Das Blutgericht

Sachsen-Saga #1

by Kari Köster-Lösche

Gunhild, eine moderne junge Tierärztin, traut ihren Augen nicht: Kaum hat sie dem verwundeten, verwirrt wirkenden Mann das Leben gerettet, findet sie sich plötzlich im Mittelalter wieder. Der Mann entpuppt sich als Priester und sie muss ihm als Sklavin Hildegund dienen. Wegen ihrer medizinischen Kenntnisse hält er sie für eine Hexe. Voller Angst flieht sie zu den Sachsen, die noch dem »alten« Glauben anhängen.

Als Gerowulf, der kluge Sohn eines Fürsten, sich in Hildegund verliebt, gerät sie in einen tiefen Zwiespalt. Eigentlich wollte sie nur schnell in ihre Zeit zurückkehren, doch Gerowulf gefällt ihr ausnehmend gut. Noch bevor sie sich entscheiden kann, wird der Stamm von Truppen Karls des Großen eingekesselt. Das große Blutgericht bricht über die Sachsen herein ?

Der erste Roman einer dreiteiligen Sachsen-Saga.

Genres: Historical Fiction

334 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Kari Köster-Lösche is a German author writing mostly historical fiction.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I purchased Kari Köster-Lösche's 2003 novel Das Blutgericht in Germany in 2006 (during a boring and rather argumentative Christmas family reunion) because the synopsis for Das Blutgericht (presenting a combination of time-slip and historical fiction) looked intriguing and right up my proverbial reading alley so to speak. But very much and sadly, I have unfortunately textually despised pretty much everything about Das Blutgericht (except for very grudgingly admitting that Köster-Lösche has done a decently solid job researching and authentically, realistically describing early Mediaeval German/Western European culture, lore etc., although sorry, this is not at all enough for me to consider a higher than one star rating), that I actually felt like throwing Das Blutgericht into the trash post my perusal (but ended up just leaving it at my cousin's house on top of the toilet bowl) and that I am therefore and bien sûr also not even remotely interested in reading the two sequels.

And well, in my not so humble opinion, what Kari Köster-Lösche has penned with Das Blutgericht is not only majorly tedious and uninteresting as a story, as a work of historical fiction in and of itself, but that Das Blutgericht also presents an absolute, a total thematic rip-off of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, not set in Scotland of course like is the case with Outlander but in (what is now) Germany during the early Middle Ages, and most definitely too weirdly similar in set-up and general storyline progression to Outlander to for me just be some random coincidence. So yes, the spectre of deliberate and calculated plagiarism certainly emerges and looms pretty large with regard to Das Blutgericht, and not to mention that Das Blutgericht is also much less interesting and much less readable than what Gabaldon offers up in Outlander, is a story that I have majorly not enjoyed for multiple reasons (and with the too obvious similarity to Gabaldon's Outlander being a hugely problematic but also not the only narrational turn-off for Das Blutgericht).

For yes, Gunhild (the main and time travelling protagonist of Das Blutgericht) is and right from the first page shown by Köster-Lösche as flatly undeveloped, aloof (read boring), her love affair with a Saxon warlord feels like a badly done carbon copy of Claire Beecham and Jamie Fraser falling in love in Outlander (with really nothing romantic at all), and how Kari Köster-Lösche describes modern day Gunhild ending up in the Middle Ages being really badly and strangely, frustratingly handled. Because and to negatively compare Das Blutgericht to Outlander, while in Outlander, Diana Gabaldon shows that Claire ends up in 18th century Scotland by accidentally (and later on deliberately) touching a menhir in a stone circle in the 20th century, in Das Blutgericht, Köster-Lösche has Gunhild just suddenly appearing and quasi out of the blue in early Medieval Europe and with no one being all that surprised at her modern clothing and contemporary demeanour either (and with everyone in the Middle Ages also almost immediately understanding Gunhild's modern German and vice versa although that is linguistically improbable since Old High German is hugely different from today's, from current German), leaving Das Blutgericht and Kari Kötster-Lösche's penmanship, her presented text as something that has been personally speaking completely and utterly unappealing (and that my one star rating for Das Blutgericht, I do indeed give this without contrition and any feelings of guilt whatsoever).

[Schneehase · Rating 1 out of 5]

Völlig unrealistisch und furchtbar geschrieben.