Format: Kindle
Publisher: North Star Editions
Publication Date: 03 December 2019
Page Count: 256
Rating: 5/5
When Lena's younger sister Fressa is found dead, their whole Viking clan mourns—but it is Lena alone who never recovers. Fressa is the sister that should've lived, and Lena cannot rest until she knows exactly what killed Fressa and why—and how to bring her back. She strikes a dark deal with Hela, the Norse goddess of death, and begins a new double life to save her sister. But as Lena gets closer to bringing Fressa back, she dredges up dangerous discoveries about her own family and finds herself in the middle of a devastating plan to spur Ragnarök –a deadly chain of events leading to total world destruction. Still, with her sister's life in the balance, Lena is willing to risk it all. She's even willing to kill. How far will she go before the darkness consumes her?
Publisher: North Star Editions
Publication Date: 03 December 2019
Page Count: 256
Rating: 5/5
When Lena's younger sister Fressa is found dead, their whole Viking clan mourns—but it is Lena alone who never recovers. Fressa is the sister that should've lived, and Lena cannot rest until she knows exactly what killed Fressa and why—and how to bring her back. She strikes a dark deal with Hela, the Norse goddess of death, and begins a new double life to save her sister. But as Lena gets closer to bringing Fressa back, she dredges up dangerous discoveries about her own family and finds herself in the middle of a devastating plan to spur Ragnarök –a deadly chain of events leading to total world destruction. Still, with her sister's life in the balance, Lena is willing to risk it all. She's even willing to kill. How far will she go before the darkness consumes her?
I received this from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
The synopsis made me think it's going to be like a female-lead edition of Rick Riordan's books set in a Norse world. I was very much looking forward to it. I was also sort of wrong. There is so much more happening in this book than one could actually conceptualize at first. It was absolutely stunning in it's description of everything happening and the weight not just of Fressa's soul, but the knowledge of what must happen that's crushing Lena along side it.
I do apologize for being a little late in my review, but some family concerns came up that prevented me from being able to actually sit down and read for more than a few minutes at a time. There was just so much going on in the last two weeks of November that make me wish I had read this earlier than I did.
Anyway, The Weight of a Soul by Tammi Elizabeth follows Magdalena Freding, the heiress to a small Scandinavian village. In a very quick succession, her sister is engaged to an "outsider" raised by the village, her father returns from a raid and gives her sister a dagger, they find out that her sister's fiance was Lena's betrothed, and then her sister dies. This all happens within the first like twenty pages. I think I was barely fifteen minutes into the book when things went down.
I couldn't believe it. It was all so much in quick succession that it was nearly difficult to wrap my mind around, but I managed. I felt bad right away for Lena and her mother. Everything was spiraling around them in a way that they couldn't possibly fathom. Then Lena goes and does something that will land her in hotter water than imaginable!
I really liked the way everything was described in such vivid detail that I could picture it clearly in my head. Tammi Elizabeth certainly had a way with describing Lena's transition from the banks of a river somewhere in Scandinavia (Norway, Finland, Denmark....it was a big place, though likeliest is Norway) to the icy paths of Helheim. Everything was done in such striking ways. I really loved the prose the way that it was presented to me in such a fascinating manner that I struggled to put this book down.
One of the biggest drawbacks I found in this was the marriage subplot. It wasn't necessary. Yeah, it did spur Lena into working all that much harder to find a solution to her problem, but it just compounded her own grief and sense of twisted loss to the point where Lena was sometimes hardly able to function long enough to even think about what she was doing. She would make rash decisions based on surface thought only. It was literally tearing her and Amal apart to know what their parents had in mind for them and their rigidity about it. I hated that. It put Amal and Lena into positions that they had to struggle hard to get out of.
It's part of the synopsis that Lena is supposed to be searching for a soul that weighs as much as her sister's does, and I thought right away that there were only two souls that would possibly have matched. Amal and Fredrik. It was made obvious that Amal loved Fressa more than any other living creature, meaning he would know her soul inside and out and would a good match for it in weight. In the end, it was a surprise who the proper balanced soul to Fressa's was.
It took everything in me to not throw my Kindle across the living room when I realized who Fredrik was and what he was scheming. The man had been lying their whole lives! I couldn't believe it, and yet I could believe it. This book was setting up perfectly as the first in a series. I don't know if it will be a duology, trilogy, quartet or what, but I am very excited to find out. I want to know what Lena does from her new position in Valhalla. I want to know what Kiali-turned-Loki does on the lamb with Fressa and Amal. I want to know all of it.
Overall a 5/5 for me. I will definitely look for this in physical form the minute I see it in the stores. I will also eagerly await the next book in the series. I have to know what is happening. I thank NetGalley for letting me read this ARC and apologize for my taking bloody forever to actually get to it.
I do apologize for being a little late in my review, but some family concerns came up that prevented me from being able to actually sit down and read for more than a few minutes at a time. There was just so much going on in the last two weeks of November that make me wish I had read this earlier than I did.
Anyway, The Weight of a Soul by Tammi Elizabeth follows Magdalena Freding, the heiress to a small Scandinavian village. In a very quick succession, her sister is engaged to an "outsider" raised by the village, her father returns from a raid and gives her sister a dagger, they find out that her sister's fiance was Lena's betrothed, and then her sister dies. This all happens within the first like twenty pages. I think I was barely fifteen minutes into the book when things went down.
I couldn't believe it. It was all so much in quick succession that it was nearly difficult to wrap my mind around, but I managed. I felt bad right away for Lena and her mother. Everything was spiraling around them in a way that they couldn't possibly fathom. Then Lena goes and does something that will land her in hotter water than imaginable!
I really liked the way everything was described in such vivid detail that I could picture it clearly in my head. Tammi Elizabeth certainly had a way with describing Lena's transition from the banks of a river somewhere in Scandinavia (Norway, Finland, Denmark....it was a big place, though likeliest is Norway) to the icy paths of Helheim. Everything was done in such striking ways. I really loved the prose the way that it was presented to me in such a fascinating manner that I struggled to put this book down.
One of the biggest drawbacks I found in this was the marriage subplot. It wasn't necessary. Yeah, it did spur Lena into working all that much harder to find a solution to her problem, but it just compounded her own grief and sense of twisted loss to the point where Lena was sometimes hardly able to function long enough to even think about what she was doing. She would make rash decisions based on surface thought only. It was literally tearing her and Amal apart to know what their parents had in mind for them and their rigidity about it. I hated that. It put Amal and Lena into positions that they had to struggle hard to get out of.
It's part of the synopsis that Lena is supposed to be searching for a soul that weighs as much as her sister's does, and I thought right away that there were only two souls that would possibly have matched. Amal and Fredrik. It was made obvious that Amal loved Fressa more than any other living creature, meaning he would know her soul inside and out and would a good match for it in weight. In the end, it was a surprise who the proper balanced soul to Fressa's was.
It took everything in me to not throw my Kindle across the living room when I realized who Fredrik was and what he was scheming. The man had been lying their whole lives! I couldn't believe it, and yet I could believe it. This book was setting up perfectly as the first in a series. I don't know if it will be a duology, trilogy, quartet or what, but I am very excited to find out. I want to know what Lena does from her new position in Valhalla. I want to know what Kiali-turned-Loki does on the lamb with Fressa and Amal. I want to know all of it.
Overall a 5/5 for me. I will definitely look for this in physical form the minute I see it in the stores. I will also eagerly await the next book in the series. I have to know what is happening. I thank NetGalley for letting me read this ARC and apologize for my taking bloody forever to actually get to it.
