The saga of Haakon the viking continues. Set on Earth, this historical fiction is pretty standard fantasy otherwise. Good action. ( )

After fighting off Rosamund's brother, Haakon and Rosamund spend a comfortable winter together at their steading, enjoying life and the luxuries that Haakon's voyages have brought. With the spring thaw, however, comes new dangers. Haakon's best man, Bjorn is found dead in suspicious circumstances and Haakon still has a debt to pay to his siblings' killer - Olaf. So he sails to Ireland to exact his family's revenge, but while there, Harund Olafsson abducts Rosamund and Gunnar and sells them into slavery. Haakon now has an entire world to search to find his true love before he loses her forever.

I found this book easier to read than the first. The story seemed more compelling and the characters less wooden. There is still no real depth to the characters and good is good and evil is evil with no shades of gray at all. To be perfectly honest, the stories contained in the first two books seem to be more of an homage paid to viking culture than much of anything else. ( )