This was a book I'd been wanting to read for quite a while. It's also known as The 13th Warrior, and apparently, there was also a movie. One of my favorite books is Timeline, which was also written by Crichton. It's a book I've recommended more than once, and a tale that has never disappointed. As long as you don't watch the movie.
In this tale, a traveler named Ahmad ibn Fadlan (a real person) is sent from Bagdad to visit certain people. He gets waylaid and ends up stuck with a group of Northmen (Vikings) who are being sent to deal with a threat. A small group is put together, and one of the group is supposed to be a foreigner. And it needs to be 13 people.
This book was very weird for me. I know the narrator was making a record of his travels, so he felt the need to write down everything. And I mean everything. I didn't need to know about whether or not they wiped their butts or anything regarding their sex lives. I really didn't need to know about those.
The story picked up for me once they started dealing with the monsters in the mist. But one of the main issues I had with the book were the footnotes. They were all over the place, and it was a toss up whether they were interesting or not. Most of the time it was telling me something related to some other manuscript or expert.
I think I only found the premise of the book interesting after I read the facts at the end. Reading why the author wrote the book and all the work he put into it was truly fascinating to me. SPOILER: I wasn't as fond of the whole Neanderthal bit. I would've preferred to leave it as some undiscovered people or just don't say anything. It completely ruined the mystery of the mist monsters. Also, I didn't make the connection to the source material until I real those facts at the end. Once I read that, though, I'm sure there was a bright light over my head from the light bulb going off. It all made sense at that point. I still hate the Neanderthal bit and the footnotes. Timeline reigns supreme!
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