C'mon! Eat the dead! Eat it!
Today I read the 1976 Michael Crichton novel "Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922."
The basics:
This book is a retelling of the epic poem "Beowulf" as a true-to-life piece of history, complete with sources, bibliographies, and footnotes as evidence. The story follows the Islamic nobleman Ibn Fadlan, a man of Middle Eastern descent, as he is sent as an ambassador to foreign lands by his Caliph, effectively banishing him for being promiscuous with the wife of a rich merchant. We are presented with a translation of his notes as manuscript: A first-person retelling of events which take him from his desert home to northern Europe during the reign of the Viking warriors that populated the region of the time. Once he meets up with these men, he witnesses the death and funeral of a king, and is roped into accompanying the king's presumed heir, Buliwyf on a quest to save another noble's land from an evil known as "The Black Mist." Buliwyf and eleven of his warriors must depart, and they take Ibn along with them to make thirteen. Can Ibn and the band of warriors liberate the land of Rothgar from this evil?
Thoughts on structure:
This should be a textbook case of how one would write historical fiction. While presented in a distinctly modern tone, there are abundant references to real academic works of the time with clarification of translations from the various texts that this was (fictionally) pulled from (usually to humorous effect). While the author in the persona of the researcher is insistent that it is historically significant, it is presented as a high-energy action-adventure with elements of horror and gore mixed in. You're not going to mistake it for a real academic work; that framework is just used as the basis to tell a pretty fun story.
Hollywood connections:
People who know might recognize that this book was adapted into the 1999 film "The 13th Warrior" starring Antonio Banderas, and for the most part that movie follows the book pretty closely, although there are some clear differences and expanded lore in the book. The movie fails in its adaptation in one significant way, and that is the nature of its enemy, the "wendol." I don't want to get into spoiler territory for those who might want to read the book or watch the film, but the book's reveal is a little more rooted in science-fiction and fantasy than the adaptation would have you believe (the book, no kidding, also has dwarves in it, though they're depicted as more of the "Disney" dwarves than anything Tolkien wrote). If you're a fan of Beowulf and want to see a less fantasy-driven telling of the tale that still packs all of the heroism, you really can't go wrong with this story. It's bloody, it's funny, it's got lots of action and intrigue, a lot of (very nondescriptive) sex, and is less than two-hundred pages, so you'll get through it quickly.
