Ice Land: A Novel [Paperback]

I was ready to like this book since I am a big fan of Icelandic Sagas. It did not disappoint. Betsy Tobin's language is stark and simple, much like the plain, unfancy tone of the Sagas. There are a few missed notes but overall the effect is consistent and well-crafted. All the action takes place in the present tense, shifting to past tense only to refer to events that occurred in the past (duh.) The narrative voice switches from first-person to third-person from chapter to chapter. Each chapter is headed by the name of the character who is the focus of that chapter. Freya (the Norse goddess of love) is the first-person narrator. She is the one actually telling the story. Fulla is a teenage girl just emerging into womanhood. The story bounces back and forth between these two, and then there is a dismal geological interruption by the Norns (the Norse equivalent of the Fates.) These tidbits from the Norns pop up occasionally throughout the book, and in them the narrative voice is that of the Norns; this is the only time when it could be understood that Freya is not narrating. Dvalin the dwarf and Berling his brother are the subjects of a couple of chapters, and Vili the young man gets a chapter of his own later.

The setting is Iceland, around the year 1000 A.D. King Olaf of Norway is trying to annex Iceland (whose people pride themselves on their independence.) Christianity is making inroads and causing friction with the traditions of farmers who have grown up worshiping Thor and Odin. This novel's Iceland is more magical than the Iceland of the Sagas, but more prosaic than the picture one usually gets from Norse mythology. The geography is mysterious; it makes sense and yet at the same time, it doesn't. Instead of placing Asgard somewhere in the heavens, Betsy Tobin places it on earth. The abode of the gods is remote and hard to find, but you can get there if you know the route. Same goes for the dwarves and the giants. A helpful afterword from the author explains some of the mythological sources that inspired the story, and the liberties she took while writing the novel.

Though set against a mythical backdrop, there is very little magic aside from Freya's feathered cloak that turns her into a bird, and the vague unidentified power of the Brisingamen (the dwarf-made necklace that Freya spends half of the book trying to acquire.) Oh yes, and the Norns weaving the fate of the world at their loom.

It's a great story, full of power and beauty and a sort of bittersweet sentiment for these old long-dead myths. The doom of the gods is prophesied in the "Voluspa" (and most of us have heard of the legend of Ragnarok.) It is due to a foreboding that the end of her world is approaching that Freya sets out to acquire the Brisingamen. There's love, and adventure, and philosophizing. This book satisfies on every level, but it isn't quite perfect enough for 5 stars. Let's call it a solid four and a half.

In 1000 AD in Iceland, Freya the Aesir goddess of love seeks a gold necklace created by the Brising dwarves that the Fates warn her can change history. At seemingly the same time sixteen year old orphan Fulla has fallen in love with Vili, whose father killed her father. Meanwhile also apparently at the identical moments, the Norns observe increasingly dangerous volcanic activity especially by Hekla that looks ready to explode.

Freya works a deal with the dwarves for the necklace in exchange for escorting their leader Dvalin in a quest to cure his sister's infertility. She actually obtains the necklace, but Odin steals it from her. Odin uses the necklace to extort Freya into kidnapping Fulla, who is his daughter; Fulla's human family accepts Vili into their clan as her husband. Hekla erupts destroying much of the surrounding area, but also enables Freya to regain the necklace and rescue Dvalin.

This is an exciting Nordic historical romantic fantasy that use Norse mythology to tell the tale of forbidden loves at a time when Christianity has come to the island. Although the two major subplots can prove difficult at times to follow as perspective rotates frequently, sub-genre fans will relish Betsy Tobin's terrific tale of love conquers all even a legendary God.

Harriet Klausner

"This book is my love letter to Iceland and its people," writes Betsy Tobin in her afterword to _Ice Land_. And so it is. Tobin is at her best when describing the landscape of Iceland:

"The day we met, I had flown deep into the central highlands, seeking a spot where I could be alone. I found it on a high desert plateau, where a hidden spring had forced its way up through the lava shield, forming an oasis. The water was a brilliant cobalt blue. It spread like fingers across the plateau, and all around it lay a bed of thick, luminous green moss."

Tobin's love of Iceland's unusual landscape is clear. Though her prose is spare compared to some, she brings the land's beauties to life in the reader's mind.

Tobin's minimalist style continues throughout _Ice Land_, with mixed results. Sometimes the prose style works with the story, its simplicity emphasizing the raw forces of nature and the rugged lives of the people who live in the shadow of the volcano Hekla. Sometimes the writing works against the story, though, skimming over events that could be interesting to read, and describing settings (especially man-made settings) so thinly that I had trouble visualizing what these places looked like.

What really bogged me down, though, was _Ice Land_'s lack of forward momentum. There's clearly a plot. The goddess Freya is trying to save Iceland from cataclysm by bargaining for the dwarves' necklace Brisingamen, and the mortal girl Fulla is searching for love and a husband. Yet the tension never feels like it's being ratcheted up. The characters wander from place to place, and in each place, have arguments. Their level of anxiety doesn't seem to rise from one incident to the next. It just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, even though I know that eventually it must.

I'm also not sold on the central love story. The back cover promises "star-crossed lovers," but I'm seeing bratty teenagers rather than epic soulmates. It takes amazing writing to make me like a story where characters fall in love after just a few brief meetings. It also takes amazing writing to make me like a couple who bickers all the time. Tobin adds the two together, and so getting me on board becomes nearly impossible. Fulla and her star-crossed love meet only a few times, fighting like cats and dogs on most of these occasions, before becoming obsessed enough to ruin lives over their forbidden desire. It doesn't feel like true love to me. It feels like a selfish whim. I don't like these two characters, and that's representative of _Ice Land_ as a whole. I just don't like any of the characters much, and maybe that's why I can't get into the book.

For a novel to hook me, it has to have great characters, a compelling plot, or (ideally) both. _Ice Land_ has an interesting writing style and a beautiful setting, but fails to make me care about the characters or keep me turning pages.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 31 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars