[It] is now a long time since there was a new major piece of writing from Rosemary Sutcliff. Blood Feud will be eagerly welcomed by admirers of her long and distinguished body of work.

Is Blood Feud then more of the same? In some ways, yes. We find ourselves once more with a hero suspended between worlds in transition—half Celtic, half English, Viking slave and Byzantine soldier, he is swept up on that epic movement of the Viking expansion eastwards, so fascinatingly unfamiliar to most of us. We find ourselves also in a moral world where courage and loyalty count overwhelmingly, and men are ruled by a ferocious code—blood binds them as brothers or as enemies. Once again we are brought through darkness to a faint dawn; the hero is suspended between duty to kill and duty to heal, and finds himself defined by the choice...