4.0 out of 5 stars A Nordic-inspired High fantasy novella

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021 by Shivani Gangwani

One look at the description of this book(a Nordic-inspired High fantasy) and I knew this was something I had to try out. Not least because of its intriguing blurb, but also because it satisfied my fascination for mythological reads. It was Rick Riordan's books that made me discover my interest in this field. On a side note, I love his Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology series. Anyhow, I digress - the mention of Norse mythology hooked me in.

And, I must say, I wasn't disappointed, no ma'am, not one little bit. From the acknowledgments section itself, I started learning new words. The author did awesome research - all the borrowed words felt right in their contexts, I got such a beautiful glimpse into Nordic history and their beliefs. I loved how she added a small introduction part to familiarise the readers with the verbiage. In her world, each person was made up of four elements - their thought/spirit( hugr ), their body( hamr ), their luck( hamingjur ), and their spirit animal( fylgyur ); and only hugr was eternal and permitted to the afterworld - wow, how interesting is that! I was waiting when she would mention Ragnarok, lol, that was the one thing from this world I had heard of before, of course :D

This was quite a short work, it felt like a preview of the series, much like the author was laying down pieces - doing the world-building with the main story to come later - much like how you know, in programming, the problem statement is described first, with the details and constraints brought in at a later stage.

There is no one character who has been put in the spotlight, even though most of the narration was done from the point of Líf. Almost all characters feel equally important to the plot currently. I loved looking up each new word that I was coming across - it pulled me deeper into the Nordic world with each instance. The Appendix was lovely, with all the vocabulary and pronunciations put together. Like I said earlier, the groundwork done is impressive.

Another thing that popped into my mind while I was reading was, the author had made such a marvelous use of adjectives. They were all new combinations, for example, I had never read blood being described as tacky, but it felt right when I looked up the actual description.

A quick fact, the symbol on the cover of the book, that's a rune( well, duh! ), it's actually the first letter of the runic alphabet,ᚨ called Ansuz. It literally means God but is most often called the rune of Odin, the All-Father. Cool, huh?!