Kings And Vikings

Poul Anderson's The Last Viking, a trilogy, and his Mother Of Kings, a single long novel, are two biographical historical fictions, each culminating in its title character's death. You might expect a trilogy to be longer than a single novel and in this case you would be right but not by a very wide margin. Novels vary considerably in length. The trilogy totals 819 pages whereas the single novel, which is divided into six Books, is 619 pages. Thus, one Book of the novel is shorter than one volume of the trilogy but nevertheless is comparable in length to a short novel.

If the trilogy were to be re-issued in an omnibus edition, then the two works would match each other on a book shelf. Between them chronologically comes Anderson's The Broken Sword but the genres of the three works differ -

Mother Of Kings: historical fiction with elements of historical fantasy;
The Broken Sword: heroic fantasy;
The Last Viking: historical fiction.

As I think the French say, long live the difference.