I recently finished Juliet Marillier's latest novel, Wolfskin, which had been languishing on my holds list for months after I read her fabulous Sevenwaters Trilogy. I loved the Sevenwaters books and liked Wolfskin also but not quite as much, probably because her first trilogy is very much a woman's story as well as inspired by a fairy tale, and Wolfskin (also destined to be a trilogy, I believe) is a male Viking story.
I can't believe that I didn't blog about the Sevenwaters trilogy when I read it this summer, but I shall have to do it here, if only to explain the similarities and differences between it and Wolfskin The trilogy consists of Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, and Child of the Prophecy; DotF stands alone as a retelling of the fairy tale The Six Swans,
in which a princess must save her six brothers, who have been turned ito swans by their evil sorceress-stepmother, by weaving and sewing magical shirts and maintaining absolute silence the whole time. The princess in Marillier's book is named Sorcha, and Marillier does a fabulous job of depicting Sorcha's trials and emotions. The stories of Sorcha's daughter Liadan and of her granddaughter Fainne are continued in SotS and CotP, respectively.
First off, I like the story because it's partially a fairy tale, and I enjoy seeing what different authors and artists do with a familiar story. I also enjoy the world that Marillier creates, one in which magic is real and powerful but comes with hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs. I like that she managed to surprise me with an unexpected yet fitting ending.
Wolfskin is very much about the conflict between loyalty and morality. The main character, Eyvind, swears blood brotherhood to a boy who later expects him to betray his Viking morals (yes, they had them, don't laugh). Marillier does a good job of exploring the problem without prescribing a solution, but I still can't figure out what her opinion is.
There are a couple of trends in Marillier's writing. One is that she loves to pair up a woman from one culture with a man from another, invading culture. That's not a problem except that it makes her plots a little bit predictable in some respects. The other problem I see is that she's not very good at making her villains likable. Take King Lear, for example. I saw a lot of similarities between Edmund and Somerled, the villain of Wolfskin, except that Somerled has no likable characteristics at all, and I have no sympathy at all for him. The book would be much more engaging and tragic if I shared Eyvind's loyalty to Somerled.
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