The Sea Of Trolls by Nancy Farmer.
It's a kid/young adult book, but even as an old crone I give it 4-1/2 stars. I'm rounding down for Goodreads, but at a younger age I would have definitely rounded up.
It's the best piece of fictionalized history I've read since The Gods Must Be Crazy or Drums Across the Mowhawk (whichever came last.) The author did her research well but didn't let it interfere with telling a whopping good adventure story. In the time and place of the legends of the Norsemen, she created an unlikely hero that you have to like--in spite of him having an intact nuclear family. Mother, father, and a bratty little sister. Is that even possible in YA fantasy?
Her world is beautiful, fanciful, fearful, sordidly grim and sometimes very funny. And I only have one quibble with her fictional reality--
Is it true you can't housebreak a crow?
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