"Icefall", by Matthew J. Kirby, is one of those books I thoroughly enjoyed reading and could not put down this past weekend. I knew it has numerous awards attached to it, Winner of the 2012 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery among others, which was the main reason I was enticed to read.
But it was the writing that first got me quickly hooked. I appreciate a story that carries you along and fills your mind clearly with details that become etched into your brain.
" The fjord is freezing over. I watch it from the edge of the cliff near our hall, and each day the ice claims more of the narrow winding of ocean. It squeezes out the waves and the blue-black water, while it squeezes us in."
It is set in historical times, a time where vikings are a warring people.
But this story is about a viking king's children who are sent to an isolated and desolate area to keep them safe during turbulent times. There is a small contingent of helpers who are there to look after and protect Asa, the king's beautiful oldest daughter, Harald, the youngest child and heir, and Solveig, the middle sister, and keep them safe.
Another of the dangers is the extreme weather. At the beginning of this story we find the household waiting anxiously for supplies from their father that will keep them throughout the winter as the fjord is quickly freezing over and soon no ships will be able to get through to them.
A ship finally appears but with it are the king's most fierce and respected viking warriors called beserkers, those usually assigned to protect the king. Why have they come?
The story that pulls you in, though, is that of Solveig, that middle child, who does not know her place and feels unwanted. As this story unfolds it is the skald or storyteller, Alric, who sees in her the power of her observations and her way with words and encourages her to become her father's skald.
But as the story progresses it becomes evident that someone amongst them is a traitor. Their chief supply of food, their animals, have been let out and killed, and then many of the beserkers mysteriously die.
Desperation and suspicion sets in and the quesions are answered when the unthinkable happens.
