The Voyage of the Short Serpent

EWWWWW!!!

For all my freaky darlings who count themselves as Viking--EWWWWWWW!!!!!

I finished the horrible little book I mentioned back in August--The Voyage of the SS by Frenchman Bernard du Boucheron. Okay, it wasn't REALLY about Vikings--persay--But well--yeah.

I mean can a novel that features catholicism, cannibals, gangrene, and "A modest proposal" on a Viking style ship really be taken seriously? I loved the narrative from the First chapters-- it read like an historic document--then a personal log from an omniscient narrator who is so overwhelmed by his situation he just goes on auto pilot--finally the last chapter is written from somebody else's PoV (not quite sure who--) and this chapter really drives home the point that maybe missionaries aren't as awesome as they think they are. It was gruesome to say the least and the grotesque amputations were described with gleeful greed. The tale of a colony of Roman Catholics marooned in medieval Greenland by the encroachment of a new ice age. I was almost sympathetic til I realized he probably only kept his son as a snack for the voyage home.