Synopsis When one of his closest friends is killed, Torak swears vengeance. He braves the hostile Deep Forest and its warring clans, and learns the true cost of revenge.

Review When one of Torak’s closest friends is killed after they have quarrelled, Torak swears vengeance on Thiazzi the Oak Mage Soul-Eater, whom he pursues into the Deep Forest through a gauntlet of tricks and traps. Thiazzi’s arrogant ambitions have caused him to set the forest clans at war, and to break taboo by sacrificing hunting animals and hanging their carcasses on the Great Oak, preventing the season from turning to summer, when the World Spirit in the form of an antlered man should appear. Torak spirit walks in the shared consciousness of the trees and in a wild mare, and is changed by these experiences.

As with an Inuit kill, there is no wastage in Michelle Paver’s story-telling. Torak’s single-minded pursuit of revenge, which those dearest to him warn him about, and which estranges him from Wolf, leads finally to a terrible choice. Now nearly fourteen summers old, Torak learns to live with uncertainty, when certainly leads to the destructiveness of revenge and to the megalomania of Thiazzi, who declaims ‘I am the truth and the Way’ and ‘One way. One Forest. One Leader!’

Followers of The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness will not be disappointed in this fifth instalment, a thrilling and morally complex adventure.

2008-08-28