Michael Crichton

Eaters of the Dead

Claudiu

Eaters of the Dead, written in 1976 by Michael Crichton, is based upon ambassador Ibn Fadlan's account of his journeys among the early Rus people, Northmen as they are called in the book, and the story of Beowulf. The main conflict is between Vikings and a small Neanderthal population.[return][return]In the beginning the books is pretty rough: the Northmen are not a clean people, they have customs which in the beginning make the clean Arab Ibn Fadlan cringe, the description of the "daemon"'s massacres are very graphic. This may make some readers give up on the book. As Crichton said in his own words: "I wrote Eaters on a bet that I could make an entertaining story out of 'Beowulf'. It's an unusual book. Readers either like it, or they don't,".[return][return]However, the adventures and battles are captured very well. Crichton's main accomplishment in my view is the ability to present the story in an old sort of language that is in fact very readable. Also, I admired his research work, the footnotes prove he did quite a lot of it.[return][return]I enjoyed the book and if you want to find out a little bit about our ancestors, especially Vikings, I recommend it.

Shape Mismatch

Was taken aback with what did I pick up, right in the preface. This book is an account of a Muslim Arab, Ibn Fadlan who ended up traveling with the Vikings on a seemingly mythical adventure. It is thrilling by most standards, but the fact that makes it stands out is 
a) It happened in AD922
b) he narrates it literally like an account of events that he has to present to the Caliphate, and not at all like a novel invoking storytelling techniques. 
c) a millennium of historical studies confirm numerous incidents and places that Fadlan couldn't have known if it weren't true. 

Crichton did a wonderful job at the translation, and the book has enough footnotes to bring into context most of the things that seem out of place. Because of them, and an observant Fadlan, we end up knowing a lot of peculiarities about tribes that he meets along the way. A good history lesson, if I may.

Rohit Arondekar

In typical Crichton fashion once the story gets going it's hard to put the book down. I enjoyed the story and the style it was written in.

Mystery, history, horror--it's a sword-rattling adventure with as many lopped heads and limbs as a nightmare...as much wild and drunken sex as a dream. It's the incredible chronicle of Ibn Fadlan, emissary of the Caliph of Bagdad, relating his expedition to the wild Viking barrens and his terrifying encounter there with the ferocious hairy demons of the Northland. It's the marvellous new Crichton novel with all the amazement of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and the captivating suspense of THE TERMINAL MAN.
--back cover

The manuscript of Ibn Fadlan, relating his experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922

Kirsten Simkiss

I have to preface this by saying that Beowulf has never been on a list of books that I have enjoyed. Furthermore, I had already seen The Thirteenth Warrior and I didn't love it as much as I might have hoped. When rating the movie, I would have given it 3 stars out of 5 and, even though I enjoyed the book less than the movie, I felt it deserved the same rating. A lot of what I felt was successful in the movie, I found to be absent in the book. And what I found successful in the book was absent in the movie. All in all, I think that the Beowulf plot line just simply is not for me.

I will say this: I liked the blend of history and fantasy in this one. Although I do wonder how the real Ibn Fadlan would feel about it, I found it to be very interesting using a real historical figure as a main character. Most people, when writing historical fiction, just create their own character off to the side so they can completely fabricate their characters' stories. Others simply retell the exact story through the eyes of a real person, but don't fictionalize much, if anything, aside from the imagined emotions of that person in those situations. 

The whole premise of this book was to retell Beowulf so that it wasn't boring to the average reader. It was a bet, and I feel that Crichton succeeded for the most part. I didn't love it, but I certainly found it more accessible than Beowulf itself.

However, I found it very hard to care about any of the characters aside from Herger and Buliwyf. Everyone else seemed to not matter in the long run and there is very little in the way of interaction with those characters. I definitely found Antonio Banderas easier to love in the movie as Ibn Fadlan than I ever managed to in the book. I found Ibn Fadlan to be an absolute waste of space and air. His sense of morality was all over the place and I just couldn't love him. That is always unfortunate when you're reading a book from a character's perspective and you just don't like them.

All in all, this is really for people who already love Beowulf and like adaptations of Beowulf. Historically, this is probably not that accurate. But, if you're willing to give the book some breathing room and suspend your belief a little bit, you'll probably be able to get into it easily enough.

Devoradores de cadaveres

Jose Vera

Este libro creo que esta muy bien escrito (o reescrito) y lo considero muy particular y especial por varias razones.

En primer lugar Crichton ha tratado (y creo que lo logro) mantener la idea general de un observador árabe en un mundo mundo nódico. Consideremos que para el siglo X los árabes eran la civilización más adelantada e ilustrada de la época (es por eso que pese a que Ibn-Fadlan veía varias de las actitudes y costumbres de los nórdicos como ofensivas, aún así las trata de describir tal y como las vio, pese a sus prejuicios).

En segundo lugar, la historia del héroe nórdico tradicional, aquel que esta por encima del hombre común, el destino ineludible y la tragedia que enmarca una vida extraordinaria que no será olvidada, la mangitud y la prescencia del héroe estan representadas en Buliwyf y su destino (las similitudes con Beowulf son demasiadas como para ignorarlas)

Otro punto a destacar es la presencia de los wendol, estos caníbales que son entre las pocas cosas que podían causar terror entre los vikingos. Esta presencia nefasta, que baja con la niebla, destruye poblados y come carne humana. Cabe destacar los apéndices finales del libro donde se da una posible explicación del origen de los wendol.

Este es un libro que no sólo entretiene, tambien podemos ver el choque entre dos grandes culturas y las respectivas costumbres de ambas.

Eaters of the Dead

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