Love, absolutely love this trilogy.

Excellent historical fiction, military fiction,

This the first book, of the 'Crusades Trilogy' by Jan Guillou, focusses primarily on the birth, early life, and training of Arn Magnusson, the main protagonist of this trilogy. Not 'til book 2, do we move to the 'Holy land', the setting of the 1st Crusades! Enjoy

Great character development, super story telling!

It's an uncomplicated read. Often boring. Sometimes interesting.

The extreme naivete of Arn is not my most favorite trait in a main character. While later in the story he has a more 'in the world but not of the world' quality that stems from his religious upbringing, it wasn't enough to make up for the earlier naive innocence that annoyed me so much.

The characters had no real depth for me. They haven't been fleshed out to real people, just distant foreign historical figures thrown into a story. I did like Arn's mom, though how she magically seems to make money and be innovative with everything she does, seems a bit much at times.

The best part of the book is that the Scandinavian history is very clear. It's not just another medieval story that could technically be set anywhere, this one is very involved with it's backdrop. I think I would prefer a non-fiction work from this author though. His mix of too much fact and not enough story didn't work in this fiction setting, though I do really like the history, the location and the era.

The writing comes across as very simple, childish and choppy throughout. I'm not sure if this is from the translation alone or has been carried through from the original text.

The author has tried to create a story from medieval times, not just of medieval times and I appreciate that, but it didn't catch my imagination enough to read the next volume.

Good solid historical fiction. Great trilogy.

I love historical fiction, and am a voracious reader, yet couldn't go father than the first 5 pages of this book. Did I say BORING?!