“Iceland was angry:” quite possibly my favourite opening line to date. With over 130 volcanoes, 30 to 40 of which are active, the resultant topography and climate have rendered Iceland somewhat mercurial, a tad tetchy. But that’s just the land. With a pluckiness akin to the sisu of the Finns, Icelanders are a resilient and... Continue Reading →
Where the Shadows Lie, by Michael Ridpath
Was Tolkien a plagiarist? How many gritty police detectives can one genre of fiction reasonably accommodate? And, does Iceland have trees? Important questions all; the answers to which, respectively are: kind of but not really; apparently many, and; the odd one or two. Already a successful author, Ridpath was in the depths of a massive... Continue Reading →