Can I say that I had a hard time deciding whether to give this one 3 or 4 stars? I must say for an old english tale it was slightly better than I had thought when I read it. You know it's your standard King gets warrior to go fight off monster and then has a rather odd encounter with said monster's mom and ends up killing her and lives happily...until another monster shows up in which the warrior who now is a king dies killing said monster and everyone is sad. I think it's what the kids liked in Anglo-Saxon England. Also they got wasted A LOT in this story, I mean they drunk so much one has to wonder why how Grendel simply didn't wipe out the whole town in a week, no way anyone there could stay sober long enough to really escape him.