Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gothic horror brought vividly to life for younger readers!, 20 May 2007
Beware. Not for the faint-hearted, younger readers & adults alike. Could cause nightmares in very sensitive young readers. However, for the bloodthirsty & adventurous, this is a great introduction to the classic gothic horror vampire story. Well-researched and based on many of the vampire myths emanating from Eastern Europe, you won't find here the well-dressed suave and sophisticated vampire, but rather the more "realistic" (if possible) vampire based on centuries of folklore and legend.
Peter is a young wood-cutter, living with his father Tomas, on the outskirts of a small village in a forested area of an Eastern European (presumed) country. His mother died in childbirth & Peter and his father have roamed for many years before building themselves a home near this place. Peter does much of the work as his dad is an alcoholic but he has a sweetheart in the village, Agnes, and the two of them seem quite content until some strange deaths start occurring in the village.... Then some travelling gypsies arrive, including the beautiful Sofia, and the dead don't seem to be staying in their graves....
This novel should have wide appeal to different ages & is an interesting addition to vampire literature. A good read.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, 10 Oct 2007
Marcus Sedgwick's MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING is a dark novel with a heavy emphasis on thick, snowy forests of Eastern Europe, gypsies, and superstitious town folk. It is the perfect setting for a scary story, but it is also much, much more.
Tomas and his teenage son, Peter, are a pair of traveling woodcutters with a mysterious past that settle down in the village of Chust one winter. Before long a string a deaths strike the village. Peter is perturbed by the villagers' strange reactions to the occurrences. When he asks Tomas about them, his father brushes away his questions as silly folk lore. However, Tomas is also doing his own share of strange things, like digging a trench around their home and filling it with moving water. When Agnes, a girl Peter likes, is symbolically married to a dead man and shut up in a remote hut, Peter tries to rescue her and runs into a monster.
Sedgwick takes pains to distance his tale from the gentleman bloodsucker that Anne Rice and authors like her have embedded into pop culture. The word "vampire" is never mentioned and the vampires, themselves, have varying appearances throughout the novel. He does a great job at weaving various and sometimes seemingly paradoxical pieces of folk lore. This gives the story a great sense of immediacy and realism. Sedgwick also shifts the focus from vampires to people who have to deal with terrifying occurrences at home. The buildup of the growing atmosphere of fear and denial will have readers biting their fingernails.
Marcus Sedgwick seems to take a lot of risks in writing this atypical, historically rich vampire novel. Central to the story line is not the relationship between a human and vampire or a girl and a boy (a la Buffy and Angel), but a wounded relationship between father and son. While this may seem terribly uncool, the realism of this relationship is what grounds the novel and makes the more fantastical elements more believable and scary.
Reviewed by: Natalie Tsang
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice little novel, 12 Feb 2007
This is a dark novel based around the true beginnings for the vampire legends which made their way out of eastern Europe in the 17th century, and as such has a slightly educational value to it. There are no slick counts in haunted castles here, the vampies of bloated corpses.
It tells the story of a drunkard woodcutter and his son (the names elude me), who have never settled in any village. They have built a house in the forest with a moat, away from the nearby village, and are treated as outcasts, outsiders. There have been a number of mysterious deaths, rather brutal and grisly, which seem to make no sense.
The protagonist is in love with a girl called Agnes, though he is forced to question this when a bewitching Gypsy arrives with her family. But in true vampyrric tradition, those slain do not rest easy in their graves, and prowl the streets and forests. It seems they are the minions of the Shadow Queen, and her power is waxing.
The hero is forced to try to defend Agnes who, being forced to marry a corpse (it will make sense) she is forced into a mourning isolation. Suffice to say she is a prime target for the blood thirsty creatures who seek to be invited into her hut. There are some rather novel ways by which the living can protect themselves, forget the garlic, give a vampire a piece of charcoal and he must write with it until it is exhausted. This is an example of the historical gems which are hidden among the all too few pages of this book.
Meanwhile the mysterious Gypsies are beseiging our hero's home, trying to steal the sword which his father has hidden all these years from his son, so that they can put a stop to this scourge. Soon the vampires are growing both in number and strength, and they too seek this sword, and are willing to stop at nothing to claim this tool for themselves. It all builds towards a pretty predictable showdown to be honest.
In the end, it is a book written for children, which is surprising considering it is fairly gruesome and pretty frightening at times. But it is easy to read and absorbing, if predictable. A good read for younger people with enough there to appeal to adults.
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