The Half-Drowned King (Golden Wolf Saga, #1)

by Linnea Hartsuyker

"The first installment in a debut trilogy, THE HALF-DROWNED KING tells the compelling story of the political intrigues, battles, and struggles for power that led to the rise of King Harald the Fair-Haired, first king of Norway, seen through the eyes of the young man who became his most trusted warrior and advisor. Conjuring a bloodthirsty, superstitious, and thrilling ancient world (9th century), this debut novel is for fans of Game of Thrones, the Vikings TV series, and Outlander"--

• ISBN10: 0062563696
• ISBN13: 9780062563699
• Publish Date: 1 August 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

This is such an underrated novel and I really enjoyed it.

Firstly, I'm game for historical fiction - overly sexualized love stories tend to push me away from it, but I actually really like historical fiction and felt like I didn't read enough of it last year. So I'm wicked happy The Half-Drowned King popped up on my TBR. It's got a little of everything from viking culture - their gender roles, their economy and culture, and just the right amount of politics and raiding. This felt like more of a story about vikings with Ragnvald, Svanheld, and Solvi as tour guides than a vicious revenge story, and I am 100% okay with that.

Everything of a historian in me was GLEEFUL about the way this story is told. It feel steeped in reality - nothing sensational about it. I did a bit of poking around after I finished, and discovered that a lot of the characters are either inspired by someone real, or WERE someone real. We don't have a lot of information about the vikings simply because they existed largely in the ninth century - over 1100 years ago - so this is a fantastic platform for historical fiction.

Okay - reining in my history nerd.

The characters were well-developed and fit into their time period. That latter bit is important - it's very easy to insert modern understanding into historical contexts and its the historian's job NOT to do that... so I think Hartsuyker did a fantastic job of making these characters feel both historically real AND still relatable. I think that some people will be bored with the pacing. I'm sure many people will go into this and think: AHA! VIKINGS! VIOLENCE! but that's not how this novel works at all. There's a lot of time on land, in politics and family life. The bits of violence are quick and real. There's even one battle where Ragnvald seems disappointed about how easy it was. There's nothing sensational about this novel, so don't go in looking for HIGH ADVENTURE and GORY BATTLE SCENES because they're just not in this one.

I really, really liked this book and thought it was so different from anything I've read - both in YA and historical fiction. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on Linnea Hartsuyker's writing, and pick up the rest of this series.