Revenge Is An Overused Word. But When You Pick On A Northman's Family, Expect It. Eirik Hjaltison is barely sixteen when his world turns to ashes. Alone, betrayed, and on the run, he barely escapes his father's enemies. He is thrown into the perilous world of Ninth-Century Europe, where your only protection is your skill with your weapons, and friends who will stand with you when hope is all you have left. Over the Northern Sea and down the Roman Road, ever south, Erik follows the dark trail of the Medieval Slave Trade towards a place that holds what he seeks-inside a cage in a dungeon, behind the brooding walls of a stone fortress. But there is a bright-eyed Egyptian girl who can sew wounds, and seven lean men from the North who thought it could be good with some plunder, and perhaps to shop for some fancy boots at a local market. They find themselves part of something else: a quest to right a grievous wrong, in a world where there is a hundred ways to die. Nothing is harder to win back than a man's honor. A Northman's name is everything. Erik ran once, and that he cannot live with. While those who spat on his father's body are still alive, there can be no honor, and no peace. But men's weaknesses show themselves when they do their worst, and Eirik's pride threatens to undo everything. Everything he loves, everything he wants to live, everything he ever fought for, rides on one last chance, one last fight, to win it all, or lose it all.
About the Author: Torgeir Hansson was born in Oslo, Norway in 1958. He grew up on the west side of town, mostly with a fishing rod in his hand. After a short stint at the University of Oslo he left for San Francisco in 1981, and never looked back. He has written extensively for a variety of promotional and entertainment purposes. The Gripping Beast is his debut novel, and has already garnered excellent reviews from early readers for its immediacy and unconventional approach to the subject matter. He wrote The Gripping Beast to renew the viking novel; to reshape the often fanciful stories into something much closer to the ground, and in his own words "to rid the genre of pet dragons, fur bikinis, and magic helmets." The Gripping Beast is among the first to bring a realistic and hard-boiled style to the Medieval novel. It puts the reader inside the boots of a young Norseman, and face to face with Medieval Europe such as it was. Torgeir Hansson lives in Sausalito, California.