Viking - Sworn Brother

This is the third and final book in the Viking trilogy, the story of Thorgils, whom we saw learning to follow the old ways, the old religion, as a child and youth in Odinn's Child, then as a young man, a wanderer in a rapidly changing world, in Sworn Brother. Now, in King's Man, he is right at the centre of the new world of the White Christ, Constantinople. But the title is misleading, for it is not the Byzantine Emperor (or later Empress) he serves whose man he is; on the contrary, the king in question is a Norwegian adventurer named Harald, another mercenary in Constantinople who happens to have a claim to the throne of Norway and whom Thorgils follows when he heads north with his men.

I have to say that I am not entirely convinced about these books, of which the best was the second. The old Icelandic pagan in the quiet English monastery, posing as a monk while he secretly writes his life story, works well, and probably no one could handle such a story better than Tim Severin, who has immersed himself in the lives led by the peoples of the north in medieval times (and sometimes literally in the ice-cold waters of the north Atlantic).

On the Vikings, the ships, the forests, the Great Temple at Uppsala and so on, Severin is excellent. I could read that stuff for ever.

He has some wonderful ideas such as Thorgils' meeting with MacBeth and Lady M. His version of this story had me spellbound, but turned out to be only an interlude, quickly abandoned. I have rarely been so disappointed, suddenly, in the middle of a book.

Also his depiction of primitive people living in the forests of the north (in this book Folkmar and Runa on the borders of Sweden and Norway, in Sworn Brother Allba and her family, of the Sabme, a nomadic people who herd reindeer in what seems to be modern Lapland or Finland, and how Thorgils comes upon them and is welcomed by them and stays with them and adapts to their way of life, and finally has to move on, leaving in one case a baby in the other twin children behind him.

But the first two-thirds of the book (more than 200 pages out of 320) is composed of intrigue in Constantinople, which has been done better by many other writers from Henry Treece down; and much even of the last hundred pages is an attempt at presenting the story of the Norman Conquest from an outsider's viewpoint and of no particular interest. If you want a novel set in Constantinople by an expert an enthusiast, there are several reviewed on this site (A Mosaic of Shadows, among recent books, which also includes Varangians, the Emperor's Viking guards, springs to mind; if you want an alternative view of the Norman Conquest, try Rite of Conquest, which Kate reviewed last month. Seeverin must stick to what he is good at. What excites him, will excite the reader: or as Robert Frost put it, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."

However, and that said, the whole trilogy is worth reading for the good parts. As I have said, they are gems, and unforgettable. And what is more, I would love to read a sequel - as in Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the fourth book of the trilogy! What happens to Thorgils after he leaves the monastery? Does he in fact head north again when he "disappears"? Does he find his children, the twins by Runa? What happens to them? We are given a mouth-watering hint of their significance (the twins named after Frey and Freya) but nothing more.

Tim Severin is a writer to watch and by writer I do not mean travel-writer (he is already the best at that), I mean historical novelist.