Eaters of the Dead

De: Michael Crichton

Narrado por: Simon Vance

The year is A.D. 922. A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. He is appalled by their Viking customs - the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness...their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth: he has been enlisted by these savage, inscrutable warriors to help combat a terror that plagues them - a monstrosity that emerges under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh....

Eaters of the Dead was adapted to the screen as The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas.

©1976 by Michael Crichton; Copyright renewed 2004 by CrichtonSun LLC. (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Interesting Historical Viking Fiction

3.5 of 5 stars.

Eaters of the Dead creates a realistic historical Nordic milieu through Crichton’s fictionally reconstructed narrative. Written before the renaissance of Viking historical literature over the past 20-30 years, this is a solid read but not as good as I remembered when I first read it in the 1990s.

The performance is solid.

Great book. Great reading.

I love this author. This was one of his best works in my opinion. Narrator was well paced and easy to listen to

a purely academic exercise

This book can best be compared to the adventure novels of the late 19th century: Treasure Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, etc In fact Crichton admits in the afterward that this book was written based on an academic argument he'd had.

As such, it works perfectly well as a doctoral thesis, but it is incredibly boring as a piece of modern fiction. I'm a huge fan of Crichton, but finishing this was painful, as most of the work is spent on building the conceit that this work is actually based on historical documents, and little focus is paid to character development or plot structure.

At several points the narrator even admits that the supposed source material is little more than a dry list of places and dates.

Don't waste your time. This isn't the same gripping read as Jurassic Park or Andromeda Strain.

Interesting premise, but just okay

I love the premise of things book, but it's a little bit slow to get going and the "historical" tone doesn't quite ring true. Still an enjoyable read that provokes one to marvel at the many mysteries of history.

Great Historical Fiction and Narration

I have long been a fan of the movie The Thirteenth Warrior, but for whatever reason, this remained one of Chrichton's books I had not read. I chose the audiobook, narrate by Simon Vance, who did a stellar job. I was pleased to read in the author's note that it was, indeed, a version of Beowulf, or, more accurately, based on a similar story from a lof of varied manuscripts that may, or may not exist. Such a style does not always work, but was uniquely suited to this book, particularly when performed in audio because it allows the story to be narrated directly, told, as the narrator in the book tells it, in the first person. It's a great story, very much in line with the movie, though some of my favorite parts of the movie appear to have been added after the fact. Highly recommended for lovers of historical fiction.