Vikings, man. You can’t take them anywhere without someone’s throat getting slit. Pit a Viking army against a Viking village as Snorri Kristjansson does in his first novel, Swords of Good Men, and there’s going to be some serious ass kicking going on.
Swords is grisly fun once the axes and arrows start falling, but it’s a shame that Kristjansson’s Vikings’ idea of wartime foreplay is drawn-out political maneuvering and angsty wallowing. The bloody climactic battle makes the slow build up worth the wait, but only just barely.
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