Lorenza Garcia

Always in the hunt for anything that belongs to the Nordic Fiction genre, I was led to The Ice Lands, a thriller set in Iceland. I hadn't read the reviews and I was immediately sold when I read the blurb.Plus,the Icelandic setting is more than enough to attract my attention.Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to make me like this book.

The story isn't something we've never seen before.Two young couples start a road trip to observe the glaciers and the Icelandic nature in general.They lose their way and find themselves in a house, in the middle of nowhere, an old couple being the only residents in the area.So far, this is not innovative at all, but it sure sounds intriguing.What promised to make it special was the setting.And it did, initially.There was a foreboding feeling during the first stages of the narration, a claustrophobic aura emanating from the house and the owners as opposed to the vastness of the landscape which his its own secrets.However, the writer seemed uncertain of the direction the story was about to take and the construction collapsed soon.

Bragi tries to touch on a lot of subjects, all of them relevant to our world as we know it.There are references to the political upheaval and the financial collapse of Iceland, the moral decay of the upper classes, the frequent use of drugs and alcohol as a way to overcome the distress caused by bankruptcy.There are also references to the Icelandic traditions about elves, trolls, fairies, etc. The Icelanders retain a deep belief in the supernatural. They respect its presence and, as a result, they manage to preserve their natural environment as much as possible, which is more than can be said for the majority of the countries of our planet.

Sadly, Bragi doesn't succeed in bringing all these issues to focus in a satisfying way.The writing is repetitive, devoid of soul, the dialogue is wooden, awkward, unrealistic.It seemed hard for me to believe that friends and couples would interact with each other in such a manner, no matter the cultural differences between cultures and codes of behaviour.These people were so rude to each other, I couldn't take them seriously after a while.Perhaps, it was a matter of translation, it often happens with Icelandic novels.In my opinion, it wasn't that. The writer tries too hard to create a kind of a mysterious, atmospheric language, but the result made me bored and disinterested in the story.As for the end? Well, having an open-ended story is one thing, having a conclusion that makes no sense at all is completely different.

My main problem was what I considered to be the wrong focus of the story.There was a kind of obsession with sex and the sexual lives of the characters. It was unnecessary, overdone and performed in a vulgar way.I am not interested whether these characters have special talents in the bedroom. I thought I was reading a thriller, not a cheap, trashy novel.I am not interested in a couple's troubled erotic life, I'm here for the mystery.Nor do I care about the different kinds of websites with sexual content.If your aim is to shock the reader, do so with your story, not with references to sick, twisted perversions involving minors.It was at this point when I seriously thought to abandon the book altogether.More than once.

The characters are all problematic, a typical feature in Nordic Fiction, but even this turns redundant in the hands of the writer.They consume drugs, they smoke and drink alcohol non-stop.This would be the perfect premise for the "unreliable narrator" trope but no, another failure.Vigdís is the only character that is decently written and developed.The male characters are hedious creatures and Anne is an irritating fool who tries to appear smart, when the only thing that she succeeds in is being manipulated by her disgusting boyfriend.

There was much potential to the story, in the hands of any capable writer it would have been a blast.Here, the execution is choppy, the characters try too hard to come across as troubled and torchured, and the focus on sex made the book a trashy read, something that I just couldn't take seriously.It lacked any basic element of a good book,the haunting,distinctive aura that makes the Nordic Mystery such a fascinating genre. I am sorry to say that this is one of its poorest examples.… (mere)