When Thorolf and Asla elope, they are punished with banishment, along with Thorolf’s two half-brothers, and they set sail for the island of Catan. This book was written incredibly wordy and slow. There was so much telling and barely any showing. There were a lot of unnecessary details and characters, instead of focusing on the important details of the book, and the characters were not developed well at all. The sexism (talk of rape, slavery, etc.) was akin to Game of Thrones, and not in a complimentary way. I wanted to enjoy this book because my husband loves the game, but I just couldn’t stomach this book enough to finish it.

Really wanted to like this book. It had lots of nice details of the Viking world but I found it hard to follow because the perspective changed so frequently. It was also tell us about so many characters that it was hard to connect with any of them.

As such a huge fan of the board game and having made up narratives of my own that go with the game, i was thrilled to see this written and it was so much fun to read. Highly recommend, whether you've played Catan and know anything about it or not!

Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Well, this is a super fun read! I love Settlers of Catan, so as soon as I saw this title available, I needed to make it my own. It does a great job of following the general play of the game while also weaving a unique story with original characters that actually have depth and complicated inner lives. That's impressive!