More historical fantasy than historical fiction.
It’s the first millennium, and Viking ships sail to Helluland, Markland, Vinland, and Albania-Land in a never-ending quest of "landnám, the process of land taking...as the gods intended."
As the prolific Gears (People of the Morning Star, 2014, etc.) continue to chronicle settlement of the North American continent, captain Godi Gunnar and the crew of Thor’s Dragon leave behind a homeland embroiled in turmoil. There's unrest and rebellion following King Aethelred's massacre of Danish settlers in England’s "northern region known as the Danelaw." Now the king’s son, Edmund, is moving to seize the throne, and Norse King Cnut waits "for the civil war in England to weaken both sides." In Gunnar’s landnám expedition, there’s also the malignant seer, Thorlak the Lawspeaker, who searches for another Seidur seer, Vethild, the Darkness-Rider. Thorlak keeps Vethild’s daughter, Thyra, as a slave. Other than deft descriptions of ocean crossings and a murderous confrontation that destroys Whale Rib Village, conflict arises from the clash of seers, young Thyra’s testing her powers, and old Asson’s tossing lightning bolts for the aboriginal "People of the Songtrail." Interaction between Norse and natives is facilitated by Kiran, an Anchorite "devotee of the Monk’s Tester," who learned the language from "Skraeling thralls," natives taken to Europe as slaves. Kiran’s love for Thyra provides a minor romantic thread. Thorlak—with "the inhuman gaze of a lion...the Lawspeaker could siphon off a soul and send it wailing into the dark abyss"—and rough-hewn Gunnar, called Skoggangur, meaning "forest-walking," because he once was a thieving reject from civilized Icelandic society, are the most interesting characters, but there’s far more magick at play than immersion into a re-creation of Viking or pre-Columbian aboriginal life.
More historical fantasy than historical fiction.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3725-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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