I’m reviewing Loki Unbound by SJA Turney #histfic #bookreview

Here’s the blurb

The Wolves of Odin must bring a rogue Viking chief to heel, in the rolling Yorkshire Dales… AD 1044. Fleeing the machinations of William the Conqueror in France, the Wolves of Odin set sail for Britain.

They make for the north of the country, heading to Jorvik – Viking York. Its earl, Sigurd, doesn’t believe they have arrived with peaceable intentions. To prove their good faith, he challenges them to fix a problem for him…

North of Jorvik, in the Dales, a rogue Viking warlord, Arkil, resists Sigurd’s rule with a small army. Sigurd’s forces are spread too thin to deal with him directly, and so it falls to the Wolves…

My Review

Loki Unbound is the fifth book in the Wolves of Odin series. I’ve read book 2, but none of the others. It took me a little while to get back into the characters, but more than anything, it’s because Hardrada was such an important character in book 2, and he’s not in this one:) Once I realised this, I worked out what was happening.

This book takes us to Jorvik and Swaledale, north of Jorvik, where our cast of warriors and seeresses are faced with a seemingly impossible task: reclaiming a lost mining area from the local Viking. The Viking has built some fairly impenetrable defences and has a warrior of immense renown amongst his warriors and his own seeress. But Halfdan, Gunnhild, and Bjorn are not to be stopped in their attempts to aid the bishop of Jorvik and, in exchange, gain something they really want as they work towards facing their own enemies in the Scandinavian lands.

Told from the viewpoint of our main characters and with some retrospective story elements concerning Bjorn, which worked really well, this is an engrossing tale of the time that I thoroughly enjoyed. I will have to go back and read the stories I’ve missed in this series.

SJA Turney is an author I trust to tell me an excellent story, be it Roman or Viking, and he didn’t disappoint.

Loki Unbound is available now.

Check out my review for The Bear of Byzantium.

And find reviews for SJA Turney’s/Simon Turney’s Roman fiction here too. Domitian. Sons of Rome. Masters of Rome. Gods of Rome. The Capsarius.

• Amazon