Valkyrie Rising (review)

Sixteen-year-old Ellie Overholt expected that her summer vacation to a seaside village in Norway would allow her a peaceful visit with her grandmother, but instead there’s trouble: the townspeople believe that Ellie and her grandmother play a role in the mysterious disappearances of several local boys. Even more troubling is the fact that they’re not really wrong: the culprits, Ellie discovers, are Valkyries, gorgeous young women with seductive magic, and Ellie is one of them. Before she can fully understand what it means to be Valkyrie, though, her brother Graham arrives, with his flirtatious, crush-worthy best friend Tuck in tow, and then disappears like the other boys. Now Ellie must use her fledgling powers to save herself and Tuck from angry villagers and to rescue her brother and the other boys from her Valkyrie sisters. Set in real-world Norway and populated by fantastic characters from Norse mythology, this smartly crafted story of a girl coming to grips with newfound power mixes just the right amount of heart-racing action and heart-stopping romance. The central conflict avoids the simplicity of a conventional battle between good and evil, and Ellie is forced to play a complicated game of ever-changing allies and enemies. Ellie herself is an authentic teenage girl, who is both terrified by the world of magic and violence into which she has been thrown and excited by the discovery of her own innate, dangerous power. Readers who like a strong, talented heroine who can save the day but still lose her heart to a roguish equal, in the spirit of Cashore’s Graceling (BCCB 1/09) and Melling’s The Chronicles of Faerie series (Hunter’s Moon, BCCB 7/05, etc.), will find much to enjoy in this complex, clever fantasy.