EATERS OF THE DEAD

In this early novel, Michael Crichton reworks the Beowulf myth, presenting it as a translation of a manuscript written by Ibn Fadlan, an Arab ambassador from the court of Baghdad, who actually did live in the tenth century. George Guidall reads the novel as though it were a scholarly paper and high adventure all rolled into one. At one moment, Guidall breathlessly presents the terrified Ibn Fadlin swinging down over sheer cliffs, dropping through crashing seas into the mouth of a tunnel where the mother of the Wendol (Grendel) sleeps. At the next, he's dryly reading a scholarly footnoted commentary on the action. Crichton calls EATERS OF THE DEAD a "playful version of BEOWULF." Certainly, Guidall, with his persuasive narrative powers, helps to blur the line between past and present, fact and fiction, exactly as the author intended. L.R.S. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 00]