Having read a lot of dystopian novels in the last few years this book was a little different. I loved the idea that gangland warfare could lead to such drastic actions as shutting London off and surrounding it with genetically modified humans/animals.
It was violent in many places and a little gruesome but then the situation that the main characters find themselves in is as well. It addresses issues of madness, chaos and prejudice and some incidents in the book reminds you scarily of what has happened in previous war times.
The characters are so well written I found myself both annoyed and proud at their actions. It follows twins Siggy and Signy (one thing I would change in the book was how close their names were to each other - got confusing at times)and how they survive when cooperation between 2 gangs goes wrong.
My favourite character in the book had to be Melanie who brought some much needed humour and goodwill to the novel and lifted it from being depressing altogether.
The added theme of something mystical and mythological going on got me to read faster in order to get some answers. I would not recommend this book to the squimish as it includes many scenes of brutality and injury.
However, I will definately read the next book as it left me on a cliffhanger and still asking questions upto the very last sentence. ( )

Having read a lot of dystopian novels in the last few years this book was a little different. I loved the idea that gangland warfare could lead to such drastic actions as shutting London off and surrounding it with genetically modified humans/animals.
It was violent in many places and a little gruesome but then the situation that the main characters find themselves in is as well. It addresses issues of madness, chaos and prejudice and some incidents in the book reminds you scarily of what has happened in previous war times.
The characters are so well written I found myself both annoyed and proud at their actions. It follows twins Siggy and Signy (one thing I would change in the book was how close their names were to each other - got confusing at times)and how they survive when cooperation between 2 gangs goes wrong.
My favourite character in the book had to be Melanie who brought some much needed humour and goodwill to the novel and lifted it from being depressing altogether.
The added theme of something mystical and mythological going on got me to read faster in order to get some answers. I would not recommend this book to the squimish as it includes many scenes of brutality and injury.
However, I will definately read the next book as it left me on a cliffhanger and still asking questions upto the very last sentence. ( )

Having read a lot of dystopian novels in the last few years this book was a little different. I loved the idea that gangland warfare could lead to such drastic actions as shutting London off and surrounding it with genetically modified humans/animals.
It was violent in many places and a little gruesome but then the situation that the main characters find themselves in is as well. It addresses issues of madness, chaos and prejudice and some incidents in the book reminds you scarily of what has happened in previous war times.
The characters are so well written I found myself both annoyed and proud at their actions. It follows twins Siggy and Signy (one thing I would change in the book was how close their names were to each other - got confusing at times)and how they survive when cooperation between 2 gangs goes wrong.
My favourite character in the book had to be Melanie who brought some much needed humour and goodwill to the novel and lifted it from being depressing altogether.
The added theme of something mystical and mythological going on got me to read faster in order to get some answers. I would not recommend this book to the squimish as it includes many scenes of brutality and injury.
However, I will definately read the next book as it left me on a cliffhanger and still asking questions upto the very last sentence. ( )

The Abbey was a Christian temple. The Volsons had given up on all that years ago but, like all the ganglords, Val was a superstitious man. It's true that under his grey silk suit he wore a silver cross, just in case Jesus happened to watching, but by its side was the stubby barrel of a small handgun, sawn off short and hammered into the likeness of a man with one eye. That was in honour of the strange gods who were said to have awakened in the halfman lands, and who had been seen these past few years inside the Wall, in the slums and suburbs of London itself. And for the same reason - unknown to Conor who would certainly have objected - a dead man hung upside down from his heel out of sight behind an awning. The new deities were said to favour sacrifice in this form. All nonsense of course - silly stories grown up from halfmen sightings by men from Ragnor or the other cities checking up on them. But Val considered it wise to take all precautions.

"Bloodtide" is a retelling of the first part of the Saga of the Volsungs, the story of the twins Sigmund (here called Siggy) and Signy. It is set in a futuristic London, abandoned to gangsters when the government moved out to Ragnor, and cut-off from the rest of the country by a no-man's land populated by halfmen (human/animal hybrids). The story of the twins takes up less than 20 pages in my copy of the saga, and this has given the novelist a lot of scope for fleshing out the story and the characters, without losing any of the savagery, brutality or passion of the original.

Whereas the saga has Odin thrusting his knife into the tree that grows up through the great hall of the Volsung's palace, this book has him thrust it into the diamond-hard glass elevator shaft full of the hanged bodies of human sacrifices, that rises up to the broken tip of a skyscraper. It was so long, glass-like and brittle-looking that first-time visitors often lifted their hands involuntarily above their heads and ducked, certain that it was in the act of snapping and that a million razor-sharp shards were about to rain down upon them. But the old builders had made it from the strongest stuff on heaven and earth. No one had ever even managed to scratch it. Even the fact that it has the old Norse gods appearing in the city leaving death and destruction in their wake (as gods are wont to do) works, as the gang lords and citizens of London only half believe in the gods, suspecting that they may be cyborgs sent from Ragnor.

This is a Young Adult book, but it's definitely for older teenagers considering how dark and violent it is, and it's an exciting read for adults too.

Edited: This Review was written when I first read this book in November 2002 and the quotations were added when I re-read it in May 2013. ( )

Set in a future and very dystopian England, this book pulls no punches. Followed by Bloodsong. "...a rich layer of intertextuality that moves from the Volsunga Saga and Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Rapunzel, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Island of Moreau to the Genesis accounts, with ease, irony and deftness, presenting the reader with a complex literary movable feast from which to choose.” - from a review by Matthew Wood
http://amlib.eddept.wa.edu.au/webquery.dll?v1=pbMarc&v20=14&v27=31540&am...