I finally finished this rather thin book.. although its thinness wasn't visible to me because of its e-book format ^^
Still, with a little over a hundred pages it took me some time to finish it. Mostly because I kept favouring the other one I was reading. I have a nifty little light that I can snap onto the cover of a regular book so that my reading at night doesn't interfere with my partner's sleep.
But I prevailed and I can count this among those I finished in 2018 and check off one item of my challenge. Jippiekayee MF!!
Of course, I completely forgot that I had a new one to choose from, my e-book library is crammed to the point of bursting and usually I use goodreads to choose a new one. Now I had to spend 10 minutes of valuable reading time last night to choose one directly from that library. A little mind-numbing and the feeling is like trying to choose one toy from the worlds largest toystore. We have a proverb that sounds in english like Choosing is losing. I felt it very acutely last night.
But I picked one, The Devil and Miss Prym.
But what about Eaters of the dead?
It was an exercise in style by late author Michael Crichton. He explains it at the end, how he tried to pour the famous poem Beowulf into a different kind of approach and how he mixed fact and fiction to create something that feels like he himself knew these men.
The thing about Michael Chrichton, is that he can make up a flimsy story in a very real environment. The stage for his stories are so thoroughly investigated, that you feel the atmosphere almost as if you're watching a movie or visiting that said place.
And it doesn't matter where that stage is.. be it a theme park with dinosaurs, outer space, Jamaica in the 17th century, the Viking era, he has the uncanny ability to make all these settings come alive.
And as I said before, the story taking place in these settings doesn't even have to be so good, it's still believable, maybe even more so because real life isn't strung together with unbelievable events all the time.
Eaters of the dead is about the Viking, loosely based upon Beowulf, with a few well placed references to how history was reviewed when this book was written (1970's). A remarkable exercise, but still not the stuff to keep one awake long enough when reading in bed.
