Description
Six years after The Half-Drowned King, Ragnvald Eysteinsson is now king of Sogn, but fighting battles for King Harald keeps him away from home, as he confronts treachery and navigates a political landscape that grows more dangerous the higher he rises.
Ragnvald's sister Svanhild has found the freedom and adventure she craves at the side of the rebel explorer Solvi Hunthiofsson, though not without a cost. She longs for a home where her quiet son can grow strong, and a place where she can put down roots, even as Solvi's ambition draws him back to Norway's battles again and keeps her divided from her brother.
As a growing rebellion unites King Harald's enemies, Ragnvald suspects that some Norse nobles are not loyal to Harald's dream of a unified Norway. He sets a plan in motion to defeat all of his enemies, and bring his sister back to his side, while Svanhild finds herself with no easy decisions, and no choices that will leave her truly free. Their actions will hold irrevocable repercussions for the fates of those they love and for Norway itself.
The Sea Queen returns to the fjords and halls of Viking-Age Scandinavia, a world of violence and prophecy, where honor is challenged by shifting alliances, and vengeance is always a threat to peace.
Praise for The Half-Drowned King:
'Suspenseful, intriguing, gripping' New York Journal of Books
'An unusual Viking saga... creates a more nuanced and richer portrait of Viking society, with its complex web of rituals, laws and debts of honour, than the genre usually provides' Sunday Times
'Like Game of Thrones, only more unscrupulous' Wall St Journal
About the Author
Linnea Hartsuyker is a graduate of NYU's Fiction MFA program and Cornell University's Engineering school, and has been researching the rise and reign of Harald Fairhair since she first discovered she was descended from him at the age of seventeen, when her family traced its ancestry back through 1200 years of Swedish and Norwegian church records. Since then she has read extensively of Icelandic sagas, kayaked and skied the fjordland settings for this novel, and even become proficient in lifting Husafjell stones, as the Vikings did to become stronger.
Reviews
A seafaring epic with bloodcurdling raids and political intrigue to spare... Svanhild emerges as a complicated, talented, and shrewd warrior in her own right... Hartsuyker is a skilled storyteller, and the moral battles her characters wrestle with on and off the battlefield add compelling psychological depth to an old and epic tale - Kirkus ReviewsHartsuyker's second volume in her trilogy (after The Half-Drowned King) continues the saga of Ragnvald Eysteinsson... but Svanhild proves that Norse women can be just as vicious and cunning as Norse men.... this is an ambitious tale of Norwegian medieval warfare told in richly colorful and accurate historical detail. Hartsuyker's novel reveals just how tenuous life is when disputes are settled with sword and battle-axe - Publishers WeeklyThrough her multifaceted characters, Hartsuyker adeptly evokes female alliances, the complications of love and passion, and vengeance both terrible and triumphant as she effectively juggles many subplots and settings, from Norway's harsh, picturesque coast to sulfurous Iceland and Dublin's muddy harbor - BooklistThis is historical fiction at its best and shouldn't be missed...Hartsuyker adds a rich, Shakespearean approach to characters and politics...All three main characters, Svanhild particularly, are so beautifully realized in their intelligence and emotional development that the descriptions of sea voyages, battles, and mead hall law-wrangling mesh seamlessly with the more personal stories - Editors Choice, Historical Novels Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780349142548
Author Linnea Hartsuyker
Format Paperback
Page Count 464
Imprint Abacus
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 365g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 126mm * 24mm
