Category: Reading Challenges

#BookReview A Day of Reckoning by Matthew Harffy @HoZ_Books @AriesFiction @MatthewHarffy

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About the Book

AD 796 . Sailing in search of an object of great power, Hunlaf and his comrades are far from home when they are caught up in a violent skirmish against pirates.

After the bloody onslaught, an encounter with ships from Islamic Spain soon sees them escorted under guard to the city of Qadis, one of the jewels of the Emirate of Al-Andalus and the true destination of their voyage.

Hunlaf believes the Emir’s lands hold the key to his search, but there are dangerous games at play. To achieve his goal, Hunlaf and his allies must walk a difficult path where friends and enemies alike are not always what they seem – and where a weapon deadlier than any yet seen could change the future of all the kingdoms in Europe.

Format: eARC (448 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 28th September 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

A Day of Reckoning is the third book in the author’s ‘A Time for Swords’ series, the follow-up to A Time for Swords and A Night of Flames both of which I’ve read and reviewed. A Day of Reckoning could be read as a standalone as there are recaps of previous events to bring new readers up to date but if you’re a lover of action-packed historical fiction I’d recommend reading the series from the beginning.

Once again Hunlaf is both chief protagonist and narrator. Now advanced in age and becoming increasingly frail, he is setting down the details of his eventful life, one which saw him abandon his calling as a monk to become a warrior and adventurer. (Retaining the mischievous spirit of his younger self, he’s writing his memoir when he should be working on something else.)

A Day of Reckoning sees Hunlaf continue his quest for a book known as The Treasure of Life, a book which he longs to study whilst at the same time he fears has the power to corrupt minds, something demonstrated all too clearly in A Night of Flames. In fact, looking back, he now refers to it as ‘that accursed tome’. The search takes Hunlaf and his comrades to the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsular, including the cities of Cadiz, Seville and Cordoba. There they find themselves becoming involved in a kind of 8th century arms race.

Many characters make a return appearance including the fearsome Norse warrior and master shipbuilder, Runolf Ragnarsson and – much to Hunlaf’s delight – Runolf’s daughter Revna.

As you might expect, they face many perils along the way and there are some terrific action scenes, including a battle with a pirate ship and a breathless escape from a mountain top fortress. Although we know Hunlaf will live to fight another day – although of course he doesn’t – that’s not necessarily the case for all his comrades. It’s something that weighs heavily on Hunlaf’s mind, a feeling of guilt that he has unwittingly been the cause of others’ deaths. At the same time, he’s happy to acknowledge that he’s been a bit of a lad since casting off his monk’s robe and that the thrill of battle can sometimes overwhelm him. ‘I had chosen the path of the warrior, and when called upon to fight, I was gripped by a savage abandon that made me deadly.’

A Day of Reckoning is the kind of historical fiction that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let go until you reach the end, slightly breathless but with the sense of having been completely immersed in another time and place. And as before, the author leaves us with tantalising glimpses of exploits Hunlaf has yet to tell us about. But will he? To borrow Runolf’s catchphrase, I guess ‘anything is possible’.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Action-packed, enthralling, pacy

Try something similar: The Serpent King by Tim Hodkinson

About the Author

Matthew Harffy grew up in Northumberland where the rugged terrain, ruined castles and rocky coastline had a huge impact on him. He now lives in Wiltshire with his wife and their two daughters.

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A Time For Swords

#BookReview North Woods by Daniel Mason @johnmurrays

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About the Book

FOUR CENTURIES. A SINGLE HOUSE DEEP IN THE WOODS OF NEW ENGLAND.

A young Puritan couple on the run. An English soldier with a fantastic vision. Inseparable twin sisters. A lovelorn painter and a lusty beetle. A desperate mother and her haunted son. A ruthless con man and a stalking panther. Buried secrets. Madness, dreams and hope.

All are connected. The dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Format: eARC (384 pages) Publisher: John Murray Press
Publication date: 19th September 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Find North Woods on Goodreads

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My Review

I loved the first book by Daniel Mason I read, The Winter Soldier, an emotional and beautifully written novel set in the First World War that I had no hesitation in awarding five stars. The same was true of his next book, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, a collection of short stories whose subtle links and recurring themes become more apparent as you read the book. In my review, I described it as ‘a tour de force of imagination’ and I have no hesitation in applying the same description to North Woods.

Starting in the 17th century and centred around a remote house and the surrounding north woods, events unfold in a series of episodes told in a variety of styles including a testimony, a newspaper report, a lecture, an exchange of correspondence, a poem, a song. Over time, the house is a place of passion, violence, refuge, contentment, simmering resentment, mental distress and trickery. It’s extended, damaged by storms, left to become derelict, abandoned and then rediscovered. The people that have inhabited it have each left a mark on it, sometimes incorporeal in nature, adding an intriguing supernatural element.

The connections the author weaves between the episodes and the various characters are immensely clever and skilfully done. Some of the links are obvious, some less so, meaning it might only be the mention of an object – an old hat of felted beaver – or a name – Osgood – that makes you recall an earlier story. The book is akin to a patchwork quilt made up of squares created by people of different generations and different skill levels, sewn together in random fashion but with some recurring motifs. As I was reading the book, my constant thought was ‘this is my favourite’, only for it to be replaced by another almost immediately afterwards.

The events in the lives of the characters are often intensely moving but there are also elements of humour, eccentricity and melodrama. And the book doesn’t just feature human characters but also animal and insect life – that ‘lusty beetle’ mentioned in the blurb – even fungal diseases.

The writing is beautiful with the author adopting a variety of styles that wonderfully bring to life the events of each episode. I’m a great fan of a list and there are some brilliantly quirky ones in the book, often almost poetic in style, such as this description of the items making up the ballast of a ship bound for America, demonstrating it’s not only humans who migrate.

‘There are stones and loam and sand, insects and earthworms, bird bones and crushed snail shells, roly-polies, and tuffs of grass that wilt within the darkness of the hold. There is a half-decayed mole, and a live one, broken jugs, a Roman coin that will be rediscovered by a young boy walking on the shoreline 317 years later, and another, a “crown of the double rose” bearing an image of Edward VI on horseback, that will sift down into the silty depths of Massachusetts Bay and disappear forever. There is a beaded necklace dropped by a longshoreman’s wife during a moment of indiscretion, a splintered lens from a bookkeeper’s spectacles, stray curls blown from the barber’s market stall by an offshore breeze, peach pits, rotting broadsheets of forgotten songs. And there are seeds, uncountable, scattered in the humid load: red clover, groundsel, spurrey, trefoil, meadow fescue, dandelion, hedge parsley, nonesuch, plantains.’

The depiction of nature is mesmerising charting the changing of the seasons and the transformation of the woods over time. In fact, the woods are a character in themselves acting amongst other things as a sanctuary, a meeting place, a source of inspiration, a habitation, a hiding place and a harbinger of environmental change.

I thought North Woods was absolutely brilliant. It’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of John Murray Press via NetGalley.

In three words: Magical, imaginative, moving

About the Author

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier  (2018), A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  His work has been translated into 28 languages, adapted for opera and stage, and awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  His short stories and essays have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award, and an O. Henry Prize. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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