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A review by peripetia
The Voyage of Freydis by Tamara Goranson
3.0
I'm a bit surprised at the negative reception of this novel. It's not bad by all means, but the critics have good points: it is slow, it is repetitive, in the end no real development happened. I was also waiting for the "Voyage of Freydis" and for the most part, no voyaging was taking place.
It was fun to read about vikings. I'm not that obsessed with the whole mythology, but the everyday lives and religion was interesting.
I would like to challenge all writers to invent or use a foreign language that is not described as "guttural". I would like for writers to take a moment and think about "guttural languages" - what is "guttural" about a language? What are some guttural languages that you know and why exactly that kind of languages are strange and threatening. Hint: Arabic is the biggest and best known and is often described with pretty nasty words.
In guttural languages some sounds are produced in the throat, and it's not all that common, so I wonder why in every single SFF novel the bad guy or strange people language is always "guttural". This novel is just another book that lacks imagination. Perhaps the (supposedly) Native American language really is/was guttural, but honestly I sincerely doubt it. (Plus my point still stands, but I will rescind my criticism for this particular book)
It was fun to read about vikings. I'm not that obsessed with the whole mythology, but the everyday lives and religion was interesting.
I would like to challenge all writers to invent or use a foreign language that is not described as "guttural". I would like for writers to take a moment and think about "guttural languages" - what is "guttural" about a language? What are some guttural languages that you know and why exactly that kind of languages are strange and threatening. Hint: Arabic is the biggest and best known and is often described with pretty nasty words.
In guttural languages some sounds are produced in the throat, and it's not all that common, so I wonder why in every single SFF novel the bad guy or strange people language is always "guttural". This novel is just another book that lacks imagination. Perhaps the (supposedly) Native American language really is/was guttural, but honestly I sincerely doubt it. (Plus my point still stands, but I will rescind my criticism for this particular book)