I've been a huge fan of this series all the way through. It starts off with A Mighty Dawn, a book I thought was going to be a classic Viking adventure - which in a way it is - but what I didn't expect from it was a fantastical twist, which I loved!
Books two and three are more straight forward historical fiction, enjoyable reads that take the reader from Scandinavia down to the colossal city of Byzantium. In A Savage Moon, it starts off as historical fiction, and then once more turns into something else.
It is, by whatever you'd shelve it as, a fantastic novel. Powerful, raw, brilliantly twisted and a not a little bit grim. What starts as a heist to steal a ship full of gold ends in a battle against a one-eyed villain who devotes himself to Odin. This journey, coupled with an antagonist with a hidden past, fresh wounds on his face and older ones eating him up from the inside, make the pages of what is a chunky book fly past.
Erlan continues to be an interesting and endearing main character, Lilla the perfect foil. Both have pasts they're not wholly proud of, each of them face inner turmoil as they strive to stay on the right path. The supporting cast around them add weight to the story, and once you've put them all together into a Dark Age world brought back to vivid life, you have a well rounded, compelling tale written by an author on top of his game.
I can't wait to see where Erlan and Lilla go next, I'll be rooting for them wherever they end up.
