Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this because my family and I binged watched the Netflix series The Last Kingdom, which is brilliant, and based on these books. I’ll stick with the show. In the show, the characters are complex. Viewers understand characters’ motivations, even if we don’t agree with them. We see them struggle with decisions, consequences, beliefs and circumstances. That is not the case in the book. The book reads like it was written by a 15-year-old boy. There is little to no character development for anyone. Though it is first person narrative for the main character, the reader isn’t given the main character’s motivations for much of anything. he makes decisions based on the fact that he likes to fight, and he wants to be a warrior (Cue endless battle scenes). He hates Christian conformity, and he likes Dane nonconformity. He makes a huge life decision , and he literally tells the readers “I did it because I was bored.” The entire book is incredibly juvenile and shallow. The Danes kill his brother and his father. If he has any feelings about this, we don’t know what they are. He immediately takes to the Danes, and likes them because Ragnar is funny, and he doesn’t have to read or pray. Then later, (spoiler alert) when Ragnar is killed, he abandons the Danes and agrees to kill them…and we don’t know why. In the show, thankfully, we are given answers for this. We see his internal struggle, and the push and pull of the two different cultures. None of that is in the book. Brida, who in the show is a well rounded character, is as two dimensional as Uhtred. The book is basically glorified battle scenes told from the pov of a shallow, irreverent teenager who just likes killing things. He is devoid of normal feelings, and has little to no human reaction regarding death, violence, war, or grief. He comes off as a bit of a sociopath. It’s incredibly disappointing, especially when compared to the show, which certainly is also about war, but is also about human beings.