Teaser Tuesday: No Snakes in Iceland

Like the ouroboros devouring its own tail, the Wheel of Time has circled ’round to Teaser Tuesday.

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

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This week I’m reading No Snakes in Iceland, the debut novel of my good friend Jordan Poss.

Ic wylle mine æþelo      eallum gecyþan,
þæt ic wæs on Myrcon      miccles cynnes

I will make my nobility known to all,
that I was of great kin among Mercians;

From The Battle of Maldon

No, that’s not my Teaser, that’s just the epigraph.

What’s the book about? I’m glad you asked!

Set in the wild edge of the world in the 10th century, No Snakes in Iceland is the story of Edgar, an English poet adrift in the world of his enemies, the heathen Vikings.

Though far from home and seething with bitter hate, Edgar is recruited by a strange young man to come to a farm in a far-off glacial valley—and kill a ghost. Accompanied only by his confessor Sifrid and an arrogant young monk, Edgar rides to the winter-bound farm and meets hostile fighters, outlaws, berserks, a family torn asunder by a generation of strife, and, always looming, the fearsome mound-dweller that terrorizes the farmstead by night.

No Snakes in Iceland is the story of both one man lost and lonely in the world, and of a world in the grip of supernatural forces it cannot understand.

The Truly Random Number Generator sends us to page 144:

I needed no mead to bring on sleep. I sat back on the bench to clean my weapons and woke only to the silence in the red-lit hall. And outside, nothing.

Intrigued?

Enter the Goodreads Giveaway to win a signed copy – something I don’t have . . . yet.

In Retrospect

With each word chosen with the care of a jeweler setting a diamond in a platinum band, I found The Prague Cemetery heady and philosophical. Its diabolical main character is perhaps the most vile and irredeemable in all of literature, yet we are compelled to read on despite our better judgment. The story falters in the last hundred pages, yet finishes with the same exacting punch that attracted us in the first place.

Coming Soon

Lock In by John Scalzi

What have you been reading?