I saw this one at the bookstore one day and I knew I just had to read it eventually. So I did. Spoilers ahead.
Auke, a Dutch ice hockey player, travels to Norway for a competitive game. Together with his rival, Sindre, he winds up back in time in the age of the Vikings. He meets Viking-chief Heimar and the two newcomers are supposed to be forces in his army to preserve the Viking way of life in the face of christians trying to convert them. Heimar soon starts to lead to certain feelings within Auke. And not only that, Auke also discovers he might have magical powers.
On a surface level, this should be a book I connect with instantly. Historical fiction, wolf shapeshifters, magic, trans main character, it's all there. But the execution...I don't know. It's not bad, let me get that straight. I liked reading this book. It's just that I really really did not connect with it at all.
Not even in a way that I wanted to put it down. Just in a way that I didn't find myself overly invested in the characters or what was going on, which is weird because this book pretty much ticks all the boxes of what I like in stories like this. But I guess the execution just wasn't for me.
It's a fine book, and I feel that most other readers probably will get something out of it that I did not. It has good world-building, interesting and three-dimensional characters, relationships that feel pretty darn real, cool magic and lore, etc. I guess somehow the final execution just didn't do it for me personally. I literally can't even pinpoint why I don't vibe with the book, outside of one point.
That being the relationship between Heimar and Auke. While they're never really together together in this, they do sleep with one another several times which just made me uncomfortable. We don't know Auke's exact age as far as I know, but he's definitely in the young adult category, meanwhile Heimar is definitely a grown man who is already a chief and has a family with kids. So there's definitely a large age gap there and the book even acknowledges it. Just one aspect of the book I definitely did not vibe with. I honestly liked the relationship between Sindre and Auke way more than whatever Heimar and Auke had going on. And they're closer in age, too.
So, yeah. Good book, I do recommend it to anyone who interests it because you probably will get something out of it, but it just wasn't for me personally. Also, I do have to say there are a few instances of transphobia in this (and of course a large age gap relationship as mentioned before) so if those things don't sound like something you want to read I'd say you'd probably better skip it just to be sure.
Rating: 3.25/5
No comments:
Post a Comment