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A review by mainon
Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck
4.0
This was not an easy read for me. Perhaps because it was my first exposure to a novel set in 18th-century Scandinavia, I sometimes struggled to orient myself.
For example, it took me awhile to grasp that "the Lapps" were not another one of the settler families, like "the Erikssons"; rather, according to Wikipedia, the Lapps are "an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, [and] Finland...."
More than once, a character I thought was dead showed up in a later scene, interacting with other characters. "Wait, I thought [he/she] was dead?" For a long while I thought I was misreading or misremembering which character was which, but it turns out that there are very realistic "ghosts" in this book, though they're not described as such. Interestingly, Swedish ghosts don't look or behave the way ghosts typically do in American folk tales: they're not translucent, they don't float, and they can (sometimes?) actually touch you and cause physical harm.
Despite my narrative discomforts, I found the initially slow pace really picked up around halfway through the book, and suddenly I was reading a great mystery novel in a quaint setting. It seemed almost as though I was reading about Miss Marple, in her youth, honing her skills in a remote Swedish farming community.
By the book's end, I had gained immense respect for the clues the author dropped along the way, and the important role some of my early confusion played in setting up some very satisfying discoveries. This is not a book where the reader knows more than the narrators; it requires patience and persistence to find the answers on Blackasen Mountain.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Wolf Winter from the publisher in exchange for my unbiased review.
For example, it took me awhile to grasp that "the Lapps" were not another one of the settler families, like "the Erikssons"; rather, according to Wikipedia, the Lapps are "an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, [and] Finland...."
More than once, a character I thought was dead showed up in a later scene, interacting with other characters. "Wait, I thought [he/she] was dead?" For a long while I thought I was misreading or misremembering which character was which, but it turns out that there are very realistic "ghosts" in this book, though they're not described as such. Interestingly, Swedish ghosts don't look or behave the way ghosts typically do in American folk tales: they're not translucent, they don't float, and they can (sometimes?) actually touch you and cause physical harm.
Despite my narrative discomforts, I found the initially slow pace really picked up around halfway through the book, and suddenly I was reading a great mystery novel in a quaint setting. It seemed almost as though I was reading about Miss Marple, in her youth, honing her skills in a remote Swedish farming community.
By the book's end, I had gained immense respect for the clues the author dropped along the way, and the important role some of my early confusion played in setting up some very satisfying discoveries. This is not a book where the reader knows more than the narrators; it requires patience and persistence to find the answers on Blackasen Mountain.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Wolf Winter from the publisher in exchange for my unbiased review.