The Year of the Warrior starts out with what I think is an unfortunate cover. The cover art implies swords, sorcery, rape and pillage, medieval Christianity bathed in a sort of lurid green background. The book is about swords, sorcery, rape and pillage, and medieval Christianity–but not lurid or salacious at all.

The central character is Aillil, an Irish student who ends up in Norway as a thrall, and who becomes a sort of fake-priest in order to save his own skin. The story is about how Aillil becomes a real follower of the White Christ and a true priest of The Beloved, as he also calls Christ. The path from slavery and hypocrisy to freedom and truth isn’t easy for Aillil.. He’s beset by doubts and Satanic tricks and dangers within and without. The book would appeal to action fans, plenty of battles and blood and gore. If anything, some of the chapters are a little too full of action for my tastes to the exclusion of quiet character development. However, the book’s true strength lies in the characters, Aillil and his Viking master Erling, and in the themes of violent change versus patient conversion, conservatism versus liberalism, truth versus seeming, and justice versus mercy.

I have a bad habit of always drawing comparisons when I read. “This author reminds me of that one. This book makes me think of some movie. This character or story line is like the character or plot of another novel.” Actually, it’s not such a bad habit as long as you who are reading my reviews remember that I’m not saying that any book or author is exactly like another or that one author is imitating another, just that they are similar in some way.

So, Lars Walker’s book The Year of the Warrior reminds me of Stephen Lawhead’s books. They both write a combination of historical fiction and fantasy, heavy on both the magic and the history, with Christian themes. There now, I’ve got that comparison out of my system, and you can decide, if you like Lawhead’s books, to give The Year of the Warrior a try. And if you don’t like Lawhead or you’re not familiar with his writing, you should still read Mr. Walker‘s book because I say so. I’ve been reading Lars Walker’s blog posts at Brandywine Books for quite some time, and his writing there made me want to see what his fiction would be like. I have another book of his, Blood and Judgement, and I’m anxious to start on it. I think I’ll recommend The Year of the Warrior to Computer Guru Son–who likes Stephen Lawhead by the way.