Three time Newbery honor author Nancy Farmer's epic fantasy, The Sea of Trolls, is gigantic in every way. There are big Vikings and bigger trolls. There are big themes--hope, despair, life and death. At a substantial 450+ pages, the sheer size of this hefty tome is impressive. But, like all of Farmer's fine work, the large scale has room for enormous quantities of heart and humor. At the center of this massive adventure is a small Saxon boy named Jack, who's never been much good at anything until the Bard of his medieval village makes him an apprentice. Then, just as Jack is learning to tap into and control his power, he is kidnapped (along with his little sister, Lucy) and taken to the court of King Ivar the Boneless and his half troll queen Frith. When one of Jack's amateur spells causes the evil queen's beautiful hair to fall out, he is forced to undertake a dangerous quest across the Sea of Trolls to make things right, or suffer the consequences--the sacrifice of his beloved sister to Frith's patron goddess, Freya. Along the way Jack faces everything from giant golden troll-bears to man-eating spiders, yet each frightening encounter brings wisdom and understanding to the budding young Bard. No quester who enters these pages with Jack will go away unsatisfied. Farmer's skillful melding of history, mythology, and humor, is reminiscent of both Tamora Pierce and Terry Pratchett's medieval fantasies, and will no doubt be HUGELY enjoyed by fantasy readers of all ages. --Jennifer Hubert


From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 5-9–Farmer draws upon Scandinavian mythology and medieval history to create an engaging tale. Jack, a bard's apprentice, and his little sister begin a series of harrowing adventures when they are kidnapped from their peaceful Saxon island by Viking "berserkers." Saved from death by his knowledge of magic and poem making, Jack gradually earns the respect, and even the friendship, of his captors. Olaf One-Brow is an especially magnetic character, despite his love of bloodshed, while a prideful young female warrior who initially detests the boy also becomes an ally. The fast-paced tale seeps deeper into magic as Jack must undertake a quest to the far north to drink "song-mead" from Mimir's Well, increase his powers, and ultimately save his sister's life. He faces dragons, trolls, and the mysterious Norns, surviving by a combination of craftiness and luck. Throughout, he ponders the nature of the people and creatures he encounters, even learning to admire the courage and vitality of the berserkers, while remaining appalled by their thirst for blood and a heroic death. Jack's growing maturity and wisdom develop naturally within the novel's flow. Geographical and mythological elements are revealed through conversations, rather than narrative description. Despite the legendary tone of some of the events, there are plenty of lighthearted moments, and the characters never seem stiff or contrived. This exciting and original fantasy will capture the hearts and imaginations of readers.–Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, OR Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. In Farmer's latest, a battle-ax-size fantasy-adventure, rampaging Northmen (the polite term for Vikings) pass through a Saxon village and enslave two of its residents: an 11-year-old apprentice mage and his 5-year-old sister. When Jack offends the Northmen's touchy queen, she threatens to kill his sister unless he reverses a misfired spell--a task that requires a journey deep into icy troll country. The subsequent bouts with troll-bears, giant spiders, and dragons are thrilling, and boys in particular will delight in Farmer's portrayal of the initially terrifying Northmen as tellers of fart jokes and singers of rowdy songs. Lighthearted moments notwithstanding, Jack's archetypal quest is a dense one, heavily draped in Norse mythology, Old English lore, and ponderings about the differences between Christian and pagan cosmologies. In addition, many readers may find it difficult to accept Jack's deepening affection for his frequently barbaric kidnappers, not to mention the oft-repeated message, "All beautiful things attract destruction"--a worldview that comes to Jack straight from the bloody saga of Beowulf. Readers captivated by slash-'em-up Viking culture will happily plunge into this celebrated author's sixth novel, but many members of Farmer's traditional audience will emerge from the experience feeling alternately dazzled and dazed. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Richie Partington www.richiespicks.com The Sea of Trolls nearly defies categorization, there are so many sides to it...the latest success in the career of one of the great storytellers of our time.

Scott Meyer Merritt Bookstore (Millbrook, NY) ...What Nancy Farmer does best -- show us that appearances do deceive. Or as the publishers say "She has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than 'Just say no to pillaging'."

Mary Brown Books, Bytes, and Beyond (Glen Rock, NJ) A new Nancy Farmer novel is always cause for celebrating because you know it will be something incredibly inventive and wholly absorbing. Nancy Farmer spins such complete stories that we don't need a sequel or even a prequel -- we just need another Nancy Farmer novel!


Review
Susan Hirschman former longtime publisher of Greenwillow Books I think The Sea of Trolls is magnificent. Absolutely the best I've read. I read it in a gulp and was crushed when I had finished it. I wasn't ready to give up any of the characters. It is truly splendid.


Book Description
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 that follows in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings. Other threats include a willful mother Dragon, a giant spider, and a troll-boar with a surprising personality -- to say nothing of Ivar the Boneless and his wife, Queen Frith, a shape-shifting half-troll, and several eight foot tall, orange-haired, full-time trolls. But in stories by award-winner Nancy Farmer, appearances do deceive. She has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than "Just say no to pillaging."

FROM OUR EDITORS

Jack was only 11 when the beserkers burst out of the fog to seize him and his little sister, Lucy. Enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate Thorgil, the youthful siblings are swept in an adventure-quest that combines exhilarating excitement and fun. A major novel from a three-time Newbery Honor author.

ANNOTATION

After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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. Other threats include a willful mother dragon, a giant spider, and a troll-bear with a surprising personality -- to say nothing of Ivar the Boneless and his wife, Queen Frith, a shape-shifting half-troll, and several eight-foot-tall, orange-haired, full-time trolls.

But in stories by award-winning Nancy Farmer, appearances to not deceive. She has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than "Just say no to pillaging."

FROM THE CRITICS

Roger Sutton - November/December 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

Farmer moves far north of her favored hot-weather climes for her latest hero-tale, which takes place along the various coasts of the North Sea in the late eighth century. Drawing upon history, Norse and Celtic myth, and Farmer￯﾿ﾽs own abundant imagination, the story is long but engrossing, a "cruel tale with a merry heart" about a Saxon boy named Jack and what befell him upon his and his younger sister￯﾿ﾽs capture by marauding Northmen (and, later, trolls). Readers will spot themes and motifs familiar from Farmer￯﾿ﾽs previous novels, including seriocomic helper figures, a ferociously loyal sibling pair, and a most adroit fusion of the natural and supernatural worlds. The book is effectively sparing in its use of fantasy elements, but when Farmer pulls out all the stops such as Jack￯﾿ﾽs encounter with the three Norns - she does so with aplomb and assurance.

Paula Rohrlick - KLIATT

Jack, a Saxon farm boy, feels lucky to be apprenticed to a druid bard who teaches him how to open his mind to the power of the life force and how to draw on it to do magic. Unluckily for Jack, the year is 793 A.D., when the Vikings first begin their raids on the British Isles, and a Viking named Olaf One-Brow, the giant leader of the Queen￯﾿ﾽs Berserkers, captures Jack and his little sister Lucy. These Northmen take the two off on their ship to their homeland and its rulers, Ivar the Boneless and his terrifying half-troll wife, Frith. At the court, Jack casts a spell that inadvertently causes Frith￯﾿ﾽs hair to fall out, and to restore it he must go on a dangerous quest to find the magical Mimir￯﾿ﾽs Well in the far-off land of the trolls and drink the song-mead it contains - with Lucy￯﾿ﾽs life at stake if he does not succeed.

Accompanied by a clever crow and a ferocious warrior maiden, Jack heads out on this perilous adventure filled with dragons, giant spiders, eight-foot-tall trolls, and other hazards. Farmer, author of the National Book Award winner The House of the Scorpion as well as other notable books for YAs, has outdone herself in this rich and satisfying fantasy based on Norse mythology.

The characters are memorable, her images of nature are lyrical, and legend, history, horror and humor are cleverly intermingled: "Just say no to pillaging," Olaf solemnly advises Jack at one point, while Olaf himself lays waste to everything around him. This is sure to be both popular and prize-winning, and it makes an interesting companion to two other recent YA novels about the Viking raids, Raven of the Waves by Michael Cadnum and The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick. There is a helpful list of the cast of characters at the start, as well as an appendix providing some background on Norse history and legends and a list of sources. Every YA collection should have this.

Amanda Craig - The Times, October 2004

Despite the pot of gold supposedly waiting for every new author who writes a fantasy novel, the classics of children's literature remain pretty much the same. Why bother to read new ones when the old are so good? Yet every so often something comes along which should instantly be added to the list of those books which leave an indelible mark on the imagination.

Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls is such a book. Three times a Newberry Award winner in her native America, she is unheard-of in Britain, despite The House of the Scorpion (the only one to be published here) being quite simply the best clone novel ever written. This one is set in Viking times, and despite its slow-paced first chapter soon develops into a hair-raising, spine-tingling, heart-stopping adventure which really does bear comparison to The Hobbit.

Jack is picked-on by his crippled, fanatically Christian father, irked by his little sister Lucy and oddly in sympathy with his mother. She is a wise woman, and it's thanks to her that Jack has inherited a gift that may just save his own life and that of Lucy. Barely has he begun to be taught magic by a mysterious old Bard washed up on their shores, when both he and Lucy are captured by the Vikings serving the Bard's mortal enemy, the evil half-troll Frith. Taken north from England to what is now Denmark, they are to be thralls or slaves to Olaf One-Brow, the leader, and the sulky shield-maiden, Thorgill. It's only as Jack discovers how to summon up his weather-working powers, rescues a mysterious crow called Bold Heart and learns how to chant songs that they escape being sold off to fearsome tribes. Violent, unpredictable and prone to kill everyone when going berserk, the Vikings are terrifying masters. Worse is to come, however, once they land at Olaf's home. Jack has the gigantic carnivorous troll-pig Golden Bristles to contend with, but Lucy, having lost her mind in the despair of becoming a captive, is to be Queen Frith's next sacrificial victim - unless Jack can cross the Sea of Trolls and regain the queen's beauty from Mimir's Well in Jotunheim, the heart of Troll-land.

Of course, Jack and his companions Olaf and Thorgill succeed, despite a dragon, a ferocious troll-bear and a host of magical creatures. What makes Sea of Trolls so vastly enjoyable is not its plot but the way this classic quest is told, in clear, dramatic prose that surges along like a Viking longship. Farmer has gone back to the same Norse sources that inspired Tolkien, and her characters have complexity and subtlety: you laugh, sympathise and fear for them. Jack's resentful care for his sister, his perpetual uncertainty, his dawning realisation that his father's crushing estimation of him may not be true, and his perception of different religious beliefs are all suffused with wisdom and warmth. The Vikings can be kindly, brave and loyal as well as killers slaughtering entire villages without guilt or regret. The jokes about their crudeness and their gloomy relish for death are hilarious. Comedy and cruelty, tragedy and beauty are interwoven with a feel for landscape to make a completely captivating story. The life of the Norse sea-farers is so detailed that any child who reads this will unconsciously pick up far more about Viking customs, beliefs and language than a hundred school text-books. It's strange that out of the four best new novels for children to be published this year, three should be about this particular period and people, but I have no hesitation in recommending Sea of Trolls as the best children's novel of 2004.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Starred review. "Out of all the boys in their eighth-century Saxon village, eleven-year-old Jack is chosen by the Bard to become his apprentice. Soon Jack is learning how to call up fog and fire and sense the flow of the life force in the world around him--important skills to possess, it turns out, when he and his six-year-old sister, Lucy, are kidnapped by Viking raiders and swept across the sea to become slaves in the Northland. . . In this substantial and swiftly moving fantasy, Jack's medieval world envelops the reader from the first page, and even secondary characters and villains have sufficient faults, virtues, dreams, and disappointments to make them sympathetic to the reader to some degree. This adroit worldbuilding and dead-on characterization combine with faultless plotting and an irresistible mixture of historical truth and mythological invention to create a tale of high adventure and exploration that reads with unexpected sensitivity, warmth, and humor. Maps, a cast of characters, a series of short explanatory appendices, and a list of sources are included."

Ayesha Court - Special for USA TODAY