Shield Maiden

Firstly, I do not think this is a badly written book. Was it for me? No. Is there a market for it? Definitely. The prose is well written and engaging, I breezed through reading this in only 2 days. Why am I only giving it 2 stars? I think I am a bit oversaturated on the historical fantasy right now. I got this one through the Goldsboro books GSFF club and it seems like most of the recent books from there have been quite similar in feel. Reviews are 100% subjective and I am confident that others will love this book way more than me.

Shield Maiden is a retelling of Beowulf, at least his third fight against the dragon, but told from the perspective of his niece. There is definitely a bit of fad for retelling of classic historical fantasy from a female perspective. Honestly, I am not sure how much it adds and would rather new stories were told rather than trying to shoehorn a modern feisty girl into a classic work of fiction. Yes, historical fiction is extremely male dominated, but I am not certain that feminist retellings are the way to correct that as it always ends up feeling somewhat anachronistic, putting modern societal mores onto these historical events.

The pacing also feels somewhat off, being very slow for the first half of the book. There is an almost YA feel to the characterizations. Fryda is a typical modern YA style feisty princess. The villainy here is also somewhat one dimensional and black and white. It is easy reading. It all jars somewhat with my knowledge of the original source material, but I have nothing in particular against making Beowulf more accessible to the modern audience, but again it felt a bit shoehorned in. The Beowulf elements of the story (fighting the dragon) definitely played second fiddle to the love interest and court intrigue.

This is not a bad story, it just felt like a few too many things were stitched in to a story which they didn't belong in.