The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer

October 17th, 2008 at 12:21pm |

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Audience: Elementary and Up

Rating: B+

Synopsis:

Jack and his family live in a Saxon Village where his father is a simple farmer and his life seems ordinary and boring. This changes when the Bard chooses Jack to be his apprentice and begins to teach him magic. Things go from great to awful when Vikings raid his village, capturing Jack and his younger sister Lucy. Armed with nothing but a pet crow and his wits, Jack needs to figure out how to adapt to his new life and protect Lucy from the whims of the berserkers.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) Nancy Farmer is such a creative writer. She weaves a new story around old Norse legends and even manages to weave in nursery rhymes and Beowulf. I was fascinated by her research notes at the end. It’s so interesting to see all the sources she gathered to create this story.

Thorgil was my favorite character – I know we’re supposed to be annoyed by her, but Farmer made her into such a sympathetic character. I wonder if she’ll be any happier now that she’s been claimed by Olaf, but lost her berserker powers.

That Farmer was going to include the rhyme “Jack and Jill” was so obvious once we found out Thorgil’s real name. That the Bard was the crow was also pretty predictable. Despite this, I really found the plot to be unusual and enjoyable. In particular, the trolls were a surprise. After all the hype, I’d expected the trolls were going to be barbaric and attack Jack and Thorgil immediately. Instead, their biggest enemy in troll country wasn’t the hospitable trolls, but the dragon.

I’m curious what will happen in the sequel The Land of the Silver Apples. The third book in the trilogy, The Island of the Blessed will be out in 2009.