Rating: 3/5
I really wanted to like this book. I've read some previous stuff from Brian Wood that was fantastic, and the premise seemed interesting. However, the implementation just wasn't up to my expectations.
So the story is about a man in England known as Magnus the Black. He does odd jobs to get by, which include protecting members of the Christian church as they expand their influence in England. A member of the Vatican is killed under his care and he becomes a hunted man.
Magnus straddles the realm between pagans and Christians in this story. This lets him be a guide to the reader into the series, but his indifference left him a little wanting as a character. By the time the story explains how he got to this point as a wanderer I didn't much care about his background. It could have made him a bit more likeable, yet it might do the opposite. He's more of an antihero without the charisma. The side characters round things out a bit, but not enough to want me to keep reading. Some parts of the story didn't mesh well with the others. It made it feel less cohesive than it could have.
The art is really good. It is quite dark, which matches the story fantastically. Something brighter just would not have fit as well. There were aspects of the art that I didn't care for, particularly the shading over the character faces. It strays a little toward the abstract in the art, but not enough for it to be real noticeable.
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