About the Book:
After committing an audacious act of revenge for her brother's murder, Disa flees with her son through the fjords of Iceland. She has already endured the death of her loved ones. Now she must run to save her son, and her honour.
In a society where betrayals and revenge killings are rife, all Disa has is her pride and her courage. Will it be enough for her and her son to escape retribution?
Dramatic and urgent in its telling, The Sorrow Stone celebrates one woman's quest, against the dramatic backdrop of the Icelandic countryside. In this gripping novel, the co-author of the bestselling Saga Land takes a sidelined figure from the Viking tales and finally puts her where she belongs – at the centre of the story.
Published by UQP
Released March 2022
My Thoughts:
This novel didn't even come close to delivering for me. Some of this may be attributed to listening on audio rather than reading, as the structure of the novel was not very 'listener friendly'. It flicks back and forth but doesn't do so from chapter to chapter, but instead randomly within the chapters. I found myself quite often not knowing whether I was in the past or the present until a few paragraphs in. If you were reading it, I would expect there might have been chapter breaks to indicate this change in the story.
That aside, I just didn't like this story at all. The characters were revolting. The women were snide and bitchy to each other all the time and the men just seemed to be in a constant state of wanting to fight or kill each other. Disa, the main character, was alternately incredibly naive and incredibly arrogant. I couldn't figure out half the time if Disa was in love with her brother Gill or her husband (can't remember his name) or both. Neither of them seemed to like Disa very much at all yet seemed obsessed with owning her. She didn't seem to even like her brother half the time but then she would defer to him constantly and ended up avenging his death when he had been involved in killing her first boyfriend and also her husband. The entire family dynamic was strange. Disa herself was always aggressive and defensive, increasingly so as the novel wore on. I could not develop any character empathy towards her at all.
The promise of an atmospheric rendering of medieval Iceland fell flat as well. It just seemed like a depressing place that Disa regretted having to move to. I don't know if my feelings about this book would differ if I'd read it instead of listening. I suspect not. I'll put it down to a case of expectations not being met and leave it at that. I would hesitate to read anything further by this author as I think his chosen topic is Icelandic history and maybe that's just not for me.
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