FEASTING THE WOLF reviews
OTTAR AND KETIL are full of dreams to join the Vikings as they raid the north east coast of England. As two young men growing up on isolated farms on te Shetlands they are aware of tales of the outside world and of their Scandinavian ancestors. So when a longship anchors in Lerwick Harbour, they are fascinated by the warriors aboard her. The more adventurous Ottar persuades Ketil to go with him and join the crew, who are off to join the Viking leader Halfdan as he harries the coasts of Northumberland.
Susan Price has written a dramatic and poignant story of two young men searching for adventure and desperate to grow into warriors. She writes in the same subject area of people like Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece and her story more than lives up to the challenge. She has produced a work which does not hide the brutality of the age and where the reader has strong sense of the physical background as well as being totally absorbed in the lives of the two young men. The book should be enjoyed by the 10+ age group, not least because of the blood and gore to be found between its pages.
Margaret Pemberton, The SL, Spring 2008.
“FEASTING THE WOLF” means leaving dead on the battlefield – and there is plenty to feast on in this dark tale of Viking adventure.
Two 15-year-old Shetland boys, Ottar and Ketil, leave home to join a Viking warship headed for the north-east coast of England. Ottar, a landless youngest son, dreams of gaining money and status; Ketil, from a close-knit farming family, is happy at home and reluctant to leave, but pushed into it by his friendship with Ottar. When the boys join the crew of Wave-Strider they take an oath to obey the master Eyulf – but Eyulf is a weak leader who allows his men to torment Ketil. The boys' friendship is tested when Ketil rebels and goes to join another ship led by Thorkel, a hard man but a better master.
The story itself is quite slight and the interest is all in the tensions between the characters. We see how the Vikings dig in and build a fort from which they can attack Saxon settlements, and how they survive the long, cold winter. In the spring Thorkel and Eyulf's bands are sent to attack and pillage a monastery, and it is here that the final drama is played out. The raiders are hard, pitiless men, but they have their own code of honour. Thorkel deals fairly with his men, protects them and commands their respect, yet he is ruthless in his treatment of Saxon captives, who are either sold as slaves or killed. A sense of horror builds through the final part of the book, and the writing conveys this: a nun expecting to have her throat cut 'shrilled like a rabbit in a snare, in a terror that turned Ketil cold.'
This is powerful writing that tells it as it must have been. It's a bitter story, but compelling and utterly convincing.
Ann Turnbull, Historical Novels Review, Issue 45, 2008.
ODIN'S VOICE
In a dystopian future where slavery is the norm and human genetic modification commonplace, people still believe devoutly in the power of ancient gods. Blessed with the gift of speaking Odin's words, Kylie is offered her freedom, but Affroditey falls victim to the barbaric society whose freedoms she has always enjoyed without question. Their growing friendship offers hope and, eventually, the possibility of escape from a so-called civilisation disconcertingly reflective of our own. Enthralling.
Reading Age: 13+
Look At A Book
THE STERKARM HANDSHAKE
This substantial novel alternates between the 16th and 21st centuries, via a time tunnel which is controlled by Windsor, a businessman who intends to exploit the ricjes of the land. Andrea, an anthropologist, is sent to live with and study the Sterkarms, a violent border clan who live near the entrance to the tunnel and hampering Windsor's plans. She becomes the mistress of Per, the son of the chieftain, but Andrea soon feels her loyalties torn between the Sterkarms and her employer. An exciting and violent novel which highlights environmental issues.
Reading age: 13+
From Children's Book News
From The Guardian, Saturday 17th January, 2004
Review of ‘A STERKARM KISS’, by Jan Mark
When H G Well’s time traveller boarded his machine he travelled from the 19th century to the future in a spirit of scientific curiosity.
He was a gentleman adventurer; he funded himself. It would be too much to hope that in the 21st century any enterprise requiring massive investment would be undertaken without the prospect of big bucks in return.
FUP, the corporation behind the development of the Time Tube, has pioneered time travel into the past with the intention of plundering the untapped reserves of gold and fossil fuels. Aware that to do so will seriously interfere with the status quo 21st side, as they call it, they cannily descend on the 16th century of a different dimension, but with the same history. The place is the Anglo-Scottish border – lawless, ungovernable and territory of the reivers, tribal sheep-stealers locked in an unbreakable cycle of bloody feuding. In the country around Carlisle, where the Time Tube operates, the warring families are the Grannams and the Sterkarms.
This novel is the sequel to The Sterkarm Handshake, which came out five years ago. Its original readership may have moved on; will those coming to the Sterkarms for the first time be satisfied by a second helping without having tasted the first? The prime test of a sequel is that it should not disappoint loyal readers, but also important is whether it can stand alone, independent of lengthy explanations about what happened last time.
Price overcomes this hurdle with authoritative economy. It is immediately clear that the last attempt to outwit the Sterkarms ended in pitched battle, hideous slaughter and the destruction of the Tube.
But too much is resting upon the enterprise to abandon it. The Tube is being reopened into yet another dimension, 16th side, and this time FUP has a cunning plan, to unite the feuding families by marriage so that 21st siders can get on with their looting in peace. Andrea Mitchell, who was once ‘embedded’ in a Sterkarm stronghold, is lured back to work fro FUP by the promise of being reunited with Per Sterkarm, the man she knew and loved the first time around. Being from another dimension, he is not quite the same Per, but she is desperate to recover her lost happiness, however hair-raising the circumstances, and agrees to go back once more. This time, though, she is on the alert. To find Grannams and Sterkarms marrying with a Bible and a Christian priest is startling. They bring the same violent enthusiasm to merrymaking as they do to massacre. Charming and ruthless, they have high ideals of honour and hospitality, making love and war with elemental simplicity. The minions of FUP, under the direction of its repellent executive, James Windsor, employ the usual methods of wooing primitive peoples, not with beads and blankets but with aspirin. Given their injury count the Sterkarms are in desperate need of painkillers and, like most primitive peoples coming into contact with civilisation, they are about to be betrayed on a colossal scale.
It does occasionally cross the mind that FUP might have saved itself a lot of trouble by debouching from the Time Tube to somewhere a bit quieter – the Notts-Derby coalfield, perhaps – but this is a quibble. Does A Sterkarm Kiss pass the test and stand alone? Without doubt it does, and to make sure, I read them in reverse order myself. Moreover, it sends the reader in eager pursuit of the first book, happily available in paperback. It gives away nothing of either plot to reveal that a Sterkarm kiss is quite as antisocial as a Sterkarm handshake.
Jan Marks' 'The Stratford Boys' is published by Hodder. She is a highly regarded writer, and much admired by Susan Price.