Review: I Wanted To Like This Book, But Really Didn't
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 19, 2013
As the title says, I wanted to like this book, but really didn't.  It has some flaws that just turned me off.  For starters, whenever the author uses a cuss-word, he replaces the word with these annoying symbols, such as &##@.  Hey, I am an adult, and reading the actual cuss-word isn't going to melt my brain!  If the idea is to make the book acceptable for children to read, then just leave out the cuss-words altogether, or substitute them with less harsh language.  Using these stupid symbols to represent strong language is very PC and very %^&#$@* annoying.  There are some grammar errors as well, that would pass a spell-checker, but are used in the wrong context.  For instance, when the author intends to write "steed", he instead writes "stead", or when he intends "loose" he writes "lose", etc..  He also spends a lot of time writing in the third person when it is not really needed to describe something.  That often comes off sounding like the script for a play, where he's giving directions to actors, or a scenery maker.  He also mistakenly refers to a Viking long-ship as a longboat.  The Norse never referred to their ships as longboats.  A longboat is a boat used by whaling ships to chase whales, or by a naval ship to shuttle personnel to and from shore.  The Norse did have boats, but they were small boats called Faerings.  Their ships, were sometimes called longships, but were mainly called Drakkars (Dragon ships), Knarrs (cargo vessels) or Karves (small ship).  The Norse were the world's greatest sailors of their age.  They justifiably took great pride in their ships and boats, and would never confuse the two in language.  For me, these errors just were too distracting to enjoy what would otherwise be a great story.All criticism aside, the author's character development was well done, and for the most part, he seems to have a good grasp of the time period.  If the author were to revise the book and clean up these annoying errors, I would gladly give it five stars, but as it stands, the best I can give it is three stars.