Icefall by: Matthew J. Kirby

       The Historical Fiction/Fantasy, Icefall, by Matthew J. Kirby was the best book I read this year.  It is about a girl named Solveig that is the youngest girl in a royal family so she does not receive any royal position when her parents die but her older sister is be the princess and her younger brother is the prince.  Solveig does not know who she should be.  Since the childrens' father is at war, he sent the children to a fjord along with servants, a prisoner, and guards.  After a while on the fjord, the king sends in his roughest and toughest military group and his skald, or story teller named Alric, to the fjord, obviously as a protection knowing there may be an attack on the icy island.  Through the icy cold winter, series of acts to hurt the settlers creep on the fjord, indicating a traitor among them.  Through the arguments of who was betraying the inhabitants, the army that the king sent to the island weakened from food poison that was in the goat that was eaten by only the army.  To make them feel better or nice when they die, Alric teaches Solveig to be a skald and to tell the army stories which they loved.  With all this witch hunt to find the traitor, the leader of the enemy marched his troops through the melted ice between the two mountains to take Solveig's sister, Asa, as his wife, while a thick, strong, glacier rumbles on the fjord, causing the the land between two cliffs to shake.  Will the inhabitants be able to fight off the enemy troops?  Read Icefall to find out.

       This book was amazing for many reasons, but I will name you only three, the rest you can read yourself when you read this book.  One reason this book is so good is because the change in characters is so significant.  Solveig changed Alric from a person that only sticks with the winning side in a battle to a man that saved the settlers from the enemy's army by committing suicide.  Solveig changed from a girl that just blended into the background to the next king's skald.  Another reason is how rough the traitor can be to the settlers, nearly driving them completely out of food by killing Solveig's goat (which she cried almost everyday about) and then poisoning it, and freezing the two cows they had to a point where they weren't safe to eat.  My last reason that this book was so good is that I can recommend it to boys and girls so more than one group can enjoy this book.  Not only was Icefall best book I read this year, but one of the best I've ever read.



By Jeffrey H. Periods 4/6