Solid worldbuilding of a little-known era wedded to a competent but uninspired plot.
In 1501, half-Norse, half-Inuit Bridget Thorsdottir struggles to save her family in the last days of the Viking’s settlement of Greenland.
Set at the onset of the Little Ice Age and the Reformation, Robertson’s debut historical novel depicts the literal and metaphoric freezing of relationships between the Norse and the Inuit, or Skraeling, populations. Bridget has grown up in the backwater Norse settlement of Dyrnes (modern-day Greenland), but she was born to an Inuit mother who took in her shipwrecked father, Thor, 17 years earlier. When Bishop Rollo announces that the entire Norse population is relocating to Vinland while Thor insists that he and his people will stay put, Bridget decides to establish a New World colony apart from the racist, money-grubbing bishop and his untrustworthy English cohorts. Bridget’s stepbrother Bjorn attaches himself to her escape plans, and the two are taken in by Bridget’s Inuit relatives and guided by her adventurous cousin Nago. However, before they can set out, news comes that Thor has been accused of sorcery by the bishop, so the trio sets out on an ill-fated rescue attempt. Bridget is a strong female character who defies contemporary gender stereotypes—perhaps to an unrealistic extent—in hunting and fighting and in her rugged individualism. The trope of corrupt church officials versus the shamanic, naturalistic religion of the Skraelings is somewhat trite, and the depiction of Nago can sail uncomfortably close to the Noble Savage stereotype. The anachronistic appearance of the notorious English slave ship Whydah—commissioned a good two centuries after the events of this tale—doesn’t fit, either. For a story about leaving Greenland, the plot seems to go to extreme lengths to keep the action there, as the trio spends most of their time sailing or kayaking from one fjord to another; even the epilogue takes them to the shores of the New World but stops short of them arriving. The strongest part may be the detailed descriptions of life in both the Norse and Inuit communities of the early modern era, though these passages sometimes bog down the plot.
Solid worldbuilding of a little-known era wedded to a competent but uninspired plot.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Menadena Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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