James Nicoll Reviews

2016’s Ansuz is the first volume in Malene Sølvsten’s Whisper of the Ravens teen contemporary fantasy series. The 2023 English translation is by Adrienne Alair.

Black-haired Danish teen Anna Sakarias’ life thus far has been less than ideal. Abandoned by her parents as a baby, Anna has been handed from foster-parent to foster-parent, finally ending up living on her own under the watchful eye of caseworker Greta. Although she saved one set of fosters from a fire, she was then blamed for the fire. When she defended herself from the local bully, Anna was the one who faced charges. If the preceding were not bad enough, Anna dreams of terrible murders.

Now Anna’s life will be utterly transformed… but not for the better.

Fellow schoolgirl Luna, whom Anna does not know from Eve, presents herself to Anna as though they are old friends with whom Anna should be familiar. Luna explains that Anna’s parents were good friends with Luna’s parents.

Luna expected that Anna’s foster parents Mia and Jens would have explained to Anna who Luna and her parents were long before. As Mia and Jens kicked Anna out thirteen years before, this did not happen. In fact, quite a number of things that were supposed to be handled on Anna’s behalf did not happen, thanks to some heroic negligence on the part of the adults around Anna.

For example, Anna owns a house, Odinmont. Anna can leave her crummy cheap apartment behind for a nice house out in the spooky, spooky woods, provided she meets certain reasonable conditions set by Greta. Anna had no idea Odinmont was hers because nobody told her.

Luna and her family worship the Norse gods. This is perfectly reasonable. Luna and her kin have material evidence that gods (or at least magical phenomena) are real.

So does Anna, although she did not know it. Those dreams she has been having are not dreams but visions. Her clairvoyance makes her a witness to a serial killer’s crimes, as he travels from town to town murdering red-haired girls before scrawling the ansuz rune on their bodies.

While it’s a bit concerning that the killer seems to be focusing on towns where Anna lived, including the town in which Anna is now resident, the alarming murders surely don’t have anything to do with Anna personally. After all, she’s black-haired, not a redhead. Anna will remain black-haired unless (or until) she stops dying her hair black, at which point she will revert to her natural red.

In fact, Anna is an important playing piece in a struggle for liberation that spans two worlds. She is someone an other-dimensional evil queen desperately needs dead. Because nobody saw fit to properly brief Anna, she is utterly unprepared for what is to come.

~oOo~

The rune ansuz, which looks like this (ᚨ), is in this novel translated as ​“god.”

I know what readers are thinking. ​“Isn’t it too soon after the raid on Lindisfarne to be considering Danish fantasies?” Well, publisher Artis was kind enough to send me a stack of translated fantasies and I feel obligated to review a representative sample.

Oddly, Ansuz was not among the Arctis books available on Netgalley and it does not appear to have ever been. As it vexes me to start a series in the middle, I bought a copy. As you can see below, Ansuz is widely available.

Ansuz is a chonky fantasy, over 700 pages in dead-tree. I applaud the confidence shown in teen readers’ ability to stay focused. However, the means by which this page-count is reached is a bit less satisfactory.

First, as one might guess from the fact Anna did not know she owned real estate¹ or that she had magic powers or that she was targeted for assassination by an evil queen, the characters in this novel often refuse to share vital, need-to-know information. The logic can be circular: people refuse to fully brief Anna because she is not ready to know the grim truth, but she’s not ready to know because nobody ever briefed her.

Second, Sølvsten is fond of inconclusive confrontations. Someone who is a minor character might want to make sure their life insurance forms are filled out, but named characters have plot immunity, even when the only reasonable course of action is… murder in self-defense.

The fact that this novel has a sequel suggests that teens (or at least Danish teens) reacted favourably to Ansuz. There are a number of reasons why that might be, a lot of which boil down to Adults Are Useless, Except When They Are Actively Counter-Productive. Reasons: kissing is fun but you can be sure the grown-ups won’t approve². Adults will cluck their tongues over your fashion choices. Adults will conceal information on which your life may depend. Adults never double-check to see if the person they assume is guilty is guilty, and adults don’t see the need to consult with teens before inflicting on them life-altering punishments.

Adults also won’t assure non-conventional teens they’re pretty despite what their classmates say. Now that I think about how little grasp many of the characters in this have of consent and boundaries, that may be for the best.

So, put this down as perhaps not a very good book but the right not very good book at the right time for many young people.

This book was definitely not my thing but then, I am not the target market. Nevertheless, I will see if the sequel is more to my taste. Authors do improve.

Ansuz is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: The tax and financial issues are acknowledged and addressed.

2: Drug-fueled sex orgies are also right out. It probably won’t help to protest that it wasn’t a drug-fueled sex orgy, but the aftermath of an arcane battle to the (near) death. But as nobody cared to explain to Greta what was really going on, we shall never know.