragnvald's sister Svanhild as she strives to assert herself in a male dominated world - that are less predictable. This is a novel that creates a more nuanced and richer portrait of Viking society, with its complex web of rituals, laws and debts of honour, than the genre usually provides Sunday Times