Eaters of the Dead

Product Information

Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death.” Los animales mueren, los amigos mueren, y yo moriré, pero una cosa nunca muere, y es la reputación que dejamos detrás al morir" Sea Monster: When Ahmad sees whales in the Baltic for the first time in his life, the Norse tell him that they are sea monsters and that they destroy ships because they mistake them for potential mates. It is as unclear to Ahmad, the reader and the in-universe translators if the Norse really believe this or they are just pranking Ahmad.

Ibn Fadlan, to my relief, does strike up a friendship with Herger, who translates the Viking language for him, but he’s largely at Herger’s mercy – and sometimes the fellow would rather drink or fornicate with slave girls than keep his foreign friend up to date. I like how the Northland is rather beautiful in the early going – where we see prairies and woods – and foreboding toward the end, as we venture into the caves of the enemy Wendol. It’s always a land of fog and horns – classic Viking stuff. Action over character building

All narrators are naturally sympathetic, but this is very much the case with Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, the audience surrogate. I’d huddle in a corner with him – a Muslim from Baghdad who is much closer to the modern world than the primitive Northmen – to keep my distance from these brutes.

Conceived to make the story of the hero Beowulf not boring, Crichton combined the real-life experiences of a historical traveler and imagined how he would have written an account of the original poem in his own style. Narrated as if a scientific commentary on an old manuscript, Crichton created an interesting take the well-known story as well as making the antagonists relic Neanderthals which at the time of the original publication were emerging from under the shadow of the Victorian description of “brutish primitives”. Given my reading of annotated history texts, I found this book right down my personal lane and the fact that I watched the adaptation, The 13th Warrior, meant that it would have had to be awful for me to dislike it. a fictional book, a version of Ibn Fadlan that, according to the story, Crichton and previous scholars cobbled together from multiple fragmentary manuscripts in several languages. Later battles are staged more clearly – but with a nice foggy, fiery atmosphere — as arrows and torches fly and horses and men fall. The cave waterfall segment is the highlight; this is not a location you see in every movie. Vikings being Vikings That said, I don’t know if one could follow multiple adventures of the Norsemen– part of the punch of the story is the temporary nature of the alliance between Fadlan and the Norsemen. If I remember, Chrichton left it open for further adventures of Ibn Fadlan.

The dead are consumed by insects and bacteria, by flame, by animals and, in some cases, by people. Even the word ‘sarcophagus’, which describes a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, literally means ‘flesh-eater’ (sarx plus phagos). When we place someone in a sarcophagus, the implication is that the casket itself is eating the dead body. The end result of death is to be eaten by, well, something. So much for the plot. If you’re just reading Eaters of the Dead for the story, you should finish it satisfied—it’s a real rip-snorting adventure tale, a classic quest full of exotic locales, strange customs, plenty of action, and a splash of horror. In 1979, it was announced the movie version of the novel would be made by the newly formed Orion Pictures with Crichton as director. [6] This did not occur.