Pleasures of home

Ah, for the pleasures of a long quiet day at home! No particular place to go, as the song says, or do or be. Aside from making dinner, and afterwards helping my Dad sort out his papers, I didn't really have to do anything but lie around and read.

Well, I did do that, but I also did some light cleaning and tidying, and did my usual tasks of doing laundry, putting away my clean clothes, tidying papers and tossing out garbage. But, unlike yesterday, I could sit when I wished and rest when I wanted, and it was a welcome change.

I did manage to finish Kim Wilkins' "Giants of the Frost". It concerns a woman named Victoria who has come to a small Island in Finnish waters to forget the pain of her broken engagement to a man named Alan. Alan broke the engagement in a spectacular way, by getting another woman pregnant and confessing his deed to Victoria only a week or two before the wedding. Now, she has sworn off love completely and only wishes to have mindless work (as well as a thesis paper) to occupy herself with. The island is used to monitor the weather in the North Sea area, and Victoria has been hired to do readings and monitor the equipment.

As one of the few women on the island, she is looked at rather hopefully by a number of men also working there, including her co-worker Gunnar and her Boss, Magnus. While Gunnar is a nice enough fellow, Magnus seems more drawn to her by the possibility of having sex with her than from any true romantic interest.

It is also the story of Vidar, one of the Aesir. Long ago, Vidar was a dutiful son of Odin, until some tragedy surrounding a girl he loved named Halla caused him to forgo the company of his family in favor of a small farm where he lives in isolation, save for his housekeeper, Aud.

Aud is a Vanir princess sworn to years of servitude to her people's enemies due to some crime she committed. Long ago, she served Odin and the rest of the Aesir, but they were little better than beasts, raping and brutalizing her. Though Vidar shuns his family, he visits his father's hall occasionally, and in one instance, he saw what was happing to Aud. He asked his father for her as a servant, and Odin agreed. Aud was initially wary of Vidar, but has since fallen in love with him because of how well he treated her compared to the rest of his family. But he doesn't love her and tends to avoid her a bit so that he doesn't have to put up with her unwanted feelings for him.

In truth, Vidar is waiting for his love to be reborn, and to come back to him, and now she has, in the form of Victoria. Victoria, meanwhile, is having a terrible time on the island. Others have told her the island is haunted, but she scoffed at them. Now, she is having unexplained nightmares and visions. When she goes to a clearing with her boss to check some instruments, he finds a piece of iron, very old, and she knows without question that it is a piece of an axe, and was left behind when someone was murdered.

In a few weeks, the other researchers on the island must leave: Magnus to accept an award, some to visit family, and others to attend a wedding. Victoria cannot wait to be alone on the island, but as the time approaches, she finds herself getting more and more hesitant to be alone there. She starts having dreams about a stick-haired boy who warns her of a hag and draugr.

Meanwhile, in Asgard, Vidar makes preparations to visit our wold, which is known as Midgard. With Loki's help, he steals a thread from the cloak of invisibility and inaudibility that Heimdall sleeps under. With this thread, Aud can weave a covering for him that will cover him and his horse, and allow him to sneak past Heimdall and over the Bifrost Bridge into Midgard to find Victoria. But he must be careful, for if Odin finds out that Victoria is alive, he will show no mercy in killing her.

Vidar and Victoria meet and she finds herself falling for him. It is the kind of love she always wanted, the kind she never felt with Alan and her prior fiancee, the kind that takes her out of herself, that makes her feel more than just a sack of skin, flesh and bones named Victoria.

Aud, of course, can barely stand the thought of Victoria, and begins falling under the sway of Loki. Loki says he only wants to help Vidar, but given his reputation, neither is sure they can trust him.

The ending is not truly a happy ending, but holds the promise of a happy ending. I enjoyed the book, but I've read much better. This was apparently Kim Wilkins' first book, but I enjoyed it much more than her second, "The Autumn Castle". In the end, I just couldn't feel very deeply about the protagonists.

The book is supposedly about the love between Vidar and Victoria, but both times they met, Victoria (and Vidar and Halla in their first incarnation) fell in love in about a week. To me, that smacks more of lust than love, and I just wasn't feeling the love the two supposedly had for each other. It seemed more like infatuation in the way it was described. I guess I'm not a big believer in love at first sight. In any case, the love... I wasn't feeling it for this book.

Next up, "Murder by the Waters" by Robert Lee Hall.