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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Thora Gudmundsdottir (have I mentioned how fascinated I am by the Icelandic patronymic naming system?) is very… normal. She’s a lawyer, but not the usual sort you find in crime novels. She specializes in contractual law. When a German woman offers her more than her yearly salary to find out who really murdered her son, Thora finds she really can’t refuse. After all, she’s a divorced mother of two whose car is in the shop, yet again. Thora is matched up with Matthew Reich, who works for the family of the murdered young man. Thora and Matthew start out awkwardly, but soon grow into an easy companionship that pulls you through this story of witchcraft and rituals and bitterness and jealousy. I doubt we’ll see more of Matthew later in the series, but I wouldn’t mind it. I liked the simplicity and realness of Thora, and I look forward to meeting her again.
There's always been a trend of UK publishers buying up the rights to translated versions of foreign crime novels and recently their attention seems to have focussed more on Scandinavia.
Taking place in Iceland, Last Rituals is the first book of a series that benefits from that interest and I was intrigued by the sound of it - a body is found with all kinds of arcane sigils carved into it and the eyes removed, all of which seems to be related to the dead man's interest in the history of Icelandic witchcraft.
The dead man also happens to be part of a wealthy German family, who are determined to find out exactly what happened. They send a representative to Iceland who enlists the help of our protagonist, Thora, a lawyer who desperately needs the money and is therefore prepared to become involved in something slightly outside of her usual purview. The author is clearly pushing for some kind of romantic sub-plot as well between these two, but sadly (to my mind at least) they have about as much chemistry as two dead fish.
It's always difficult to judge a translated novel, since I have no idea whether the way it's translated reflects the overall tone of the original work. Sadly, I found Last Rituals a dull read with unsympathetic characters and gave up about halfway through - the series continues with [b:My Soul to Take|6260575|My Soul to Take|Yrsa Sigurðardóttir|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41c9shnXbmL._SL75_.jpg|6443735], but I think I've had enough...
Taking place in Iceland, Last Rituals is the first book of a series that benefits from that interest and I was intrigued by the sound of it - a body is found with all kinds of arcane sigils carved into it and the eyes removed, all of which seems to be related to the dead man's interest in the history of Icelandic witchcraft.
The dead man also happens to be part of a wealthy German family, who are determined to find out exactly what happened. They send a representative to Iceland who enlists the help of our protagonist, Thora, a lawyer who desperately needs the money and is therefore prepared to become involved in something slightly outside of her usual purview. The author is clearly pushing for some kind of romantic sub-plot as well between these two, but sadly (to my mind at least) they have about as much chemistry as two dead fish.
It's always difficult to judge a translated novel, since I have no idea whether the way it's translated reflects the overall tone of the original work. Sadly, I found Last Rituals a dull read with unsympathetic characters and gave up about halfway through - the series continues with [b:My Soul to Take|6260575|My Soul to Take|Yrsa Sigurðardóttir|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41c9shnXbmL._SL75_.jpg|6443735], but I think I've had enough...
I really wanted to like this one. Thora is a great character, and I really like Ysra's style. But this felt like a bad mix of Nordic Noir and Cozy Mystery - an amateur sleuth who shouldn't really have access to the case and somehow lands right in the middle with all of the darker elements of a great mystery. I might come back and read it again, but this one wasn't what I was expecting.
(It's a shame to be writing a review of a book I thought was bad, when so many books I think are good go unreviewed, but I feel I ought to justify the low score I've given it. Maybe that's perverse, I don't know.)
It would be nice to blame the translator for the problems with this Icelandic crime novel (which I read hoping for some evocative description which might remind me of my visit to Reykjavik nearly 20 years ago, but no such luck). Unfortunately its problems go so far beyond the cliched prose and wooden dialogue that I suspect the translator may in fact have been skilfully and accurately rendering into English cliched Icelandic prose and wooden Icelandic dialogue.
The lawyer-detective protagonist is a wide-eyed simpleton, continually astonished at the crashingly obvious and needing it spelled out to her in excruciating detail. Perhaps for this reason, the experts she encounters -- and she consults with many of them -- lecture her at immense and tedious length on everything she needs to know and most of what she doesn't about their particular fields (while vital clues go altogether unmentioned until a couple of pages before their significance is revealed). Nothing, throughout the entirety of the novel, actually happens, except for the protagonist and her dull sidekick learning incrementally more stuff, and at one point, realising that their character dynamic has nothing else interesting going for it, shagging. In the end new stuff is discovered which drops the solution into their laps. It's all staggeringly inept.
I'm told the later novels in the series improve, and that's entirely possible. I can't recommend this one, though.
It would be nice to blame the translator for the problems with this Icelandic crime novel (which I read hoping for some evocative description which might remind me of my visit to Reykjavik nearly 20 years ago, but no such luck). Unfortunately its problems go so far beyond the cliched prose and wooden dialogue that I suspect the translator may in fact have been skilfully and accurately rendering into English cliched Icelandic prose and wooden Icelandic dialogue.
The lawyer-detective protagonist is a wide-eyed simpleton, continually astonished at the crashingly obvious and needing it spelled out to her in excruciating detail. Perhaps for this reason, the experts she encounters -- and she consults with many of them -- lecture her at immense and tedious length on everything she needs to know and most of what she doesn't about their particular fields (while vital clues go altogether unmentioned until a couple of pages before their significance is revealed). Nothing, throughout the entirety of the novel, actually happens, except for the protagonist and her dull sidekick learning incrementally more stuff, and at one point, realising that their character dynamic has nothing else interesting going for it, shagging. In the end new stuff is discovered which drops the solution into their laps. It's all staggeringly inept.
I'm told the later novels in the series improve, and that's entirely possible. I can't recommend this one, though.
When single mother and local lawyer Þóra Guðmundsdóttir (or Thora Gudmondsdottir (well, ish) to you and me) is asked to investigate the ritualistic murder of an eccentric German history student, she finds herself researching the history of Icelandic witchcraft. But would someone kill to keep the secrets of the past? (Presumably, or this is going to be a short book)
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is 'the queen of Icelandic crime', so I had high hopes of this Scandi potboiler. Sadly, it failed to live up to them. Instead, there was awkward prose (translation?), dubious character choices and cheap crime tropes that set my teeth on edge.
Heroine Thora oscillated between being magnificent (facing down her ex-husband), bitchy (I actually felt sorry for Bella, even though she appears to be every bit as bad at her job as Thora thinks), and childish/naive. But I couldn't get past her inexplicable and inappropriate interactions with co-investigator Matthew, who was keeping any redeeming features carefully under wraps. This central relationship more or less spoiled the book for me.
The story itself leans heavily on the witchcraft angle to try and stand out, but has little to offer in terms of character development or consistent plotting. By the time I got to Harald's mother blaming herself for her son's lifestyle choices, I'd long since checked out.
Full review.
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is 'the queen of Icelandic crime', so I had high hopes of this Scandi potboiler. Sadly, it failed to live up to them. Instead, there was awkward prose (translation?), dubious character choices and cheap crime tropes that set my teeth on edge.
Heroine Thora oscillated between being magnificent (facing down her ex-husband), bitchy (I actually felt sorry for Bella, even though she appears to be every bit as bad at her job as Thora thinks), and childish/naive. But I couldn't get past her inexplicable and inappropriate interactions with co-investigator Matthew, who was keeping any redeeming features carefully under wraps. This central relationship more or less spoiled the book for me.
The story itself leans heavily on the witchcraft angle to try and stand out, but has little to offer in terms of character development or consistent plotting. By the time I got to Harald's mother blaming herself for her son's lifestyle choices, I'd long since checked out.
Full review.
I am not going to type up full reviews here, but here is a link to my blog if you are interested in where I am reviewing my world books. https://mereadworld.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/last-rituals-iceland/
2.5 stars
I couldn’t really get into this one. I thought it was kind of predictable in terms of the culprit, and while I liked reading a mystery that takes place somewhere with a different culture than what I know, this book didn’t really hold my attention.
I couldn’t really get into this one. I thought it was kind of predictable in terms of the culprit, and while I liked reading a mystery that takes place somewhere with a different culture than what I know, this book didn’t really hold my attention.