Book Review: “Shield-Maiden: Under the Hunter’s Moon” by Melanie Karsak

Hello!

It is time to discuss my thoughts on the second book of “The Road to Valhalla” series by Melanie Karsak. If you have yet to check out how this whole journey started, click here, and you might want to skip this post, so you don’t see any spoilers.

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When the gods play in mortals’ lives, the only certain outcome is uncertainty. Especially when that god is Loki.

In the course of a night, I found out my entire life was a lie. Now, Yrsa, Eydis, and I will set off to recover Tyrfing. I must leave Dalr—and the dream I’d shared with Hofund—behind. Eydis is sure the gods have plans for me. I hope she’s right. For on the distant island of Bolmsö, the last of my father’s line is besieged by enemies, and only the blood of a berserker can make things right again.

taken from Goodreads.

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Once I finished the first book, it didn’t necessarily take me long to get into the sequel. The one thing I was a bit worried about was the sheer number of pages it had compared to the other but then I got over it and was able to enjoy the continuation of Hervor’s story.

Some people have never experienced feeling unconditional love from their families, even in the same case as Hervor, as her mother does in fact adore her truly, but she has never been of sense and mind up until the end of the ‘Howling Moon’ and so she has relied on other people for care and protection but now she knows the truth of her parenteral side and she intends to make it known within herself but to others as well. You could look at this in the same way of Jon Snow finding out about his heritage on season six and seven of “Game of Thrones”.

Although the plot is based around Hervor proving herself worthy of others around her, you still have the comical side with characters like Eydis and newcomer Utr. They were a nice separation of the serious events happening all over.

“The gods have surely brought you here, Hervor.”

There was one part of the story, and everyone was getting ready for an upcoming battle, and there was a tiny scene that puzzled me because I wondered if it was plausible for this character–who is fictional I know–to actually know and understand the measures it took on the battle itself. Eydis had explained that she had received a vision of a certain Trojan horse that was moved into the other side’s camp, however it was not hollow on the inside, and everyone was massacred once the ruse broke.

The story of the horse was featured in Homer’s Odyssey and although it is still unclear whether or not the horse even existed, they time the war between Greeks and Troy to be around 1194 to 1184 BC. If you are even more curious to learn about the myth, you can click here. After finishing my research, I went to look into the sagas of Hervor and I found that her story is placed sometime in the 13th Century BC, which is fairly close to the story of the horse, so with that, it seemed like a clever way to connect both sides of history into this series.

Despite all of this, I realized as I was searching for everything that I was just like Hervor in this book. It can be difficult to decipher between myth and truth. There were a lot of speculations who Hervor’s father was in the beginning and it has been interesting for me to wonder about the these two settlements; the Vikings were brutal warriors and ruled the waters with axes, shields, and sheer strength in their bodies plus knowing they will be drinking in the halls with Odin in Valhalla as they dead on the battlefield wasn’t a bad passing, whereas the Greeks lived in massive cities of concrete buildings and sophisticated armor with swords and horse drawn chariots. I mean, certain parts of history do have a way of repeating itself.

I never meant to doubt Melanie’s information or overall work, but from the moment I read that paragraph, I found it odd but then of course I let it fester in my head as I continued reading and knew I would eventually look everything up to my curious heart’s content and that’s what happened. I feel better and pleased to learn more about how our ancient selves lived, and thought you, if you are like me and love history, would appreciate the insight too!

Have you read ‘Under the Hunter’s Moon’ by Melanie Karsak yet? If you have, what were your favorite parts of it?

5 Disney Sequels I Love!

Howdy!

I know a lot of people rarely like the Disney sequels, mostly because they usually come out whenever the children that fell in love with the original are a little older so their interest is lower and sometimes they don’t have the same actors and lose the plot line and that sort of doesn’t help either, so not a lot of people share my love for the sequels, but I’m okay with that. I tend to only love the second movie that comes out. I’ll watch the other sequels afterwards but I hardly ever like them as much. And yes, I am writing this post because of Frozen is getting a sequel itself! I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write it though!

I tried to rate them according to keeping the theme of the original plot and voices in characters. Hope you all enjoy!

 

1.) Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)

I can barely get through the first Lion King film in one sitting, mostly because of Mufasa’s death. I could barely watch it when I was a kid but we didn’t have the power to fast forward that whole scene in the 90’s unless you wanted to stand up against the VCR for the whole time! One of the drawbacks of having a physical disability.

I loved the fact that they gave Simba a daughter, because I felt as though it would be payback for how Simba was when he was younger. She gave him a round for his money! I was always confused though, at the last of the original you ultimately thought the cub that Nala gave birth to was a male, so when you watch this and you see that the color is more of a orange-y hue and its a female, it makes you ask “did the other one die?” Another drawback was Kovu, was he or wasn’t he Scar’s son? I thought Scar was a good villain until I saw Zira. I thought she was ruthless!

Kiara was my favorite like Nala was my favorite in the first film. I liked the name too! I think my favorite scene of all-time is when both prides meet to fight and Zira’s group get all muddy like they put on their war paint and that whole part was amazing! However, it does make me a bit sad though! I did enjoy seeing Timon and Pumba getting their hands (and hoofs) dirty again!

2.) Toy Story 2 (1999)

If you were to ask me which I preferred from the first Toy Story movie and it’s sequel, I’d probably have to choose this one! As I mentioned in my last Disney movie post, I didn’t necessarily mesh well with the first one as I do now! Now for this one, I did but I don’t know why.

I hated the fact that Woody breaks his arm and he gets put up on the shelf, it broke my heart and then to top it all off, he gets stolen after trying to rescue another toy! I loved how Buzz and the others go after him though. One of the things I really thought was interesting on how they played on a collector’s mind, he had every character and merchandise of the show; people have collections of Funko pops and My Little Pony, it’s fine to collect toys just don’t go stealing something that doesn’t belong to you!

My favorite character is Jessie, so quirky and terrified of being abandoned and the dark. Two of my greatest fears! I also loved the song by Sarah McLachlan, first off, it still makes me want to cry everytime I hear it, but it’s so beautiful and goes with that scene so well. As far as my favorite scene though, I think it’s a cross between Bullseye licking the cheese puffs off of Al’s fingers and when Woody is getting a makeover from that old man, he just reminds me of my papaw!

3.) Lady And The Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure (2001)

For these next three movies, I haven’t seen them for the last 12-14 years. They are hardly ever played on Freeform or NickJr (don’t knock it until you try it!) so I had to look into the layers of gifs to figure out what the crap they were about again!

I love Lady and The Tramp in general, I wish it was aired more on TV! I remember the second film was one of the most-watched movies I watched while I was busy recovering from having my surgeries in 2002. I loved Scamp’s rebellious phase, the opening of the movie was typical of a male puppy. At least, it became typical when Blondie and Brandon adopted Chipper! He has yet to calm down! I thought the 3 sisters were annoying though, I wish there was one of them who was at least friends with Scamp. Thank god for Angel though.

I loved the dog pound guy, but mainly because he sounded like Don Knotts. Unfortunately, since I haven’t seen it in a long time, I cannot chose a favorite scene. Sorry!

4.) The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea (2000)

I absolutely love this movie! Again, as I mentioned in my last post I always had  love/hate relationship with the original film because of the context. Although it has some disability undertones, I’ve never really enjoyed it. So the fact that I actually enjoyed the second was interesting.

I thought the beginning was adorable! The birth of a princess named Melody, who looked more like Prince Eric than her own mother, wanted to learn everything she could about the sea and since Ursula’s sister came to crash her big day as a baby, she never got to truly understand why her mother wanted to keep her safe and out of the water completely. What is it about these rebellious characters that I like so much?

I think my favorite scene was when she was given that necklace in the beginning and we got to see Flounder as an older fish? And have his own set of kids. It made you have many feels! I feel like that this was as close to the original as possible just backwards, instead of wanting to have feet, Melody wanted fins and in the end everybody gets their wish!

5.) Pocahontas II: Journey To The New World (1998)

I really loved the first Pocahontas, but I happen to love anything about the Native American culture, even as a kid. Sadly, I’m not as interested but I’ve discovered a few other cultures over the years, in each one the other sort of dies down. I do go in spurts though so it’s not like I hate it.

I remember when this move came out, since it was direct-to-video I think dad or somebody in our family bought it and then when I had my birthday either that year or the next, my family friends surprised us with another video of it. I’m not going to lie, we kept it in case we ever lost the other one. Sad to say, but I’m pretty sure our cat Oliver threw up all over the case so we never got to open the spare! This is another one that I haven’t seen several years, so I’m not as descriptive as I have been with the others.

Were you a fan of the many Disney sequels? If so, which ones are your favorites?

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