Book Review // Berserker: Shadow of the Wolf

Sometimes you pick up an old book expecting one thing and end up getting something completely different.

That was pretty much my experience with Berserker: Shadow of the Wolf by Chris Carlsen. Looking at the cover, I was expecting a fairly straightforward swords-and-sorcery adventure. Vikings, Berserkers, gods, blood, battles and probably quite a lot of people getting stabbed, and to be fair...There is absolutely loads of that.

But underneath all the blood and violence is a much stranger story about mythology, ancient powers and the idea that perhaps the old stories weren't stories at all.

The Details

Title: Berserker: Shadow of the Wolf
Author: Chris Carlsen
Published: 1977
Series: Berserker Trilogy
Genre: Swords & Sorcery / Historical Fantasy

The Blurb

Harald Swiftaxe is a young Norse warrior taking part in his first raid on Ireland. He's a Viking, he's there to fight and pillage, and he's more than capable of getting stuck into the violence. But Harald occasionally shows something that doesn't quite fit with the rest of his warband.

Mercy.

After sparing a monk and refusing to kill a woman and her child, his companions start calling him the Innocent. Then Harald returns home to discover his beloved Elena's village has been destroyed. A wounded Berserker gives him the answers. And before long Harald finds himself facing six of Odin's cursed warriors, dragged into a world of ancient magic, bloodshed and gods who are very different from the stories people tell about them.

Harald is about to become a Berserker himself. And things are about to get considerably worse.

The Review

Let's start with the obvious: this book is bloody. There is a LOT of violence packed into Shadow of the Wolf. Raids, battles, murder, Berserkers tearing people apart and all the other horrible things you'd probably expect when you mix Vikings with 1970s swords-and-sorcery fiction. The Norsemen aren't exactly presented as cuddly historical heroes either.

These are vicious, brutal raiders, and Carlsen's version of the Viking world is a pretty miserable place to live. Death can come at any moment, and often there isn't anything particularly noble about it. It's dirty, violent and dangerous, and weirdly, I liked that. It gives the book a nasty atmosphere that fits the story incredibly well.

Harald Swiftaxe

Harald is probably the most interesting part of the book for me, which is good as he is title character after all. He's introduced as a young Viking warrior who should, by all accounts, be just as brutal as everyone around him. But he isn't. There's something in him that keeps making him hesitate. That little bit of humanity becomes incredibly important once he is transformed into one of Odin's Berserkers. Because now Harald isn't simply fighting other people. He's fighting himself.

The curse turns him into something monstrous whenever the blood starts flowing, leaving him to deal with the consequences once the rage finally passes. And that's where the story starts becoming much more interesting than a simple Viking adventure.

One thing I definitely wasn't expecting was just how strange Carlsen's mythology becomes. Odin isn't presented as the wise old wanderer you might be expecting. He's something much darker, something ancient, something that seems far more interested in violence, chaos and death than the noble mythology we've inherited.

The deeper Harald gets into the story, the more it feels like he's peeling back layers of mythology and discovering that the stories people tell aren't necessarily the truth, and this is where I think Shadow of the Wolf really starts to shine.

The first half of the book is much more straightforward: Vikings, raids, Berserkers, blood and revenge. It's fun, but I did find myself occasionally wondering where exactly the story was going. Then Harald starts travelling through this strange, ancient landscape and the whole thing changes. He encounters burial mounds, ancient ruins and places that feel like they're sitting outside normal time. The land itself begins to feel alive.

Harald starts seeing things that shouldn't be there, or perhaps have always been there, and suddenly the book becomes less about Vikings fighting Vikings and more about discovering the ancient mythology underneath everything. That was easily my favourite part.

The Ancient World

There is something really bloody appealing about the idea that the myths of the past might have been based on something real. Shadow of the Wolf leans heavily into that idea. The old burial mounds aren't simply burial mounds. The ancient stories aren't simply stories. The gods aren't necessarily what people think they are, and Harald, thanks to his transformation into a Berserker, gets dragged deeper and deeper into this hidden world.

There are ancient places, strange beings and magical forces lurking just beyond the edge of what ordinary people understand. It's almost like Harald is discovering that the Viking Age is sitting on top of something much, much older, and for me that was bloody interesting. Reminding me of how I’m trying to explore a similar theme in Sector 102.

A Little Confusing

Now, I will admit something. I got lost. A few times. There are sections where I had to stop and reread what I'd just gone through because I wasn't entirely sure what was happening or where the story was taking me. Some of this was due to the writing which can also get rather...wordy.

There are passages where I found myself thinking, right, okay, I know these words are English but I'm not entirely sure what the hell you are telling me. It didn't ruin the experience, but it definitely slowed me down. I think this is one of those books where you have to accept that you're not always going to understand every little thing immediately. And honestly, once I stopped worrying about that, I enjoyed it a lot more.

Final Thoughts

Berserker: Shadow of the Wolf isn't quite the book I thought I was picking up. I went in expecting a bloody Viking swords-and-sorcery adventure, and I got that. But I also got ancient mythology, strange magic, terrifying gods, supernatural landscapes and a story that seems increasingly interested in asking where myths actually come from.

The violence is plentiful, the world is bleak and Harald's journey gets increasingly strange as he becomes more entangled with the supernatural. I did find myself getting lost in places, and some of the prose could be a little too wordy for my liking. But I enjoyed it for what it is:

A bloody adventure set in a time when perhaps the myths were a lot closer to the truth than we ever realised.

And that's a bloody good place to start a trilogy. Now I just need to see where Harald's story goes next...which seems to be rather hard to find in the wild.

Until next time Adventurers keep reading cool shit!