I can't say I've ever read an alternate dimension travel story quite like Accidental Warrior, but I mostly enjoyed how this one turned out. I liked seeing Hal grow as a personal and really begin to find himself while he's stuck in a contemporary world that never was. Let's just say he experiences quite a few growing pains and makes some boneheaded decisions along the way. My only real complaint is that the ending is fairly predictable. You can see it coming from a mile away, but it did still totally work. Now if only it wasn't a standalone novel because I would certainly like read more about Hal's new world, with or without Hal as a matter of fact. If you are at all interested in early American history and the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam before it became New York, then you'll need to try this novel.

Wonderful characters woven into a great story that I found very difficult to put down.
A light, thoroughly enjoyable Fantasy.

Do not recommend this book to anyone. Poorly written, the whole thing seemed like a cliche. This book deserves no stars, but it gets one to serve as a warning to others.

The accidental warrior is a well written book about dimensional travel. Once the character is given authority to act on his own, the story picks up and is quite entertaining. That is actually the flaw in the book: Hal doesn't get agency until almost 75% of the way through the book. While it is probably more realistic the way the author wrote it, the writing loses urgency when the protagonist is drifting from one subservient position to another, without largely being able to determine his own path for most of the novel.
The other issue that probably enhanced the "realism" of the novel, but which I thought detracted from the story, was Hal's lack of purpose for much of the novel. Events acted upon him, he didn't act to shape the events.
Overall, I liked the writing and I actually enjoyed the tale, I just regret that it ended up being so much less than it could have been.

This is a well-written example of a mainstream fantasy/SF trope - hero suffers some kind of accident and wakes up in another world/time/alternate Earth - which dates back to at least Mark Twain and his Connecticut Yankee. In this case our college-boy hero is transplanted to a technologically-backward North America in a world wherein Europe was long ago effectively wiped out by plague. The descendants of colonists planted by the Dutch, English, Swedes, and French are all in contention and alliances are fluid. Hal Christianson has one main advantage in this world where modern firearms are at a premium: he happens to be a master swordsman - and that is what propels him to be the Bloody Hal of the title.
While the premise is not new, the book has strong characterisation and plot. I found it much more entertaining than the lack-lustre cover seemed to promise.