Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson
Auteur de Shadows of the Short Days
A propos de l'auteur
Séries
Œuvres de Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1988
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- Iceland
- Lieux de résidence
- Reykjavík, Iceland
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 2
- Aussi par
- 2
- Membres
- 94
- Popularité
- #199,202
- Évaluation
- 3.4
- Critiques
- 2
- ISBN
- 10
- Langues
- 1
Hrímland is an introduction to an Iceland inhabited by pure humans, huldufólk (extradimensional exiles), huldumanneskja (those born of human and huldufólk parents), náskári (the ravenfolk), marbendill (aquatic folk), and the four landvættir (the spirits of the land). We are introduced to Sæmundur who has been expelled from the Svartiskóli, the School of Supernatural Sciences and driven by an obsessive need for knowledge and understanding of terrifying, undefinable, spoken magic called galdur. Its companion is seiður, a more orderly, land-based, sorcerous energy (seiðmagn) that can be harnessed by industrial means. We also meet Garún, a mixed-breed artist of huldufólk and human parents with a foot in both worlds and part of neither. She is on a singular quest for belonging by destroying the Kalmar Commonwealth’s hold over her homeland and guided at times by her demon-powered audioskull that plays changeable music through her headphones to alert her of danger.
As our two obsessed protagonists continue on their separate journeys, we are introduced to a Reykjavík where everything is a potential threat under an authoritarian regime that is deeply intelligent, crafty, spies on its own citizens, and has no qualms about using violence to put down protests. At their disposal is not only a looming airship and a prison from which none escape, but also disturbing seiðskratti (wielders of seiðmagn) in red robes and plague doctor masks who call to mind the worst imaginings of inquisitional torturers. Sæmundur and Garún continue to spiral into ever deeper shadows and riskier situations in their personal quests from venturing into the Forgotten Downtown to the depths of Svartiskóli’s forbidden magical library. The protest scenes and dystopian atmosphere are very timely as our world sees a rise in authoritarianism and as one character points out, “They will kill us for demanding civil rights and rewrite history to make us sound like hooligans.”
At turns deeply satisfying, rebellious, and disturbing. Vilhjálmsson plays with music, sound, and silence as a part of his rich worldbuilding. At one point he calls this out directly: “As a composer [Sæmundur and Vilhjálmsson both] break up his work with the absence of sound, he used the silences as well to draw in the power from beyond, lying behind the entirety of creation.” If as Vilhjálmsson writes, “No space is as infinite as the gulf between the mind of a living being and the reality outside it,” he has done an excellent job at creating a bridge between one mind and another to draw the reader into his astonishing first novel.
As we get toward the end of this Icelandic opera, we are treated to a carefully orchestrated discordant tone. Where other authors might linger over action in Reykjavík at a particularly dramatic moment, Vilhjálmsson instead pulls us headlong into the obsessive nature of the protagonists with shorter passages switching between the two that rushes the reader into the explosive crescendo of a conclusion that should not be told here, only experienced.… (plus d'informations)