My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

 

I love the title of this book--it resonates, I think, with those ancient epic poems about heroes and battles, victory and defeat, which so many cultures seem to have developed.  It's a good choice for this story.  Sedgwick is a strong and elegant writer who excels at transporting his readers to the past and steeping them in generous amounts of action and chilly atmosphere.

My Swordhand Is Singing is a vampire tale.  It's not written in the current romantic "Bella and Edward" vein;  rather, it is rooted in old Eastern European folklore in which vampires were terrifying, deeply evil, and often quite disgusting to look at.   The folkloric motifs in this story are many--woodcutters, small villages surrounded by the dense wintry gloom of "Mother Forest", gypsies, magical songs and unearthly, unseen characters known as the Shadow Queen and the Winter King.  The charms and defenses against vampires that feature here are equally folkloric--garlic, millet, hawthorne, nets flung into graves.  An archaic ritual, the Wedding of the Dead, plays a pivotal role in the plot.  Sedgwick uses these old beliefs and traditions to create a feeling of historic authenticity, albeit one where the supernatural is dark and dreadful and thrives in the shadows of the natural world. 

Sedgwick's  story concerns the lives of the woodcutter Tomas  and his son Peter, nomads who have recently moved to a hut outside the village of Chust, where villagers view them with xenophobic suspicion.  Tomas is a troubled, violent man who drinks more than he works, and who has been keeping many secrets from his son.  I won't reveal exactly what they are, but they relate to his warrior past.  When a plague of vampires sweeps the village and both his father and the village elders are in denial,  Peter responds to try and protect his sweetheart, drawing his father into danger as well. 

Sedgwick creates some striking images, such as the vampire whose tongue slices through his victim's neck, or the grave with the hole just big enough for Peter to glimpse the corpse's eye, which suddenly opens. However, the chills are nicely balanced by the wholesomeness of Peter's character, which is always humble but grows in courage, determination and maturity.   This is a startling and satisfying book, an exciting story memorably told.

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
Anton Chekov


"My mother's children are not murderers."
 Sig Andersson, Revolver

I'm really interested in the first lines of books.  I think a strong first line sets the tone for the whole story, and I actually have a little collection in my head of favourite first lines of novels.  Revolver opens with a one-line paragraph:  "Even the dead tell stories."  This book had me at the first sentence.

Revolver is the best frontier novel I've ever read.  It's stunning, really.  It reads like the kind of book that's been polished and pared down again and again and again until there is nothing left but the pure crackling light of the story.  Every word counts.  Chapters begin with the shortest of sentences.  "How things unwind." ,  for example.  Yet despite it's spare frame it features a dramatically tense plot, an almost visceral sense of place and time, and beautiful characterization.  At the heart of this intelligent book is the working out of an implacable ethical question:  is it right to shoot another to save oneself?  

Revolver is alternatingly set in 1910 in Giron, a small Swedish settlement north of the Arctic circle, and Nome, Alaska, in the late 1800s (the gold rush period).  Sig Andersson, a young man living with his father, stepmother, and older sister in Giron, has just discovered the icy corpse of his father, who had fallen partway through the ice while driving over a lake by dogsled.  The lake Einar himself has warned his son never to cross.   Sig's sister and stepmother leave to get help from neighbours who live miles away, and Sig is left alone in the cabin with his thoughts and his father's frozen corpse.  But then a stranger breaks in, a man who claims that Sig's father had cheated him out of a fortune in gold.  The stranger wants the gold back, and he has a gun. 

Revolver is really so perfectly plotted that I don't want to spoil the story for anyone.  But the decision Sig must eventually make is whether to accept the practical philosophy of his father (" 'A gun is not a weapon"' Einar once said to Sig. 'It's an answer.  It's an answer to the questions life throws at you when there's no one around to help.") or the ideals of his mother, a devoted Christian who believed in nonviolence and forgiveness.   His very survival depends on what he chooses, and Sedgwick makes us feel the weight of that all the way through this gripping story.