Maddy Smith, the village witch, is left to deal with the goblins-in-the-cellar-problem five hundred years after the end of the world. Maddy Smith was born with a ‘ruinmark’, as the villagers call it, but when Maddy is seven and meets the mysterious traveler One-Eye, he tells her it’s a runemark. One-Eye teaches Maddy everything about runes, their meanings, how to cast them, and their fingerings. And, when she is fourteen, One-Eye tells her that they need to open Red Horse Hill to get to an item called the Whisperer inside. Maddy enters and sets off an amazing chain of events circling around the ancient Norse myths.
I completely and totally love this book. Harris’ writing is incredible, the pages are filled with suspense and wit, and the story is extremely well thought out. I love each and every one of the characters, even the ones I’m not really supposed to like. Some of the characters you see from the Norse myths are Odin (of course), Loki, Thor, Freyja, and Skadi. I would also like to point out that even though Harris gets much of the important information right, this book is based on the Norse myths and there have been changes made. (I think it’s important to note here, that I love the Norse myths, and I normally don’t tolerate fact changing, Harris’ story is so darn good, I just don’t care.) I didn’t give very much information here because to list every important event would have made this a very long post, it’s five hundred and thirty something pages!
Taryn
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about runes and runecasting, I created this document. All of the information is either paraphrased or copied from this site- http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/- it is very informative and even has some Norse myths on it. Harris also used different names for the runes than the ones on this site, just a heads up. Also, because the rune meanings got messed up in the document, here is the link to the rune meanings section of the site, which has graphics of the runes- http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/meanings.html
P.P.S. Here is a link from Harris’ website on the actual rune fingerings used in the book- http://joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/books/runemarks/fingerings.html
P.P.P.S. (there are a lot of post-scripts in this post) Here are two books I recommend to read about the original Norse myths. The first is a large one, kind of like a children’s book, but the writing is not for little kids, but it’s a good Norse Mythology 101 book. The second is much more detailed and adult-like (it also looks like a regular non-kids’ book).
D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths- http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Norse-Myths-Ingri-DAulaire/dp/159017125X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275076619&sr=1-1
The Norse Myths- http://www.amazon.com/Norse-Myths-Pantheon-Folklore-Library/dp/0394748468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275076672&sr=1-1
