Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been reading translations and retellings of Beowulf for twenty years - not all are good, and few are great. I consider Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf one of the absolute best translations, and Gardner’s Grendel as one of the most interesting retellings. In Headley’s foreword, she references her dislike for the courtly. This is fine. I generally share her disdain. Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that modern slang is the answer. I guess I get the reasoning behind translating “hwaet!” to “bro!” - but it just feels like a cheap joke played upon Seamus Heaney’s “So!” This is reflected often throughout the book. It is definitely more of a retelling than a translation - and I think it would be a better book if that was made more clear. I ran across many lines which were definitely “creatively translated” when compared to the original Old English. That in itself doesn’t bother me, but where Heaney was able to translate Old English into readable Modern English without sacrificing the deep gravity of the original, this book seems to miss the forest for the trees. And the bros.