This is an unusual book - not because of the subject, though I can't remember reading any Viking fantasy of late (apart from the one I'm writing) or indeed ever. Sure fantasy abounds with 'Northman warriors', beards a-bristling, who crop up with sometimes annoying regularity in everything from George Martin's A Game of Thrones (& subsequent books) to the recent Grim Company by Luke Scull. But actually honest-to-Odin Vikings with names like Audun Arinbjarnarson and Ulfar Thormodsson ... that's unusual.However, it's not the subject that makes the book most unusual - it's the writing style. The prose is fairly standard, good, solid, does the job. The point of view though - the set of eyes through which you see the story - changes rapidly from one character to another, continuously, through the whole book. You often get two or three paragraphs from one character here, a page from another on a boat miles away, then a page from a third, and half a page from a fourth. This could be disastrous but Snorri Kristjansson made it work for me. The effect is to give a different experience of what is, when boiled down, a week-long attack on a smallish town. The price paid is that it's hard to connect emotionally with any single character and hard to become too interested in their schemes, but on the other hand you get a much more sweeping view of a grand conflict and if you're not connected so strongly to the characters you certainly connect and understand the events. In a way it feels like a different 'cinematic' treatment where we flash about rapidly watching the battle unfold.The battle is the thing here. A lot of axes divide a lot of flesh into smaller pieces than required for good health. Blood runs in the streets. Longships plow the waves. The old gods are invoked. The White Christ too.The ending was a surprise. It certainly left me mulling it over, wondering if I liked it or not and whether me liking it was really the point.[I should note that there are longer sections with single characters. I don't want to overstate the 'jumping', just acknowledge it.]This is, in my opinion, a good book. I'm glad I read it. It's far from perfect. A number of plot lines confused me. Things happened that I can't really explain the reason for. The focus felt misplaced sometimes and some characters rang less true than others. However, it's something new both stylistically and subject-wise (fantasy-lite Vikings written by one of their descendants), and certainly if your fantasy reading is starting to feel a bit samey you should give this one a go.And if none of that sways you, consider this: My mother liked it.....