This book purports to be an accurate description of viking raiders in, attempting to show their thoughts and feelings, and give us insight into their culture. Unfortunately the author has not done his research. He merely reinforced old stereotypes and borrowed heavily from common misconceptions of vikings in order to write a book that misrepresents the norse tradition. For example, he graphically describes the making of a "bloody eagle", a horrible mutilation of a man. Todays scholars have now proved "bloody eagles" to be a complete fiction invented by a couple of Christian writers (who must have had sick sadistic imaginations).
Rape is also a common topic of the book, and this too is an old innacurate stereotype. What viking has time to rape a woman when hes fighting for his life? In addition, vikings abucted people to hold them ransom, so is it likely he would rape a ransom victim, thereby making his prisoner worthless to her family? No. Furthermore, when the vikings kept prisoners as slaves, they did not see them as expendable, and did not rape them with impunity as many believe. Viking tels even tell of Free men, Norsemen, wooing and courting slave women in their villages.
Women even went on raids with the men, were sometimes leaders in the raids, and participated in the all aspects of Norse life.
So near as we can tell, the fortunate Norse simply were allowed by their culture to live such uninhibited lives that they didn't need to be sadistic, and did not tie together sex and violence. The men did not hate and fear women, and so had no need to either rape them, or keep them in weaponless subjection.
Despite his historically innacuracy, the book simply is not appropriate for young readers, boys or girls. It is given from the perspective of the men in the story, and makes no distinction between what is approriate behavior and what is not. It speaks of young boys getting drunk on a regular basis, as just a part of life. It makes mention of sex and young men "mounting" girls, women, etc., and raping other villagewomen. It is violent and perverse, and gives no context for the not yet discerning young reader to be able to sort through the behaviors of these people, and make a distinction between what is right and wrong.
In short, THIS BOOK [STINKS]!

This book is a very interesting tale about the vikinggs and definetly a good read. the editorial review says "historical" reffering to the book as educational about history and thetime of the vikings. It is not at all historical but still a good read.

What a great read for anyone of any age! Author Cadnum works magic with his words in this realistic coming of age story. Brought together by a Norse raid on England in 794 AD, two sympathetic boys learn grim adult truths about "heroic" warriors. This impressive novel offers accurate historical detail, sensitive pyschological insight and compassionate consideration of good people trapped by traditional expectations. Cadnum enriches our perceptions of both the Viking and the Anglo-Saxon worlds by his range of characters. We learn with 17 year old Lidsmod via the voices of his fellow sailors -- sensible leader Gunnar, veteran steersman Njord, comic Opir the Boaster and saga-singer Eirik. Even extremely violent men like Gorm or the Berserker Torsten are shown acting from different motives. Similarly, the author balances the impressions of the 13 year old English captive Wiglaf with the mature views of Christian abbot Aethelwulf and the local political lord Redwald. This work is a delightful combination of echoes of ancient myths and foreshadowing of cultural change for both the Norse and the English.

Anna, the main character of the novel is a chronic pretend shoplifter. This behavior escalates to a more serious problem of her actually shoplifting. Anna is a child of divorced parents who Cadnum points out, do not relaize the serious extent of Anna's problem. Once again, Michael Cadnum brilliantly accentuates the conflict between the adolescent and themselves, and the adolescent's relationship with the adults in the novel. The story is very detailed and realistic, an excellent choice for the reader.

The novel caught my interest in the beginning with the story of a young teen pretending to steel. The author's use of such explicit detail slowed down the pace of the story line and made it hard for the reader to stick to the book. Granted the tale itself is intreaging, but the way it is writen made the book a chore to enjoy.

Michael Cadnum, a master at subtle and complex stories of coming-of-age, has here written an engrossing story about a thoroughly unlikeable seventeen-year-old who cannot control her own impulses to steal--until she hits bottom and begins to realize there are some people she can trust. Not a book for young or unsophisticated teens, this takes some literary smarts on the part of the reader.

Peter and Mead were best friends until one day They got in an argument and Mead dropped the bottle of alcohol they were sharing. Peter attacked and killed him not really meaning to. He begins to worry about what Meads parents will do because his dad is really sick. He eventually calls Mead's parents on pay phones and every time talked to his mother. Will they ever catch on to him?

Micheal Cadnum's book is well written, though I dislike when an author turns a genuinley creepy story into a movie-style "destroy-the-monster" climax. Some may taste spices of "The Evil Dead". Check your library system if one isn't on auction.

As stated on the back cover, this is the story of a girl who fakes her own rape. This idea in and of itself would have been enough for a brilliant book, plus he threw in a fictional Paul Newman as her father, and the scenario from "Jacob Have I Loved" mirrors the relationship between the narrator and her sister.

Then this beautiful setup dissolves into pointless interaction between characters, and suddenly you have no idea what's going on anymore. I kept thinking, oh, this is going to be the part where it is all going to come together, but it never happened. Then i got to the ending, and I was like, huh?

But I don't think this is a book of filler. I just think the point is far too subtle, as I completely missed it. At first I though it was just me, but then i read the other Amazon.com reviews, and it seemed nobody understood what he was talking about. I picked up that there was a theme of running away, that's about it.

The good news is, there's still a slot open for ME to right the Great American Young Adult novel =)

another book that was on my required reading list for school. it centers around jennifer thayer, daughter of two newly well-off parents who seem to care alot....about jennifer's older "perfect" sister. to get attention, jennifer fakes being assaulted, which brings on many more emotions then jennifer counted on. at first, i found the fast-moving action exciting, and the set-up promising. i even could identify with jennifer at some points. then, however, the story hit a point where i just didn't care anymore. to many side-plots that went nowhere were annoying. not the best book i've read, but not the worst.

I thought that this book was very entertaining. The book was very detailed and was very easy to follow. Though the book did have a mis-leading ending, I will give it 5 stars because I thought that it was ver well written. (results not typical)