| Coronation: The Queen of Intelligent Thrillers |
July 19, 2010
I am on an S.J. Bolton roll and loving every hair-raising minute of it. I just finished Sacrifice, Awakening is reviewed below, and I have started in on her latest, Blood Harvest. Bolton is much more than a writer of great thrillers; she is a plunger of the depths of the human soul, and a sympathizer with the outsider struggling to find her place in the world while retaining her integrity. In fact, Bolton's heroines do what Bolton does: strive for excellence while blazing their own, very individual paths, to doing the right thing, the right way. Bolton does her thing -- writing thrilling novels -- her own way and she does it magnificently.
You could call Bolton's books thrillers for intelligent women but men, and even dummies, will love Bolton: there is nothing not to love. She provides interesting and layered characters; riveting and twisting and unpredictable plots; and fascinating facts and myths from British history, from the snakes driven from Ireland but plentiful in England in Awakening, to the Norse history and mythology imbued in the Shetland Islands in Sacrifice. In Blood Harvest, which I am reading right now and will review soon, Bolton presents (and embellishes beautifully and scarily) the centuries old harvesting legends and traditions of the Yorkshire moors.
Bolton is also blessed with an innate sense of pitch and rhythm. She knows just how long to hold the suspense in an unfurling scene and just how tightly to wind up her characters -- and her readers -- before allowing everyone a moment of release and contemplation. It is the mix between thought and action, a mix calibrated perfectly to engage both sides of the readers' brains -- the analytic side and the thrill-seeking side -- that makes Bolton's novels so satisfying to read.
In Sacrifice, Tora Hamilton has come to the Shetland Islands with her husband, who is a Shetlander by birth but has been away for twenty years. One day while digging a hole in which to bury a beloved horse, Tora finds a corpse preserved in the peat. But as it turns out, this is no bog body from centuries past but a much more recent victim of murder -- and a very sick murder, at that. Tora, an outsider to the close community of the Shetlands, is told by the police to leave the investigation to them. But the dead woman had recently given birth and Tora, an obstetrician and a woman trying hard to get pregnant herself, cannot let her death go. The only sympathy for her interest that Tora can find is in police detective Dana Tulloch, herself an outsider, in more ways than one. Together the two women find clues linking the murder to Norse runes, ancient Shetland myths about powerful trolls, and the strange, isolated island of Tronal.
I was riveted to the pages of Sacrifice, alternating between chills and cheers as I followed the women in the path towards understanding, a path fraught with danger, shrouded in deception, and twisted by age-old illusions of fate and destiny. Bravo, Ms. Bolton, and I dub you the new queen of thrillers. Long may you reign -- and write.
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June 7, 2010
Awakening by S.J. Bolton is a thriller fully steeped in the Gothic tradition (dark stormy nights, haunted houses, gloomy cellars, decaying churchyards) and topped off with fascinating facts and information about everything from snakes to sects to scripture. With all that plus its occasional wink of sly humor, hints of burgeoning passion, and inspiring heroics, Awakening is a must-read book for this summer, perfect for rainy days on the porch or sunny days out in the grass. Just watch out for the snakes you may begin to see everywhere, even in your dreams.
Clara Benning is a young vet working in rural England; scarred from an early age both physically and emotionally, Clara prefers the company of animals to humans. When nearby humans find themselves suddenly besieged by venomous snakes, they call on Clara's expertise, and Clara cannot ignore their pleas for help. She comes through, again and again, with intelligence, caring, and bravery. Will those traits be enough to save the villagers, and herself, from slithering snakes, avengers from the past, and insanity posing as piety?
What I loved about this book, in addition to its fast-paced but layered plot, compelling characters, fascinating facts, and great atmosphere -- set in rural Dorset, Bolton creates the vivid atmosphere of what at first glance appears to be a lovely small English village but soon reveals itself to as a place where deceit, treachery, and greed conspired in dark acts and darker secrets -- was Bolton's psychological probing of revulsion. People have been repulsed by Clara her whole life, due to facial scarring she received as a child. Taunted and tortured by other children, stared at by strangers, and teased by hooligans, Clara has learned to shut herself off and to exist in a world of work, sleep, and running. She prefers to run very early or very late in the day, when she can be assured of her solitude, and she chooses to work with wild animals, again shielding herself from the public eye. Snakes, like Clara, are also a source of revulsion: Bolton subtly creates a parallel between the hunted snakes and Clara's hiding of her face. Only when she dares to raise her eyes and face the world, and save whom and what she can, does she shed the serpent of fear inside of her, and allow the snake of enlightenment to move forth. She becomes awakened to her powers, both inside and out.
Clara explains her work saving animals with a simple line: "all lives, even tiny, secretive, short ones, have a value and a purpose." Clara herself leads a very secretive life but there is no doubt of her value or purpose: she is a force of honestly, goodness, and reliability (much as snakes are forces
in nature for balance and equity), even though she herself can't see how special she is. By the end of this magnificent thriller, all readers will see what Clara is made of -- and all of us will be hurtling through the pages to discover if what she's got is good enough.
I read Awakening the first time through at breakneck speed, I was so excited by Bolton's plot and characters and ideas. Having finished it, I started right away to reread the novel. On my second time round, I read slowly, taking the time to appreciate and even more fully enjoy the amplitude of Bolton's craftsmanship and the fulfilled ambitions of her marvelous story telling.
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