Hey Blog! Last month, as you know, I went to the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of the UK. This is a book review on a book we read while we were there, inspired by the ancient history of the islands!
The book I am reviewing today is called The Orkney Cycle – The Shattering Sea. It is set in iron age Orkney, but references the prehistoric connections. You may have been thinking of The Boy with the Bronze Axe, an earlier tale of the folk of Scara Brae, but this new book is just as good! The Shattering Sea is much more focused on the myths and legends, containing fiery sea monsters called Asawans; mysterious fish-like humanoids the Fin-folk; mind-reading Divers and skull-talking Speys. All in all, it has lots of mystery and one of the best plot twists I know of – when you find out the bad guys are actually the good guys everything gets confusing!
The story starts when fin-footed farm boy Talorc watches his family and home burn as the Asawan attacks it. He had previously seen what he thought was a Finman summon it (seal pup, flint knife and an arrow shape of grass being used in the ritual) and when the house is destroyed, he sets of to tell the king – meeting the princess Runa along the way. When it appears everyone is going to war, Talorc and Runa set of to kill the Diver summoning it – only to come up against the most extraordinary plot twist. Dun dun dunnnn…
It’s a very good book. Being able to weave a story with that level of detail, making every last little feature of the landscape into a setting of a fight, ceremony, meeting or fall off a cliff, the author clearly knows Orkney, and we could see the places from the book as we went around the islands. I like this way of incorporating real places into a fantasy (we are currently reading The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and it also has that stunning feature – I may have to cover it on another review sometime soon!) as it means you can feel your way around in the same way as the characters, and in historically set novels you can feel part of the past – not that you need a book to do that on Orkney! “Scratch the ground and it bleeds archaeology,” people say!
The author Daniel Allison has a few more books coming, set in the same world, so there is clearly more to The Orkney Cycle! I eagerly await these reads.