Blood Axe by Menno Meyjes Spotlight

 

 

I used to read a hundred or so novels every year. Sadly, my novel reading has suffered since I started reviewing comics. But this recent novel from the co-writer of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade looks like fun. After visited England five times between 2011 and 2017, and watching decades of British TV, I can readily envision Alistair's world. 

Unlike Alistair Deacon in As Time Goes By ("Hey hey"), and Alistair Gordon Leth-Bridge Stewart ("You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets"), Alistair suffers from ADHD. So he relates his mythological adventure from a first-person POV, like Percy Jackson in Rick Riordan's novels. But the pace seems a little slower, and the style more literary, in the introductory chapters of Meyjes' novel.

Here's all the info on Blood Axe:

  

Alistair is a Norse-mythology obsessed, neurotic, well-read and deeply unpopular teenage boy. He lives in Staines with his bulimic older sister Belle and their depressive single mother, an Amazon worker and weekend protester of the third runway at Heathrow. Alistair is in therapy. And he does not fit in with his classmates, ‘normal’ teenagers who bully him for being different. But when he is struggling, Alistair does not pray to God – Alistair prays to the Norse Ull, and in trying to summon him, he accidentally conjures up the formidable Eric Bloodaxe. 

Erik idiosyncratically adjusts to contemporary living while Alistair and Belle attempt to conceal his identity from their mother. When Erik abruptly leaves Alistair’s house, Alistair tries to follow him by climbing through the rabbit hole in the base of the oak tree where he prays to Ull. Transported to the tenth century, Alistair meets Erik’s wife - the fearsome sorceress Gunhild and Alistair’s Norse adventures begin...

As we accompany Alistair to and from the tenth century – a world far removed from his suburban house, where Bake Off blares in the background – we also travel with him through the ups and downs of adolescence and his blossoming relationship with Madelon, a Dutch girl from history class. 

 

 

Menno Meyjes is the screenplay writer of The Colour Purple, which was Bafta- and Academy Award-nominated. He is also the winner of a Goya Award and gained global recognition for co-writing Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Meyjes directed the highly controversial Max with John Cusack, released in 2022. Blood Axe is his first novel.

 

Read a free preview of Blood Axe at Amazon.co.uk. 

Thanks to Grace Pilkington for sharing this press release with us.