My Swordhand is Singing
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An original interpretation of the timelessly fascinating vampire myth, and a story of father and son, by award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick. Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
In the bitter cold of an unrelenting winter, Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust. Despite the villagers' lack of hospitality, they settle there as woodcutters. But there are many things Peter does not understand. Why does Tomas dig a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut so they live on an isolated island? Why does Tomas carry a long battered box everywhere they go - and refuse to tell Peter of its contents?
When a band of gypsies comes to the village, Peter's drab existence is turned upside down. He is infatuated by the beautiful gypsy princess, Sofia, and intoxicated by her community's love of life. He even becomes drawn into their deadly quest - for these travellers are Vampire Slayers, and Chust is a community to which the dead return to wreak revenge on the living.
Stylishly written and set in the forbidding and remote landscapes of the 17th century, this is a story of a father and his son, of loss, redemption and resolution.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sedgwick's (The Foreshadowing) grim, atmospheric tale, set in 17th-century Europe, brings fresh blood to the vampire mythos without once using the word "vampire." Peter and his father, Tomas, are woodcutters who travel from town to town, Tomas seemingly on the run from something. Tomas carries a wooden box, which Peter is forbidden to examine, but when word circulates through the village that sheep and cattle are being attacked and a dead man has come out of his grave, secrets from both the box and Tomas's past are revealed. The father/son dynamic is particularly well-wrought, with Tomas a violent drunk who is nonetheless a decent man, and Peter an introspective and bold youth whose budding relationship with a gypsy tempers the doom encroaching upon the village. As with the best vampire/zombie fiction, there is a note of sympathy for the creatures who, after all, never chose this "life." Several scenes have the visceral, visual impact of cinema, such as a "Wedding of the Dead," in which a young girl weds a man who has been murdered, and the villagers' painting tar on their windows to ward off evil ("Somewhere among the trees the path that led directly to God had gone astray. It had got lost among the folktales and superstitions and the hushed talk of the fireside"). Sedgwick knows his way around a gothic setting, and readers will likely devour this bone-chiller. Ages 12-up.
