THE ISLANDS of the BLESSED (Sea of Trolls trilogy #3) (audiobook) by Nancy Farmer

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2009.
Duration: 13 hours, 30 minutes
Read by Gerard Doyle

Jack, the apprentice Bard from late 8th century Saxon England and his difficult friend Thorgil, the Viking girl, continue their adventures in The Islands of the Blessed, the conclusion to their trilogy (although there is an opening for the series to continue...). 

As with the other books in this series, Jack and Thorgil come into contact with a host of fairy tale creatures such as Mermen and Mermaids, Hogboons, Half-trolls and even a Viking god as Nancy Farmer demonstrates the depth of her research into European mythology. Jack and Thorgil join the bard on a quest to correct a horrible wrong done by Father Severus on a Mermaid  years ago (the Merpeople are called Fin Folk in this book) that has caused her to become a fearsome ghostly creature that kills and spreads disease and destruction. 

A Viking Longship in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Photo by Urban.

In this book, the adventure returns to the form of the first book and heads out to the open sea in Viking long boats. But, sadly, this book is much more like the second book of the series than the first. The book quickly deteriorates into a series of rather pointless confrontations with random monsters that are the unfortunate by-product of Nancy Farmer's meticulous research. Rather than develop a creature and flesh it out as a character (which the first book did so well with the Trolls and their world) this book just throws the out as a series of obstacles that Jack must overcome in his quest. It reminded me of the worst of the adventures that I helped create when I played Dungeons and Dragons in Junior High and High School.

The best parts of the book are when Jack struggles with the immense changes his world is undergoing. Christianity is a new arrival and Jack struggles with blending his Christian worldview and his pagan worldview.  He struggles with a Christianity that allows Father Severus to be so cruel. But, he has the example of Father Aidan who exudes a much more subtler style of Christianity and who comes so much closer to living up to the ideals of Christianity. Jack respects those ideals and espouses them at a critical moment that I cannot detail here because of spoilers. But, he is also a practitioner of magic that Christianity condemns (or at least discourages, depending on the location).  He also struggles with his friends the Vikings - fantastic friends, loyal to a fault who will gladly slit your throat and sell your sister into slavery and the Viking brand of paganism that glorifies death above all. 

As I listened, I was struck by the idea that the best parts of the book were constantly being subverted by yet another mythical beast's arrival making the book much longer and all the poorer.

Gerald Doyle's narration was extraordinary, as it was in the other two books of this trilogy.

It can be found on Amazon here: The Islands of the Blessed (Sea of Trolls Trilogy)

Click on the Nancy Farmer label below to see the other reviews of the books in this trilogy.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. 

THE LAND of the SILVER APPLES (Sea of Trolls Trilogy #2) (audiobook) by Nancy Farmer

Did Not Have the Same Spirit as the First Book in This Trilogy.

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2007.
Performed by Gerald Doyle
Duration: 13 hours, 31 minutes.
Unabridged

It is the year 794 and Jack, the 13-year-old Bard-in-training from what is now the United Kingdom is on a new mission. Having recently returned from his adventures with the Vikings and the Frost Giants (detailed in Book #1 of this trilogy, The Sea of Trolls) Jack's new adventure begins in The Land of the Silver Apples with a mid-winter ceremony led by his teacher, known simply as The Bard. 

The ceremony is supposed to symbolize renewal by ridding the village of all fire. Then, the village gathers in one place and creates a new fire and re-ignites everyone's hearth fires from this new fire. The ceremony has few hard and fast rules, but Jack's self-absorbed sister, Lucy, breaks one of them by bringing metal to the ceremony in the form of a beautiful silver necklace that she was given during their trip to the Viking homeland.

Because of this necklace, a change comes over each of the members of Jack's family. Jack develops a cruel streak, his father becomes even more blind to Lucy's self-absorbed nature and starts to exhibit uncharacteristically greedy tendancies. Jack and Lucy's mother, a "wise woman" with a touch of magic power even is affected. So, The Bard leads a group to St. Fillian's well, a monastery that is supposed to use the water from the well to cure possession. The monastery is in a kingdom controlled by a cruel king.

Once they arrive, things go badly right from the beginning. Jack is attacked with magic by an unseen (to everyone but Jack) woman who comes from the waters of the well. Later, she kidnaps Lucy and takes her into the well and the waters of the well dry up despite Jack's best efforts to save her.

As a punishment, Jack is sent down into the well (now a dried up cave entrance) to figure out what the problem is and fix it. The Bard cannot travel with him because it will be too difficult for the old man to traverse the caverns. Jack is accompanied by Pega, a young recently-freed former slave girl that is considered to be hideously ugly but has a hauntingly beautiful singing voice. The last member of their group is Brutus, a man who acts like a fawning slave when in the presence of the king but once he is away from the king he quickly asserts that he is a knight and also the rightful ruler of the kingdom - and also a true descendant of Lancelot!

As they travel through the caverns this party finds one adventure after another, including monsters that make themselves look like the scariest thing you can imagine, a forest that consumes people it does not like, hobgoblins, kelpies and, of course, the self-absorbed elves who live in "The Land of the Silver Apples". 

Along the way, Jack and Pega lose Brutus but they find the girl Thorgill, Jack's companion for a lot of the action in Book #1.

Farmer mixes Celtic, Norse, Saxon and Christian beliefs throughout this book, much more than in the first one. This was a time when all of those beliefs were in active play and the story of the Elves mixes the religious traditions the most. 

Gerald Doyle reads the entire Sea of Trolls trilogy and he does an inspired job with this book. He gives real character to the all of the characters and all of the mythical races that appear throughout the books. 

But, his remarkable performance does little to help with the pacing of the book. The story of their time in the hobgoblin village takes entirely too long and just drags on and on. Farmer keeps on re-iterating Thorgill's irascibility, Pega's good nature and Jack's doubts about Brutus. Yeah, yeah. We got it the first fifty times you said it.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. Two or three hours could have been cut out of this book and it would have only improved it. The quest had none of the drive or quick pace of the first book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Land of the Silver Apples.

Reviewed on December 22, 2014

THE SEA of TROLLS (Sea of Trolls Trilogy #1) (audiobook) by Nancy Farmer

Published in 2004 by Recorded Books
Performed by Gerard Doyle
Duration: 13 hours, 51 minutes
Unabridged

Brilliantly read by Gerard Doyle, The Sea of Trolls is essentially the story of a young boy living in 793 England who is kidnapped by Vikings, taken back to their home and eventually returns home.

But, this story is so much more than that.

Jack is an adolescent that lives in an English coastal village with his parents and younger sister. This world is Christian with a hefty bit of pagan practices thrown in. This is not a comfortable mix.

Jack is invited to be the apprentice for the local bard. Bards are more than mere story-telling musicians - they can weave magic by being in touch with something called the Life Force. Their music can enhance and focus their magic. Jack's mother exhibited such tendencies as well but she was never formally trained.

While in the midst of his training, Jack's teacher is magically attacked by a half-troll Viking queen (married to King Ivar the Boneless) and the village is soon physically attacked by Berserker Viking raiders from the same kingdom. Jack and his sister are captured by these raiders and their leader, the fearsome Olaf One-Brow plans to sell them as slaves back in the kingdom of Ivar the Boneless.

A Viking Longship in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Photo by Urban.

While traveling back to the Viking kingdom, Jack's nascent talents as a Bard are discovered and he moves into a new, precarious position - still a slave yet also valuable to Olaf as a weaver of spells and singer of his praises. But, if he casts a spell incorrectly or sings a song wrong his life may be forfeit.

A mistaken spell in the great hall of Ivan the Boneless and his half-troll wife sends Jack, Olaf and the sullen young shield maiden Thorgill on an epic quest across the Troll Sea into a land that only exists in legend - a land filled with trolls, man-eating plants, giant spiders, sea monsters, dragons and more...

This is a fun story, has lots of depth and plenty of opportunity to talk about how people are rarely all good or all bad. For example, the Vikings warriors are thieves, slave traders and brutal murderers of an entire village. But, they are also honorable friends, wonderful hosts and fantastic family men.

I listened to this audiobook with my freshman daughter. It was her first audiobook experience and she absolutely loved it. I was more than impressed by the narration of Gerard Doyle. He voices men, women, boys, girls, trolls, crows, and even more with great skill. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE SEA of TROLLS (Sea of Trolls Trilogy #1) by Nancy Farmer.

Reviewed on October 12, 2014.

Read my review of The Land of the Silver Apples, volume 2 in this trilogy by clicking HERE. 

The House of the Scorpion (audiobook) by Nancy Farmer

Recommended for middle schoolers through adults 
 
National Book Award, Young People's Literature, 2002.

Published in 2002.

Limiting The House of the Scorpion to a young adult audience is a disservice to the book and to the themes it brings up. This would be a fantastic book for an adult discussion group - there are so many themes and controversial topics that a group could discuss for hours and hours.


That being said, I nearly quit listening to this audiobook after the first hour. It was sooooo slow to get started. On top of that, it was often dark and opressive. However, after the character Tam Lin comes in to the story the whole book changes and you would have had to fight me to get me to give the book up. By the time the end came around I felt like I had lived a life with Mateo and was thoroughly satisfied.

So, what kind of themes are there? Well, this book, in my opinion, points out the dangers that many of the more Conservative thinkers warn us about with our current policies towards bio-technology and, to a lesser extent, immigration.

Nancy Farmer

The future, as portrayed in The House of the Scorpion is often a dark place with clones created solely to provide body parts for their originals and "eejits" - people with computer chips inserted into their brains to make them completely docile and the perfect slaves who will literally do the task they're assigned to do until they are told to stop (or die). The United States is no longer the world's only superpower and there is a new country between Mexico (now called Aztlan) and the USA. It is called "Opium". Opium serves as a buffer between Aztlan and the U.S. that is run by a cartel of drug lords with drug plantations worked by eejits, most of whom are illegal aliens from the U.S. or Mexico who were captured and enslaved (the parallels with the American underground labor force comprised of illegal immigrants can be easily made).

Aztlan has become a country obsessed by economic success and the duty to the larger society as a whole. The goal there seems to be the bee hive - all workers know their place and sacrifice for the good of the society. The mantra is the "5 principles of Good Citizenship" and the "4 Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness." The success of the state is paramount over the interests of any individual.

Grand themes run throughout the book such as:

-What does it mean to be human?

-Who is accorded human rights?

-What are the limits of cloning? Do we clone people just to use them for parts? Do we clone fetuses just to use their parts (as happens in the book)?

-The rights of the individual vs. the demands of the state? Where are the boundaries or should there be any? Is the individual entirely free? Can the state demand everything of the individual? Is there a difference between an eejit and an Aztlanian worker bee?

The audiobook lasts 12.5 hours and is read brilliantly by Robert Ramirez (NOTE: There are other audiobook versions out there with different readers). I'm glad I stuck through the initial slow parts - I was thoroughly rewarded.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The House of the Scorpion

Reviewed May 21, 2009.