Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (1991, Paperback, Reissue)

I was hoping for an exciting nove,l such as I am used to reading by Chrichton, but this was historical fiction although quite funny.

I think that the confusion with this book arises from the fact that people don't understand what Crichton accomplished. This is a retelling of Beowulf, in a first person, narrative, entertaining form.
The narrator, Ibn Fadlan, is an actual Muslim writer from the 10th century. The first 3 chapters of this book are actually from his original narrative. Crichton then moves from there in to the fictional portion, using Fadlan as a first hand observer of the events surrounding the Beowulf story.
Considering how dreadful Beowulf was (admittedly mainly due to barriers of time, language and perception of what is entertaining), Crichton has accomplished a very difficult task. He has rewritten a very long, very boring epic and made it concise, easy to digest and entertaining.

I hated Beowulf; I found it to be dreadful, boring and longwinded.

This is a wonderful retelling of the story. I highly recommend that any lover of historical fiction read this book.

If you are a fan of Crichton's more mainstream work (i.e. Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, etc.) you may want to read a few more reviews and see if you can find a snippet of this story online as it is completely different from his other works. The closest novel of Crichton's that I could compare this to would be Timeline and even that is a stretch because Timeline involved Sci-Fi type elements where this is strictly a narrative from the 10th century.

I heartily enjoyed this and was only put off by the ending which just ended. Seriously, be prepared because there is no ending. The book just stops and moves on with an appendix, a historical note and a bibliography. That was a bit annoying. I don't remember if Beowulf did the same.

Still, very well done, very entertaining and very good historical fiction.