RUNEMARKS by JOANNE HARRIS
Doubleday hardback, 500pp, £14.99

Reviewed by Iain Emsley

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Joanne Harris’s d?©but children’s novel is a fantastic romp which is eminently readable. Her adult fiction flirts with the fantastic, delivering it gently, while Runemarks is a retelling of Norse myths which also sets up a mythical - almost ‘asterisk fantastic’ ‚Äì world within which she finds some very human characters.

Maddy lives in Malby, a small village hear to the Red Horse Hill, and works as a maid in a tavern trying to keep the goblins out of the cellar. Born with a rune mark, she is an outsider who is friends with a wanderer named One-Eye. One-Eye has taught her everything she knows about runes, cantrips and magic during his trips, and as his price he now wants Maddy to descend into the Hill to steal the Whisperer, claiming that this act will prevent the end of the world and delivering warnings about ‘The Captain’.

After finding the Whisperer, Maddy gets involved in the awakening of the age-old cycle of death and rebirth in Norse mythology. Travelling to Hel, Maddy begins to understand her role and realises the games being played around her, but is determined to maintain her own sense of self.

Harris tells her story at a fair pace, keeping the plot in motion; one gets the sense that this book has been written to be read aloud and shared as well as read by the individual. Harris tells her story using a mixture of mythologies but is aware of her role as a narrator of the twice-told story.

The world becomes deeper and more complex as the book goes on. In some ways it is highly reminiscent of The Hobbit, though it is far less stylistically dense. The underlying story – the rebirth of the world – is not new, but Harris understands that she must tell the story in her own voice, and she allows her characters to make choices in an essentially human fashion. Her passion for the Norse myths and her desire to bring them to a new audience shines through, but her ability to find the normal in the fantastic is what transforms the story. The tale is in the telling.

Maddy becomes the girl that Hermione and Lyra were meant to be: an individual, capable of making her own choices once she understands her place in the story. Around her, the gods are neither grand nor kind nor particularly demonic. Instead, they are childish and petulant, each trying to settle old scores and get their own way.

Malby and Red Horse Hill almost dissolve into this world made of the tapestry of myth. The land created is one that exists only in the mind of its perceivers, a land of conjecture and possibility – like the asterisk used in linguistics to denote a possible (yet unproven) ancestor.

Runemarks is by no means an original tale, but it is a tale well told, engaging on many levels.

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Iain Emsley is a former Reviews Editor for Interzone, and owner of the now-defunct online genre bookstore The Aust Gate. He has a blog called Yatterings, where he posts interviews and genre fiction news. He is currently researching a history of fantasy in children’s literature.

Tags: book • Fantasy • fiction • INTERZONE • Joanne Harris • review • Runemarks • young adult