In the Shadow of the Beast: A Historical Novel of the Viking Age (The Saga of Hasting the Avenger Book 2)
“Right up there with Bernard Cornwell.” — Reader Review
838 AD. Chaos reigns. Following his rise from slavery, the legendary Hasting must now learn the brutal reality of what it means to rule.
The death of King Horic’s rivals has left the Viking armies in Frankia fractured and leaderless. As ambitious rivals move to claim power, Hasting finds himself at the center of a fragile following where loyalty is a commodity easily bought and quickly broken. As he struggles to unite the Northmen under a single command, an old wound resurfaces, turning a political fight for territory into a deeply personal reckoning.
Moving through the shifting borders of pagan and Christian lands, Hasting is tested not only as a commander but as a man. Among Franks, Celts, and Vikings, he must navigate a world of siege, imprisonment, and betrayal, where every hard-won victory pushes him further from the life he once imagined.
The History behind In the Shadow of the Beast
The historical foundation of In the Shadow of the Beast is set during a period of escalating volatility within the Carolingian Empire, as the Norse presence shifted from sporadic coastal raiding to a structural reality of the Frankish landscape along the Loire. The narrative picks up in 838 AD, a pivotal year following the death of a certain King Horic I of Denmark, which left Viking warbands in Frankia increasingly autonomous and prone to intense internal power struggles. This setting allows the story to explore the “nodal system” of Viking expansion, in which leaders like Hasting focused on controlling specific trade centers and river junctions rather than vast territories to secure economic and political leverage. The novel follows Hasting as he navigates the complex political web of the Loire River Valley, a region where Viking, Frankish, and Breton interests collided amid a landscape of opportunistic, shifting alliances. Historically, this era was marked by institutional adaptations, such as the monks of Noirmoutier being compelled to fortify their castrum and, in 836 AD, eventually abandoning their island home for the relative safety of the mainland due to frequent, persistent raids.
By placing Hasting at the center of these shifts, the narrative aligns with eleventh-century accounts by Raoul Glaber, the Annals of St. Bertin, the Annals of Angoulême, and the Cartulary of Redon, which depict Hasting as a regular regional actor capable of manipulating both pagan and Christian factions for his own ends. The story delves into the “mindscape” of the ninth-century Northmen, where acquiring social capital and silver was as much about proving a leader’s drengskapr, or honor, as it was about immediate territorial gain. As Hasting’s following grows, the book mirrors the historical transition into a period of systematic exploitation, in which Norse warbands used strategic terror and the extraction of Danegeld to paralyze their enemies, effectively turning the waterways of the west into corridors of Viking influence. This interpretation of Hasting’s origins draws on modern scholarship to place him at the center of the region’s formative politics, weaving him into the foundational struggles of the ninth-century Breton and Frankish nobility. Through this lens, the narrative establishes the deep-seated regional ties that explain his frequent and persistent presence in the Loire and Brittany throughout the remainder of the tumultuous century.