NOTE: I received this as a free copy via Aconyte Books & Ubisoft for an honest review. This is also a SPOILER FREE review.
I love Assassin's Creed. The third entry in the series was my first rated M game, Black Flag's ending always makes me cry, and I've logged countless hours on Odyssey while in College, playing off and on in the world of Greece. I read up on the lore, I imagine future games in the series, and sometimes, I imagine stories that I'd love to one day write in the future. But I had never really taken a dive into the literary adaptations of the games' stories, no matter how bad I'd love to write about an Assassin from any point in history. I think the only time I've ever really done that was when I read a chunk of Matthew J. Kirby's Last Descendants series of YA books, but I only reached a hundred pages into it before I lost it while moving into a new house.
But now, I crack open a book from the same author, and, as a preface - I want, nay, need to go back and read Kirby's earlier works. Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Geirmund's Saga blew it out of the water for me.
Assassin's Creed, for those that don't know, is a game franchise that revolves around a group called "the Assassins," in other cultures, they're called "the Hidden Ones," meanwhile they're facing off against the Templars, who hide in plain sight. As a piece of Historical Science Fiction, some games a player will interact with figures of the past. Assassin's Creed Three, for example, revolved around colonial America, and you met people like Paul Revere and George Washington. This novel is a tie-in to the newest entry in the franchise (at the time of posting), Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which revolves around the Vikings of yore, landing in England for conquest and power.
Found in this novel is an adjacent story to the game. To die-hard fans of the franchise, this may be seen as a con. For a few years now, Assassin's Creed hasn't really been Assassin's Creed to some. Odyssey received so much flack because it wasn't even revolving around Assassins and Templars, and, seen here in both the game and book, it's all just happening elsewhere. The story follows Geirmund Hel-hide, who doesn't appear in the game. Geirmund's Saga revolves around a quest for identity and is riddled with war as he works to help the Danes in their conquest of England, working to defeat the Saxon king and establish control of new land. There's no real "assassinations," nor is there a "Leap of Faith," or a hidden blade in the standard sense. It is adjacent to Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which, already, is adjacent to the Assassins.
Something that I love about Assassin's Creed media is its dedication to the time period. I can see that so much research went into this novel that it really should be seen as the saga that it is. Even the references from the game are accurate and in accordance with Assassin's Creed lore. It's a massive bonus that this is, at its heart, a historical fantasy first, and an Assassin's Creed Tie-in Novel second.
I'm feeling unsure if I'd consider this a con, as this allows people that don't really know much about Assassin's Creed to go into it and still get a story full of captivating characters and an enjoyable plot. But, as a diehard fan, I went through thinking "Okay, so is Geirmund going to do this?" In reference to some game-beat, and no, it doesn't happen, or it does happen, but I'd have to go through six degrees of connection to decide on if what happened could really be considered Assassin's Creed related. A murder in the night isn't, to me, an assassination, but it may be to some.
Geirmund's Saga is told from a third-person limited point of view, meaning that we only know of Geirmund's thoughts and what Geirmund is seeing and feeling. I like this. Sometimes, third-person novels will jump to the villain's perspective, revealing every dastardly thing or the whole plot, making it all feel null to me. I'm glad it stuck with the hero.
I will say that the character of Geirmund has a really interesting arc, that plays on the ideas of identity, religion, and making one's own path. Everything about Norse beliefs revolve around fate, the Three-Spinners are brought up frequently, if a person dies it is fate that wills it so. Geirmund struggles with this thought, but has faith that the gods will make sure everything goes according to plan in their own weird Aesir way.
England is also a Christian country, so seeing this clash between Norse ideas and Christian doctrine is so intriguing, and it gets explored often throughout the 460 page novel. To Christians, a Norseman is a pagan, sent by the devil to rain hellfire to their holy land of England. To the Danes and Vikings, the Christians are just an obstacle, and their gods want them to overtake this land. I'll admit, going into a book that's a tie-in to a video game, I didn't expect these ideas and I think that shows a fundamental bias to tie-in novels in general, as there's really diamonds in the rough, like this and Matthew Stover's "Revenge of the Sith" novelization.
I will say that while the plot is intriguing and the prose is so poetic and well-told, I think there's parts throughout the book that dragged. Descriptions got to being so in-depth, and I would find myself skimming a little bit of it before catching myself and rereading it. I'm trying to find the balance of this in my writing, and I think you can describe a lot of stuff, but you may also have to hope that the reader's imagination can fill in the blanks. The story isn't saying something like "The Longboat was about 5 meters in length with long overarching wooden carvings," it doesn't get into the nitty gritty like a history book, but it does get really poetic in it's language for something as simple as "It was a torrential downpour of rain."
I'm glad, though, that the dialogue is really intriguing and realistic for the period. It's almost Shakespearean at times in terms of wit. No spoilers, but the ending dialogue is like a hundred guns on the mantelpiece, and just now are they all going off. It was such an amazing payoff of wit. This falls into characters too, which are all pretty great and have their own use. Later on in the story it seems like it may get confusing with how many people join the roster, but it never really felt like it did. The only issue I had was that the names all felt similar to each other. I know, some of these are historical figures like Guthrum, but I'd find myself confusing character names like Skjalgi and Steinolfur with Sidroc and Styrbjorn. Just a lot of names that start with S, and I guess that's hard for me, but maybe it isn't for others.
All-in-all, though, I found Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Geirmund's Saga to be an epic that stands on its own as a captivating story, separate from the AC title. I wonder if Geirmund will show up in the game's future Downloadable Content, as I think some of the things seen here took place after the games ending, but I could be wrong.
If you're a fan of Assassin's Creed, or you're looking for an emotional, theme-filled, Viking Tale, this book is something that I'll wholeheartedly recommend.
