Eaters of the Dead was an overall good book. The first half of the book goes really slow and gives you a lot of information that ends up being pertinent to the end of the book. You see how people from two different cultures with different beliefs see each other as they meet and how their opinions of each other change over time. If you can tolerate the first half of the book which reads more like a history lesson than a work of fiction, it'll be worth it in the end as the second half of the book is a real page turner.

Adventurous, very Arabian Nights vibe. A normal protagonist, without any gimmicks and an Arab/Muslim hero, a rarity in Western mainstream culture. A Middle Eastern met the Northmen and everyone got along just fine and fought a COMMON enemy. No taunting and no one called anyone an apostate or an extremist. Haha. Take heed.

I don’t know if I would have enjoyed this as much if I hadn’t been hearing/seeing Antonio Banderas as the narrator, Ahmed ibn Fadlan. I do believe this is one of the rare occasions where I like the movie better than the book. The 13th Warrior is widely panned, but I find it entertaining.

This short novel begins on a dry note, but picks up when the Arab narrator reaches the vikings and finds himself drafted, for superstitious reasons, as the 13th member of a group of warriors sent to rescue a kingdom beset by monsters. I enjoyed hearing the story from his point of view: an ambassador in the midst of warriors; a Muslim among Pagans. He is repelled by some aspects of the Northmen’s culture (there’s a vile process described by which a woman “accompanies” a dead warrior to the afterlife) but he is impressed with their strength and fearlessness.

The book has dwarves that are missing from the movie, but the movie has more humor, plus it has a more elegant version of the “Viking prayer”:

Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother,
and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
Back to the beginning.
Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place among them,
In the halls of Valhalla
Where the brave may live forever.

n  THE 13th WARRIORn

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
Page/Plant, Immigrant Song, 1970.

The idea for the book came after Crichton heard his pal giving a lecture including Beowulf as among the Bores of Literature. Crichton notes in an appendix that the book is based partly on the Beowulf myth).

The full name of this 1976 novel was n  Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922.n After being made into a movie under the title, The 13th Warrior, the book was republished for a time under that name.

The book is basically told as a edited translation of the account written by Ibn Fadlan, a Persian ambassador conscripted by a group of Vikings (probably from Sweden) as the 13th warrior in a hero's quest to save a northern kingdom from a group of "mist monsters" called "wendol," a group of vicious savages, perhaps surviving Neanderthals, who wear bear skins in battle. After battling with the wendol (probably based, in part, on Grendel), they must fight Grendel's mother:



I was somewhat disappointed by the lethargic lulls and the story's underdevelopment. On the other hand, the action sequences were quite thrilling. As usual, Crichton's research was impeccable and provided an education on the Vikings and a more modernized account of Beowulf.

If you enjoyed Beowulf or you're a Viking connoisseur, you should like this.

Laut anderer Rezis soll Michael Crichton vor 40 Jahren dem Irrtum erlegen sein, er könnte sogar Beowulf spannend machen und als Gegenstand der entsprechenden Wette, sei Eaters of the dead entstanden.
Als Gelehrtensatire hat das Buch sicher seine Meriten, aber spannend ist diese Aufzählung von unübersehbaren Gelegenheiten, bei denen die Nordmänner besoffen und mit ihren Sklavinnen zugange sind, garantiert nicht.
Der Autor und Regisseur bekam mit der durch seine teuren Eingriffe zum Jahrhundertflop geratenen Verfilmung ein knappes Vierteljahrhundert später noch seine Höchststrafe. Leider habe ich mich durch zu viele Jubelbewertungen zur Lektüre verleiten lassen.

I liked the movie, and I like Crichton, but this structure isn't for me. Seems a bit self-indulgent. Shouldn't the story be the focus? Twenty pages of fake-real historical placement? Then just massive fast forwards? DNF.

As much as I love the movie adaptation, The 13th Warrior, I found that the nature of this book became boring and tedious after about the halfway point. The delivery of the story is done as an observational recounting: "I saw this, and it was weird; they did this, and it was weird; this was believed, and it was weird. Verily, verily, verily, do I say unto you." That about sums up the entirety of the story's telling.

The premise is great, a fictionalized historical observation that provided the basis for the epic Beowulf. The historical and cultural observations (of which, not doing the research, I wonder how much is accurate) are fun to see but it gets tired when your main character, Ibn Fadlan, does nothing but watch. He interacts on occasion, barely learns the language of the Norsemen, and sits around watching and recounting what they all did. And let's not forget, it was all weird and contrary to the ways of the cultured and advanced Muslims of Baghdad (I understand the point but I tired of it being constantly slammed home that he was an outsider looking in).

That was the entirety of this book and, rare as it is, I find the film version did a better job of this. Though, I think the movie would have done well to add some of the more graphic portions of the book that weren't possible with a PG-13 rating. Hell, most of the stuff the Game of Thrones TV show does is tame in comparison to what happens in this book.

What begins as a cold firsthand account of Viking culture becomes a terrifying experimental novel, as the prose gradually becomes less analytical and more eloquent. Crichton was an expert at blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

-Curioso ejercicio con pocos puntos en común con el resto de la producción del autor.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. Trabajo de ficción sobre un supuesto manuscrito con más de un milenio de antigüedad que arranca como un análisis sobre el origen del documento, la cultura vikinga y el supuesto autor, para a continuación ofrecernos el propio manuscrito, el relato de un noble árabe al que mandan precipitadamente fuera de Bagdad como parte de una misión diplomática que inesperadamente tendrá que abandonar, uniéndose contra su voluntad a un grupo de vikingos que viajarán muy al norte para enfrentar una terrible amenaza.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

También Llamada “El guerrero número 13”, desde que Banderas hizo la película. Se nota que la novela es de la primera época de Crichton, porque está escrita en forma de documento histórico, al igual que El hombre terminal, La amenaza de Andrómeda y El gran robo del tren. La obra está escrita con gran erudición, que no sé si es auténtica o fingida, y con multitud de notas a pie de página, muchas de ellas discutiendo los posibles significados del original árabe. Un embajador musulmán debe ir a rendir pleitesía al emperador de los Búlgaros, como castigo del jeque por haber conocido (en sentido bíblico) a la bella esposa de un rico mercader. Por el camino se topa con un grupo de guerreros nórdicos, a los que acompaña hacia el norte para luchar contra la amenaza de los wendol, los monstruos devoradores de cadáveres. El estilo es conciso, casi telegráfico, y más al tratarse del relato de un musulmán escueto, como afirma el autor en el prólogo. Me ha gustado, aunque todavía no despunta el Crichton de “Parque Jurásico”, con sus soberbios planteamientos y su emocionante estilo narrativo.

A wildly under-appreciated novel, much like the movie it was turned into. A quick read that masterfully uses an actual historical first hand account to build an entertaining retelling of Beowulf. Full of legitimate historical nuggets, this story is still fast paced and keeps you reading. It is billed as a bit of a “horror” which it is far from, but historical thriller is a fair enough categorization. Crichton once again proved why he was one of the best mainstream fiction writers of his generation. 4 stars.

Много хубава и интересна книга! В нея увлекателно са разказани приключенията на арабин от 10-ти век, който е изпратен от халифа си с мисия при волжките българи, обаче е заловен от доста сурови и опасни викинги. Той е принуден да пътешества с тях, а впоследствие като чужденец е определен за 13-ти воин в техен отряд...


„Съществуват обаче твърде много неща, непонятни за човека. И където завършва човешкото познание, там започва царството на боговете.“