Fantastic Saga

Blood and Judgment by Lars Walker

Baen Books, 2003
(310 pages; $6.99, paperback)

reviewed by Dale Nelson

Sixty-odd years ago, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt wrote several lighthearted stories about the adventures of Harold Shea in various alternative universes in which the events of Norse mythology, or Spenser’s Faerie Queene, or the Kalevala, or Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso were in keeping with the laws of nature. Lars Walker has updated this genre in Blood and Judgment, pitching high-school English teacher Will Sverdrup of Epsom, Minnesota, and his fellow amateur thespians into a universe (or two) in which the ur-Hamlet saga of Amlodd, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet—or Thomas Kyd’s!—supply the templates.

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