Sea of Trolls

Jack was eleven when the berserkers loomed out of the fog and nabbed him. "It seems that things are stirring across the water," the Bard had warned. "Ships are being built, swords are being forged." "Is that bad?" Jack had asked, for his Saxon village had never before seen berserkers. "Of course. People don't make ships and swords unless they intend to use them." The year is A.D. 793. In the next months, Jack and his little sister, Lucy, are enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate, Thorgil. With a crow named Bold Heart for mysterious company, they are swept up into an adventure-quest in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings.

The children from the sea of trolls brave their worst nightmares – underground. Jack is amazed to have caused an earthquake. He is thirteen, after all, and only a bard-in-training. But his sister, Lucy, has been stolen by the Lady of the Lake; stolen a second time in her young life, as he learns to his terror. Caught between belief in the old gods and Christianity (790 AD, Britain), Jack calls upon his ash wood staff to subdue a passel of unruly monks, and, for his daring, ends up in a knucker hole. It is unforgettable -- for the boy and for readers -- as are the magical reappearance of the berserker Thorgil from a burial by moss; new characters Pega, a slave girl from Jack's village, and the eager-to-marry-her Bugaboo (a hobgoblin king); kelpies; yarthkins; and elves (not the enchanted sprites one would expect but the fallen angels of legend). Rarely does a sequel enlarge so brilliantly the world of the first story. Look for the conclusion in The Islands of the Blessed in 2009.

Foolish boy, whispers the cobwebby voice of the hogboon. You force me to slay you. But Jack and Thorgil between them possess the rune of protection, and they overpower the soulless spirit who is so intent on murder and marriage, respectively. They've survived worse. The crowning volume of the trilogy that started with The Sea of Trolls and The Land of the Silver Apples begins with a tornado (Odin on a Wild Hunt, as the young berserker Thorgil sees it). The fields of Jack's village have been devastated, the winter ahead looks bleak, and a monster -- a draugr -- invades the forest outside of town. What's a hogboon in comparison? In the hands of bestselling Nancy Farmer, the direst prospects are all part of the fun as Jack, Thorgil, and the Bard set off on a quest to right the wrong of a death caused by Father Severus. Destination: Notland, realm of the fin folk, and unfortunately for the adventurers Not Always There.