The Saga of Beowulf
R. Scot Johns 

Reviewed by Araminta Matthews

As a lover of all things lingual, I have been a fan of Beowulf since I first encountered it in my eighth grade AP English class.  Credited as the first thing written in the English language that has survived the centuries into the modern era – though, anyone familiar with this tenth century document can tell you it barely resembles our contemporary, text-speak-addled version of the language – Beowulf is not only our finest example of the imagination of our ancestors; but it represents either our first brush with science fiction over 1,000 years ago, or one hell of a Darwinian tale.  It is our Anglish version of the “hero’s journey” popularized by Ovid and Homer, and before that, who knows?  One thing I can say for sure, R. Scot Johns recognized in this poem the stuff that weaves prose, and he set the strings in place for an epic novel riddled with adventure, real history, and violence of the oldest kinds.

While the story traces the path of our earliest knight-verus-dragon tale, the novel takes the story of Beowulf and Grendel to a new level, layering the action sequence of the poem with the relationship of strong characterization, detailed setting, and a plot that carries the story beyond just Beowulf’s ultimate victory over Grendel and into the history of early England.  The story is paced well in that, at least at the beginning, it moves briskly through the action with detailed language and description throughout.  The historical backdrop against which this novel is based is clearly researched and fairly accurate-- though it fails to reach the height of detail as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s intensely-researched ancient England historical fictions, it still manages to hold its own.  The character of Beowulf, at once our archetype of masculine hero and chivalrous night, is humanized in Johns’ work in a believable way.  And the writing shows insight into craft, audience, and sequence – all points which punctuate a good genre tale.

At the same time, I do have a few gripes with this book, beginning with the tendency of the writer to wax modernist description throughout – a fault to which I find most science fiction and fantasy authors  succumb, including myself.  Rather than detail the moment, Johns often takes pages to describe every fine detail of the moment, which often slows the story down to a slither in the middle of the book.  While Johns is no Joyce and The Saga of Beowulf no Finnegan’s Wake¸ the tale does grow stale in a few places, especially as we draw deeper into the politics of the Anglo-Saxons and further away from the adventure and vengeance of Griselda. 

Apart from Johns’ occasional wordiness, the story is strong.  Johns shows depth as a writer and skill at synthesizing the details of a real history and the pressures of genre-based fiction with the literature of Beowulf, replete with all its original mystery.  I could totally see this novel reinventing itself into a series of graphic novels or an extended visual ebook, as the detail here could really lend itself to fantasy art.  I would, however, encourage Johns to seek a secondary artist.  While the cover art is decent, it’s a bit hokey for my tastes.

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