Publisher: Belmont Books

Belmont Edition published December 1968

Cover Art: Jeffrey Jones

Plot Synopsis (Of Cover): Sven was not like the over Vikings. While most of the boys took to slaughter and mayhem as ducks do to water, Sven much preferred the quiet arts of needlepoint and hide-tanning. Of course, he was no coward, but being naturally slighter than the other men in his village, he remained largely untested as a warrior. That is, until the day that his leader took full half of the village’s fighting men off for a pillage of the southlands, leaving Sven’s home vulnerable to attack by the devastating menace posed by the time travelers of Future Sweden; they who invade the past to mine the priceless artifacts of yesteryear for their HyperMuseums. Sven, fearing for his village but aware of his shortcomings, struck upon a plan. He would confuse the technologically superior Swedes by adopting the sexiest lady-Viking costume he could make on short notice, using the window of confusion created to apply sword to skull. His maneuver met with middling success for a time, but he was eventually struck down. The Swedes returned to the future with many an artifact, and a curious tale about Sven the Uncomfortably Alluring was added to their databanks.

Relatively Irrelevant Inside Text: This book reads like a prog-metal record. Vikings battling giant alien ants, undead wolves and Martian love-slaves… seriously, someone make this book into an album (does anyone have Paul Masvidal’s phone number?). However, when you do, do me a favor and leave out the strange spasms of oddly reverent Christianity that crop up like bile after too many horns of ale. There is a conversion experience in the beginning of the book that you could copy-paste into a fucking Chick Tract. Hacking those bits off as one would the limbs of foolish Mongol warriors, however, leaves you with joyous aforementioned badassery that I could have read for another hundred or so pages. Alas, ’tis a novella—Jorgensen (né Paul W. Fairman) obviously needed to run off and write his tie-in for the TV series “That Girl”. So yes, a fun, if anemic, little book about wanton slaughter, alien sex-goddesses that birth hordes of ravenous ants, raping and pillaging as only the Vikings can do it, and eternal salvation through the love of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. \m/

Rating: 6.8 Bloated Ant Corpses

Questions for Critical Cover Viewing:

* When going into battle cross-dressed in a leather bikini, is it more effective to tuck-n-hide one’s manhood to create an air of doubt and confusion, or to threaten the enemy with a paunch of jiggling sausage?

* Who would win in a fight: a Viking dressed as above or a medieval knight in assless chaps?

* Come on, what ELSE do you wear to the Reykjavik Pride Parade?

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