An engrossing and finely detailed Viking story.
This second installment of a historical fiction series continues the saga of a Viking woman in North America.
In the late 10th century, Thora Thorvinnsdottir, a Norse settler of Greenland, finds herself stranded on the shores of Westland. Her estranged husband, Ivar Ulfson, and his crew abandoned her during an attack by the natives, leaving Thora alone with only an injured Westlander captive named Elkimu as well as two horses and a dog. Through the winter, Thora catches fish and birds to sustain them, wondering—with some chagrin—why the attractive Elkimu has not made any sexual advances. They hope to build a skin boat from seal hides in order to make it to the man’s Westland home, the island of Unamakik, before they are discovered by the Cliff Dwellers—a rival clan led by Elkimu’s disgraced uncle, Taqtaloq. The unusual pair reaches Elkimu’s island home, and his people welcome Thora into their community. After learning their ways, she formally becomes Elkimu’s wife. Thora finally has something like the life she imagined when she left her native Iceland. But when Norsemen again appear along the shores of Westland, the past returns to haunt Thora in unwanted ways. In this sequel to The Sun Road (2014), Kamminga’s prose is rich and balanced, selling not only the remote setting, but also Thora’s experiences in Westland: “Apikji, the mouse boy, was straining to pull a toboggan loaded with sap-filled containers to the steaming log cauldron by the stream. Behind him came Amu’s sons who had been checking their snares, each dangling a frozen pair of snared snowshoe hares by the hind legs.” The novel manages to work within the realm of the historical while retaining the mystical worldview of its characters and concocting a few turns that readers will not expect. The experience of seeing a re-creation of North American life around the turn of the first millennium is alone worth the price of admission, and the love story between the two unlikely spouses provides a satisfying conclusion to Thora’s difficult tale. Unlike many of the other Norse, who seek to profit from the resources of these new lands, Thora is a recognizable archetype of that more idealistic sort of migrant: the one who is simply looking for a place to belong.
An engrossing and finely detailed Viking story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-7708-6
Page Count: 175
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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