Synopsis: As the first daughter of a magnificent kingdom in medieval Ireland, Melkorka leads a life of privilege and luxury. But when she is kidnapped and taken aboard a Viking slave ship, Mel must learn quickly if she is to survive. Taking a vow of silence, she finds herself an object of fascination to her captors, and soon realises that what little power she has may just make a difference.

Based on an ancient Icelandic folktale, this is a heartbreaking and powerful story of a young girl who must learn to forget all she knows and carve out a place for herself in a new world – all without speaking a word.

Review: I enjoyed this book. The female heroine is a well-rounded and believable character whose stubbornness and refusal to be down-trodden by men creates a very positive role model for young female readers. This novel is based in an age and culture which are not often explored in teenage fiction and I think that this has been done incredibly well.

With reference to the classroom, there are some cross-curricular links with Geography and History which could be explored. One aspect that might be interesting to explore with this book is the idea of language change and integration of words from other languages as it does use Old Norse words at times throughout the text.

 This could be a class novel for some classes or a suitable guiding reading text for fluent confident readers. However it is more likely to appeal to all-female classes as it has fairly negative male characters which might alienate boys. Some readers may find the pace a little slow in places.

2008-06-07