Sword of the North

This book is both a scholarly work which tells of a little known historical event, as well as a good old fashioned page tuner of a yarn. I agree with the other reviewer, the characters are a little one dimmensional, but that's a mere quibble. It's a shame the book is out of print and is not better known.

This is an underrated novel about Henry Sinclair, Baron of Rosselyn and Jarl of Orkney, who beat Columbus to the Americas by almost a century when he sailed to Nova Scotia and Massachussetts Bay. While the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, the dialogue is superb and the narrative entirely engaging. A peculiar sense of humor runs through the writing, and some of the reconstructed events owe to the research of Frederick Pohl. The book is out of print, but it shouldn't be. Like Stuart Mirsky's "King of Vinland's Saga", it offers more and better than most mainstream historical fiction.