For just $8.99 (US) or $12.50 (Canada), this 462-page epic fantasy adventure is an incredible bargain. The Sea of Trolls has won at least thirty literary awards, including A Parents Choice Gold Award and Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Book. The author, Nancy Farmer, has also been honored with the Newbery Honor three times!
The author’s unusual use of sounds, sense of touch, and texture for descriptive scenes is a skill that has helped her stand out from her peers.
Nancy Farmer went to great lengths to ensure that the language, locations, and even some characters, poetry, etc., were as appropriate and authentic as possible for her novel. Certain battles in The Sea of Trolls actually happened, some of the religions, tribes, warriors and even the Bards and Wise Women actually existed during the era the book takes place in.
The setting for this epic fantasy is around the year 793 AD. C. and involves the areas we know today as England, Iceland, Sweden and some other regions on that side of the world. The main character is an eleven-year-old Anglo-Saxon boy, Jack, who is destined for more important things than farming. The berserkers attack the village in a violent raid and steal this young apprentice bard and his little sister, Lucy. Soon his skill as a bard is revealed and he saves Jack from the fate of a servant. An action-packed high seas adventure takes Jack to the kingdom of the Vikings, where he is sent on a quest to the land of trolls.
The appendix section of this book includes wonderful little history lessons that are sure to renew the reader’s interest again and again. The Sea of Trolls will be a favorite on my family’s shelf along with Star Tide Rising, Hawkwood’s Voyage, The Road of Silk, and On Stranger Tides.
I give this book the highest possible rating and recommend it to anyone who enjoys learning as they read and is entertained by fantastical adventure stories involving magic, battles, and sea voyages.
Author: Nancy Farmer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-689-86746-8