|
Jack was eleven when the berserkers loomed out of the fog and nabbed him. "It seems that things are stirring across the water," the Bard had warned. "Ships are being built, swords are being forged." "Is that bad?" Jack had asked, for his Saxon village had never before seen berserkers. "Of course. People don't make ships and swords unless they intend to use them." The year is A.D. 793. In the next months, Jack and his little sister, Lucy, are enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate, Thorgil. With a crow named Bold Heart for mysterious company, they are swept up into an adventure-quest that follows in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings. Other threats include a willful mother Dragon, a giant spider, and a troll-boar with a surprising personality -- to say nothing of Ivar the Boneless and his wife, Queen Frith, a shape-shifting half-troll, and several eight foot tall, orange-haired, full-time trolls. But in stories by award-winner Nancy Farmer, appearances do deceive. She has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than "Just say no to pillaging."
Sea of Trolls FROM OUR EDITORS Jack was only 11 when the beserkers burst out of the fog to seize him and his little sister, Lucy. Enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate Thorgil, the youthful siblings are swept in an adventure-quest that combines exhilarating excitement and fun. A major novel from a three-time Newbery Honor author.
ANNOTATION After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.
FROM THE PUBLISHER Jack was eleven when the berserkers loomed out of the fog and nabbed him. "It seems that things are stirring across the water," the Bard had warned. "Ships are being built, swords are being forged."
"Is that bad?" Jack had asked, for his Saxon village had never before seen berserkers.
"Of course. People don't make ships and swords unless they intend to use them."
The year is A.D. 793. In the next months, Jack and his little sister, Lucy, are enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate, Thorgil. With a crow named Bold Heart for mysterious company, they are swept up into an adventure-quest in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings. Other threats include a willful mother dragon, a giant spider, and a troll-bear with a surprising personality -- to say nothing of Ivar the Boneless and his wife, Queen Frith, a shape-shifting half-troll, and several eight-foot-tall, orange-haired, full-time trolls.
But in stories by award-winning Nancy Farmer, appearances to not deceive. She has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than "Just say no to pillaging." FROM THE CRITICS Roger Sutton - November/December 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Farmer moves far north of her favored hot-weather climes for her
latest hero-tale, which takes place along the various coasts of the
North Sea in the late eighth century. Drawing upon history, Norse and
Celtic myth, and Farmer¿¿¿s own abundant imagination, the story is long
but engrossing, a "cruel tale with a merry heart" about a Saxon boy
named Jack and what befell him upon his and his younger sister¿¿¿s
capture by marauding Northmen (and, later, trolls). Readers will spot
themes and motifs familiar from Farmer¿¿¿s previous novels, including
seriocomic helper figures, a ferociously loyal sibling pair, and a
most adroit fusion of the natural and supernatural worlds. The book is
effectively sparing in its use of fantasy elements, but when Farmer
pulls out all the stops such as Jack¿¿¿s encounter with the three Norns
- she does so with aplomb and assurance. Paula Rohrlick - KLIATT
Jack, a Saxon farm boy, feels lucky to be apprenticed to a druid bard who teaches him how to open his mind to the power of the life force and how to draw on it to do magic. Unluckily for Jack, the year is 793 A.D., when the Vikings first begin their raids on the British Isles, and a Viking named Olaf One-Brow, the giant leader of the Queen¿¿¿s Berserkers, captures Jack and his little sister Lucy. These Northmen take the two off on their ship to their homeland and its rulers, Ivar the Boneless and his terrifying half-troll wife, Frith. At the court, Jack casts a spell that inadvertently causes Frith¿¿¿s hair to fall out, and to restore it he must go on a dangerous quest to find the magical Mimir¿¿¿s Well in the far-off land of the trolls and drink the song-mead it contains - with Lucy¿¿¿s life at stake if he does not succeed.
Accompanied by a clever crow and a ferocious warrior maiden, Jack heads out on this perilous adventure filled with dragons, giant spiders, eight-foot-tall trolls, and other hazards. Farmer, author of the National Book Award winner The House of the Scorpion as well as other notable books for YAs, has outdone herself in this rich and satisfying fantasy based on Norse mythology.
The characters are memorable, her images of nature are lyrical, and legend, history, horror and humor are cleverly intermingled: "Just say no to pillaging," Olaf solemnly advises Jack at one point, while Olaf himself lays waste to everything around him. This is sure to be both popular and prize-winning, and it makes an interesting companion to two other recent YA novels about the Viking raids, Raven of the Waves by Michael Cadnum and The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick. There is a helpful list of the cast of characters at the start, as well as an appendix providing some background on Norse history and legends and a list of sources. Every YA collection should have this. Amanda Craig - The Times, October 2004 Despite the pot of gold supposedly waiting for every new author who writes a
fantasy novel, the classics of children's literature remain pretty much the
same. Why bother to read new ones when the old are so good? Yet every so often
something comes along which should instantly be added to the list of those books
which leave an indelible mark on the imagination.
Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls is such a book. Three times a Newberry Award
winner in her native America, she is unheard-of in Britain, despite The House of
the Scorpion (the only one to be published here) being quite simply the best
clone novel ever written. This one is set in Viking times, and despite its
slow-paced first chapter soon develops into a hair-raising, spine-tingling,
heart-stopping adventure which really does bear comparison to The Hobbit.
Jack is picked-on by his crippled, fanatically Christian father, irked by his
little sister Lucy and oddly in sympathy with his mother. She is a wise woman,
and it's thanks to her that Jack has inherited a gift that may just save his own
life and that of Lucy. Barely has he begun to be taught magic by a mysterious
old Bard washed up on their shores, when both he and Lucy are captured by the
Vikings serving the Bard's mortal enemy, the evil half-troll Frith. Taken north
from England to what is now Denmark, they are to be thralls or slaves to Olaf
One-Brow, the leader, and the sulky shield-maiden, Thorgill. It's only as Jack
discovers how to summon up his weather-working powers, rescues a mysterious crow
called Bold Heart and learns how to chant songs that they escape being sold off
to fearsome tribes. Violent, unpredictable and prone to kill everyone when going
berserk, the Vikings are terrifying masters. Worse is to come, however, once
they land at Olaf's home. Jack has the gigantic carnivorous troll-pig Golden
Bristles to contend with, but Lucy, having lost her mind in the despair of
becoming a captive, is to be Queen Frith's next sacrificial victim - unless Jack
can cross the Sea of Trolls and regain the queen's beauty from Mimir's Well in
Jotunheim, the heart of Troll-land.
Of course, Jack and his companions Olaf and Thorgill succeed, despite a
dragon, a ferocious troll-bear and a host of magical creatures. What makes Sea
of Trolls so vastly enjoyable is not its plot but the way this classic quest is
told, in clear, dramatic prose that surges along like a Viking longship. Farmer
has gone back to the same Norse sources that inspired Tolkien, and her
characters have complexity and subtlety: you laugh, sympathise and fear for
them. Jack's resentful care for his sister, his perpetual uncertainty, his
dawning realisation that his father's crushing estimation of him may not be
true, and his perception of different religious beliefs are all suffused with
wisdom and warmth. The Vikings can be kindly, brave and loyal as well as killers
slaughtering entire villages without guilt or regret. The jokes about their
crudeness and their gloomy relish for death are hilarious. Comedy and cruelty,
tragedy and beauty are interwoven with a feel for landscape to make a completely
captivating story. The life of the Norse sea-farers is so detailed that any
child who reads this will unconsciously pick up far more about Viking customs,
beliefs and language than a hundred school text-books. It's strange that out of
the four best new novels for children to be published this year, three should be
about this particular period and people, but I have no hesitation in
recommending Sea of Trolls as the best children's novel of 2004. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Starred review. "Out of all the boys in their eighth-century Saxon village, eleven-year-old Jack is chosen by the Bard to become his apprentice. Soon Jack is learning how to call up fog and fire and sense the flow of the life force in the world around him--important skills to possess, it turns out, when he and his six-year-old sister, Lucy, are kidnapped by Viking raiders and swept across the sea to become slaves in the Northland. . . In this substantial and swiftly moving fantasy, Jack's medieval world envelops the reader from the first page, and even secondary characters and villains have sufficient faults, virtues, dreams, and disappointments to make them sympathetic to the reader to some degree. This adroit worldbuilding and dead-on characterization combine with faultless plotting and an irresistible mixture of historical truth and mythological invention to create a tale of high adventure and exploration that reads with unexpected sensitivity, warmth, and humor. Maps, a cast of characters, a series of short explanatory appendices, and a list of sources are included." Ayesha Court - Special for USA TODAY
This National Book Award-winning author departs from science fiction in this heroic tale of Jack, an 11-year-old Anglo-Saxon and bard-in-training who is enslaved by Viking raiders. Farmer brilliantly marries historic details about life in England, Scotland and Scandinavia in A.D. 793 with the magic of runes, trolls and bards. This story will send readers on a quest to read more about this bloody but fascinating era. Ages 10 and up. Read all 12 "From The Critics" >
|
