Scan barcode
A review by bookwoods
Wolfskin by Juliet Marillier
4.0
3.5/5
Last year I fell in love with Juliet Marrier, devouring most of her substantial backlist, and embarking on another of the magical journeys she’d created felt utterly comforting after too long of a pause.
Wolfskin differs from Marillier’s other books by exploring Norse mythology - quite successfully, I think. The title refers to Eyvind, Thor’s devoted warrior who reluctantly joins a voyage to faraway islands where a visionary nobleman Ulf wants to establish a settlement. Yet the islands aren’t unoccupied, which leads to a complex story between two different folk and cultures. Naturally, there’s love story woven into it, this is Marillier after all, and many further aspects embody her style as well.
The Light Isles duology of which Wolfskin is the first belongs to Marillier’s earlier works, and it does suffer from being considerably too long and having an unpolished feel to the prose. Oh and the plot is ridiculously predictable, but that honestly didn’t matter, it wasn’t masterful plot twists I was looking for. If you are, Marillier might not be for you. What I did get is an immersive story to escape into, only the excessive writing frustrated me sometimes. I will get started with Foxmask, the sequal, very soon.
Last year I fell in love with Juliet Marrier, devouring most of her substantial backlist, and embarking on another of the magical journeys she’d created felt utterly comforting after too long of a pause.
Wolfskin differs from Marillier’s other books by exploring Norse mythology - quite successfully, I think. The title refers to Eyvind, Thor’s devoted warrior who reluctantly joins a voyage to faraway islands where a visionary nobleman Ulf wants to establish a settlement. Yet the islands aren’t unoccupied, which leads to a complex story between two different folk and cultures. Naturally, there’s love story woven into it, this is Marillier after all, and many further aspects embody her style as well.
The Light Isles duology of which Wolfskin is the first belongs to Marillier’s earlier works, and it does suffer from being considerably too long and having an unpolished feel to the prose. Oh and the plot is ridiculously predictable, but that honestly didn’t matter, it wasn’t masterful plot twists I was looking for. If you are, Marillier might not be for you. What I did get is an immersive story to escape into, only the excessive writing frustrated me sometimes. I will get started with Foxmask, the sequal, very soon.