Product Description
A young man, struck by lightning, is believed to be a keeper of the Norse religion's greatest secret. When war breaks out against the rising tide of Christianity, he must embark on a journey where he must confront his own gods, and the gods of a people yet more savage.
Product Details
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
| ISBN | 0571217982 |
| Number Of Pages | 336 |
| Format | Paperback |
| Author | Paul Watkins |
| EAN | 9780571217984 |
| Label | Faber and Faber |
| Dewey Decimal Number | 813 |
| Studio | Faber and Faber |
| Title | Thunder God |
| Publication Date | 2005-05-05 |
| Manufacturer | Faber and Faber |
Customer Reviews
"On the blade, engraved in runes was 'Halfdan' and 'Varangian'."Review by Ronin, 2010-03-14
This book was ok, but really nothing great. Even though the main character Hakon travels extensively, the word "literary" rather than "epic adventure" jumps to mind. Many typical themes are present: raiders attack his coastal community and he is taken away; the old gods versus the tyranny of christianity; Varangians, etc.
I think the problem for me is I found Hakon to be one of the sorriest Vikings I have ever read about. While it was easy to relate to his sufferings, of which there was no shortage, Hakon was in a large way completely devoid of real emotion. Instead he seemed to carry an admirable innocence through his harsh world, but somehow managed to avoid rage and battlelust. Where was his pride or presence that he could suffer insult? The answer I think is that no one seemed to show him any great respect, meaning he didn't command it, so this reader had to wonder how someone like this could have served the Varangian?
Its hard to imagine such a Viking. I almost didn't survive the first 27 or so pages describing Hakon's boring existence, but then his life changes after he is struck by lightning and shortly thereafter is taken by raiders. His childhood best friend Olaf is a diabolically vile character who I wanted to choke to death throughout the book kind of like Jar Jar Binks or Young Anakin in Star Wars I, and why Hakon tolerated him rather than put him in his place I never fully understood. Hakon would have become twice the man Olaf ever could have after service in the Varangian, and I incorrectly assumed that even though Olaf may have been jealous of him, he would also have had a healthy respect because of who Hakon had become. Instead Olaf lays turds all over him without any fear of reprisal. Olaf had become a trader, and how someone like this could have kept his hide, let alone his drakkar left me clueless.
Watkins tries to portray Hakon and his friend Cabal as veterans returning to a more normal life with the ghosts of their Varangian experiences haunting them. I think this is a good theme but his attempt failed for me because Hakon was just too peaceful and tolerant. While we are never given the impression he was any great warrior, the length of his Varangian service would have given him training in some of the highest martial arts of the day and he would certainly have become an exceptionally above-average fighter at the least. I can accept an expert fighter being tolerant of people they can easily kill, but Hakon just didn't pull it off. Around p150 he barters the pattern-bladed sword he acquired during his service in Miklagard for something completely worthless, and it was like the final straw in my view of Hakon's character and I lost almost complete respect for him.
While Hakon had some gold after his discharge, I think Watkins really underplayed how wealthy such a man would have been. Its hard to imagine a discharged Varangian returning to his boring village and not being fabulously more wealthy than anyone, being more enlightened after seeing the world, and as a battle-hardened warrior, not becoming a leader of the people or having conflict with people already in that role. How could his simple village not look up to him after a life of fantastic accomplishment?
Then we have the main character's name, Hakon Magnusson, which is a major problem I have now encountered in a few Viking books. The prefix Magnus is Latin for "Great". Hakon came from a non-christian village with a Norse god-fearing father and no monks or priests, so Magnus is a highly unlikely name that realistically would not have even been in their lexicon, let alone their consciousness. The book Magnus the Viking (no relation) has the same problem.
The book is well-edited with only 5-typos, but the spine of my hardcover unglued midway through. There were parts of the book that kept me turning the pages, and I read it fairly quickly, but these issues nagged me throughout. I personally enjoyed books like the Saxon Chronicles, The Eye of Odin, and the Raven Blood-Eye series a lot more. I've reviewed many great Viking books, so if you haven't already read them, I suggest you don't start here.
Take a pass on this one
Review by D. Dunster, 2008-06-03
A third of the way into this book I was wondering "where is the real Paul Watkins, and what have you done with him?"
Watkins is my favourite author by far - but I wish I had never read this book. It is so gawdawful cliche. Relying on improbable coincidence after improbable coincidence to keep the 'plot' moving.
There is none of the trademark Paul Watkins setting of time and place in one's mind with excellent writing. Very little character development, weak plot lines, historical inaccuracies, and weak attacks on politically correct targets.
In short if you are a Watkins fan take a permanent pass. If you have never read him, don't start here or it will finish your interest.
Excellent Storyline
Review by T. McCall, 2007-10-29
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this excellent novel. The storyline and characters were well developed. The detailed descriptions of various places, events and customs added to the storyline instead of detracting from it. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historically based fiction. Now I just have to see if I can find another book by Paul Watkins that is worth reading.
Readable and well crafted historical novel
Review by F. J. Harvey, 2007-10-20
It is possible to write about this book and make it sound like a tale of high adventure and in plot terms it does fit this category very nicely.However there is a curious dislocation between the events being described and the tone of the book which is quite detached and the prose relatively leisurely .It is almost as if the author is writing a genre piece -high adventure in the Dark Ages -in the mode of someone aiming at the Man -Booker prize
It opens in a small town in what is today Norway ,in the year 79AD and is narrated by Hakon ,a fisherman's son .Hakon is struck by lightning and survives the experience .In the eyes of the villagers this is a sign that he is set apart from others and they earmark him to be the next village holy man .The village still cleaves to the old religion although Christianity is becoming more fimly established across Norway and the rest of Western Europe .
On the eve of his investiture as holy man ,Hakon is captured by raiding Vikings and becomes a slave to Halfdan and together they travel to join the elite Viking unit ,the Varangians,at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor ,Basil the Second at Miklagard(modern day Constantinople).He eventually buys his freedom and sets out to return to his own land .In the company of the virulently anti-Christian Welshman Cabal he has many adventures but on returning home settles quickly back into his old life until a decree from the King that all must become Christian or else face punitive taxation forces him to resume his old warlike ways .Eventually he ends up in the New World amongst the Mayans where he again must deal with war and bloodshed ,
The book strongly emphasises religion and spirituality ,from the rites of the Old Nordic Gods to the rituals of the Mayans ,and Christianity gets a bad press in the book .Its advocates are depicted as charlatans ,bullies or at best well meaning windbags .In its interleaving of an actionful narrative and meditations on the nature of belief it invites comparison with Gore Vidal's "Creation" but without the insouciant wit Vidal brought to proceedings .Thunder God is a bit plodding and the first part of the book is a tad heavy going .It picks up pace after Hakon returns to Norway and the second half is very gripping with some good insights into ordinary village life
Its a good book and well worth reading but as I indicated some may find there is a touch too much reflection and not quite enoough action early on .Minor quibbles aside this is a worthwhile read
Rife with Historical Inaccuracies but Interesting
Review by Stuart W. Mirsky, 2007-07-02
I normally like my historical fiction steeped in its period and this one just wasn't. A story of Norsemen in the Viking era, it's told as though its narrator had somehow slipped into the clothes and events of the era he's speaking about from our own time. From the beginning, when we encounter our hero, Hakon Magnusson, and his childhood playmates, one has the sense of just being in the wrong place and time.
Living in the poor Norwegian fishing village of Altvik, Hakon and his buddies Olaf, overweight Ingolf and Hakon's sister Kari ("Kari" is actually a man's name -- see Njal's Saga for the exploits of Kari Salmondarsson, one of the great viking heroes of all time), like to play in the shadow of the local pagan temple. Through an apparent quirk of fate, Hakon gets "picked" to be the next local priest, precipitating a falling out with his best bud, Olaf. But Hakon gets kidnapped instead by some local Vikings and ends up a slave to his captor, Halfdan, in Byzantium where the fierce but oddly spiritual Halfdan signs onto the Varangian Guard (mainly Norse mercenaries in the employ of the Byzantine emperor).
There Hakon grows up, learns to fight and, more importantly, to become "spiritual" like his soldier-master. None of this, alas, rings at all true and we don't get to see a very clear picture of Hakon's development or coming to manhood during the almost 20 years he's there, first as servant to Halfdan (who has become "priest" of the Varangians) and later as a member of "the Varangian" himself. But Hakon eventually decides to head home with a Celtic brute in tow who is also a remarkably sensitive (and "spiritual") soul in his own right.
When not killing their enemies with abandon, Hakon and his new best bud, Cabal, are musing about spiritual matters. They make their way through Gardariki (the Scandinavian name for the land that would one day be Russia) and then across the Baltic where, miraculously, they run into Olaf, Hakon's earlier best bud. Olaf is now a prosperous merchant sailing about the Baltic as a one-man crew in his converted drakar (dragon ship). Then it's home with Olaf to pick up where they left off in their little dispute about who should be in charge of the pagan temple.
At Altvik, Cabal goes peacefully native while Olaf, now the wealthy local merchant, who carries about bags of money "even the (Byzantine) emperor" wouldn't dismiss out of hand according to Cabal, alternately is friendly toward Hakon and jealous of his presumed right to run the local temple. Ingolf is now an unhappy Norse momma's boy, running the local inn and fatter than ever, while Hakon's sister Kari spends her life harvesting herbs and curing the locals with them. The former berserker Cabal decides to improve his grooming to make an impression on Hakon's sister since, it turns out, they are fellow herbal enthusiasts.
Then come the Christianizers, out to fool, cajole and intimidate the locals into embracing the new creed. A conflict between Hakon, priest of the old ways, and the Christianizing emissaries of Norwegian King Olaf Trygvesson is unavoidable as Hakon feels the spirituality of the temple he has inherited and learns its secret. The story by this point is rife with peculiarities and errors. Altvik is said to be a poor village that never recovered after some twenty odd years from the Viking raid that took Hakon away, even though this raid consisted of only two small dragon ships. Twenty years is a long time but Altvik seems to have lacked the wherewithal to come back though no further Viking raids are said to have occurred in the intervening years.
Even stranger, when the Norse king's emissaries demand a heavy tax, we're told that the village cannot hope to pay it though Olaf, its local merchant, alone is said to have money in his possession the fabulously wealth Byzantine Emperor would not look askance at! When the time comes to pay the new tax, no one thinks to ask Olaf. Indeed, even Olaf seems to think the best that can be done is for him to lend his ship for a proposed Viking raid to raise the necessary revenue.
In one remarkable oddity King Olaf Tryggvesson is repeatedly referred to as Trygvesson or King Trygvesson as though this were his last name. In fact, it wasn't since last names were not used in those days. Hakon Magnusson's own name poses a problem, too, since the name "Magnus" is Latin based and entered the Norse lexicon with the coming of the Christian priests. But the era in which Hakon's father grew up is clearly pre-Christian so his name is remarkably out of place. Another error that constantly rankles was Watkins' tendency to have Norse ships routinely sailed by one or two men. While one could probably have done a bit of sailing on these ships alone, in fact they were not like modern sailing vessels at all and lacked the kind of equipment that made them easy to operate with a small crew. Aside from the need to have enough men to row (they frequently could not rely on wind power and entering or leaving coastal areas demanded rowers as did beaching the vessels), it took a number of men to raise and lower the mast and sail while afloat, etc. It's just unrealistic to suggest that dragon ships were easily manageable by one or two or even three men alone as Watkins does. While he does seem to have familiarity with sailing, he doesn't convincingly translate that into a description of how Norse sailing vessels actually worked.
The dialogue and mindsets of the characters also ring false. Olaf tells the returned Hakon that their old childhood friend Ingolf "hates (his mother) for never letting him grow up as much as he hates himself for never having the courage to move out on his own." (p. 115) Give me a break! Later (p. 135) Kari tells Hakon "The longer you live alone, the harder it is to imagine not being alone" as she contemplates the prospect of a life with the reformed berserker Cabal. Later on our returned Varangian, Hakon, "gritted his teeth," we're told, "at the unfairness of (his friend) Olaf's dealings" with some trading partners.
Eventually, with the coming of King Olaf's Christianizing tax collectors, Hakon and Cabal must make a momentous decision and we're treated to a Viking raid perpetrated by three men in a dragon ship, alone, and learn about child abusing Catholic priests! Finally, our heroes, such as they are, find their way to the land that would one day be known as the New World where they experience the barbarism of Mayan spiritual beliefs first hand. Finally awakened to the evils of religion of any sort, the survivors now give over their bickering (it never rose to the level of feud as it would have in the real sagas) over who's got rights to be the next priest of the old religion. A pox on them all, we seem to be told, as our newly enlightened and remarkably modern Norsemen find peace and contentment in the world as it is.
Watkins has some nice descriptive powers though they're very much over-utilized, further adding to the sense of separation between the era of the tale and the tale itself. (Norse sagas are generally simple and understated, not painted with heavy, purplish prose in the manner of Watkins' verbiage.) Nevertheless, though the characters never really developed convincingly (midway through the story I couldn't even remember the protagonist's name) or get beyond certain modern stereotypes, and the plot is loose and unrealistic throughout (they go through certain motions but are rarely seriously challenged or face situations which take them in new and unanticipated directions), I still found myself reading through to the end. And this is something since there are many books I throw aside these days, especially bad books about vikings. This is readable and, if you aren't too hung up on historical accuracy, characters appropriate to their era, and stories that are tightly plotted, you may want to give it a try.
SWM
Saga: A Novel Of Medieval Iceland
The Golden Warrior: The Story of Harold and William
Styrbiorn the Strong
Eric Brighteyes: The Works of H. Rider Haggard
The King of Vinland's Saga
Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway
Used starting at $0.01
New starting at $5.74
