Instruct: Classify the given Amazon review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: An excellent early work fusing fact and fiction

Michael Crichton has taken a real 10th century manuscript depicting Ibn Fadlan's journeys into the northern country of the Rus, and worked it into a rousing adventure story. His text follows the original so closely at times that it doesn't read as smoothly as a modern novel, and has therefore been misunderstood by a number of readers. Nonetheless, those interested in an anthropologically-oriented volume showing the culture clash between Arab and Norse, with a great deal of adventure and bloody battles thrown in, will enjoy the book. It becomes clear during reading that the story familiar to Europeans and Americans in Beowulf is present here. Despite some claims, this does NOT appear to have been inserted by Crichton - professional historians had already noted this connection in the original Ibn Fadlan manuscript and written on it in professional journals. Another example of supposedly European literature originating in earlier Arab manuscripts.