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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
