And given the choice, she’d rather be at sea. She understands how to manage a hall and a farm, but is under no illusions that keeping herself at home holds any more safety than being in the thick of battle on the sea. Meanwhile back home, Ragnvald’s sister Svanhild chafes at the limits placed on her experience as a woman: her brother sails out to seize the world while she takes the cows out to pasture. When Ragnvald is rescued, he eventually follows Harald I, who Ragnvald sees as the golden wolf from his vision, the one favored by the gods to unite all of Norway. A golden wolf interrupts the feast and calls Ragnvald back to life. On the verge of death Ragnvald has a vision: Rán, goddess of the sea, draws Ragnvald down to her underwater hall where he sits down to feast, accepting his fate to be made one her warriors. In the first chapter, an assassin very nearly drowns Ragnvald, at the behest of his step-father.

Hartsuyker’s novel focuses on the story of Ragnvald and Svanhild, a brother and sister in the tradition of Hamlet: their step-father murdered their father, stole his lands and married their mother. Death is never more than a footstep away, and the fates rule the lives of all, men and women alike. Every king can trace his ancestry back to Odin. There are blood feuds, warlords, undead-who harry the living when their spirits cannot rest-and rumors of frost giants in the dark north. The novel is an atmospheric portrait of life drenched in the pre-Christian beliefs that tried to make sense of a land so extraordinarily harsh. The Half-Drowned King, set in ninth-century Norway, is inspired by Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, which relates the semi-mythic rise of Harald I and the forging of Norway into a single kingdom out of a pack of squabbling warlords. Thankfully, The Half-Drowned King, Linnea Hartsuyker’s thrilling historical novel debut, is a boon to readers who can’t wait another second for their next medieval battle fix. There is another month to wait before Vikings begins its fifth season on the History channel, and no one knows how long until the much-anticipated final season of Game of Thronesairs.

The half drowned king trilogy