For the most part i really enjoyed this journey into Norse Fantasy with a Black protagonist because of course it was something id never seen done before. Written by a co author alongside Willow Smith, i was intrigued when seeing this on #Netgalley so immediately made the request.

Going in i knew there would be struggle/slave narrative but due to the historic setting, i had no real issue with this and actually liked how delicately it was handled from the point of our heroine being taken from her village in Africa (modern day Ghana) to a viking town in what i believe is Norway, and how she navigates the change from freedom to captivity.

There is a dual POV with the princess of said viking town and i enjoyed meeting Freydis and understandin the longhouse politics through her eyes as a woman in the traditional role and then in the heroine’s role as a non traditional one.

What made me not love this weirdly enough is that it felt too neat and HEA. Vikings were brutal and while there is a surface layer of what they got up to, it all felt too immature to be a true Viking outing as Ive seen in the tv show Vikings and The Last Kingdom etc which i adore.

So for me, good story, good characters but just a little too tame but I would love for this to get in front of more people so definitely give it a go if you want to try something different.

Thank you to @netgalley @randomhouse @cornerstone and @delrey for the ebook. All opinions are my own.