Customer Reviews

Foxmask (Children of the Light Isles series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First off, let me say that I am a huge Marillier fan. Her two latest books (released in America) cannot be compared to her beloved Sevenwaters Trilogy because the two are very different. It can't be guaranteed that if you loved Daughter of the Forest you will loved these books and I must say, after I read Wolfskin, I was inclined to agreed with you. That book lacked what Sevenwaters had and Foxmask comes very close to but it is a neccesary for all who loved Marillier's first trilogy. I wasn't all that impressed with Wolkfskin but I loved Foxmask.

Foxmask is different. The quality of writing that so entranced me with Daughter of the Forest was somewhat lacking in Wolkfskin but is back with full-force in Foxmask. It's filmic, fun and puts you right there, caring for the characters and wishing you were there.

The character development is great. Somerled has developed into one of the best characters Marillier has ever created. He went from being dastardly, malicious and, let's face it, intriguing in Wolfskin to and outstanding, self-aware man who suffers regret and has indeed found redemption through love of his son. Creidhe is cut from the same cloth as Sorcha, especially by the end. She is realized, mature, selfless and loving and definetly a character worth exploring in (hopefully) another book to turn this into a trilogy. Thorvald was a weak point. He rarely had me caring what happened to him but that's the point, I guess.

True, there are times (very few) when you wish things would speed up or stop jumping back in time but I couldn't put the book down.

In the end I was satisfied and in a dream-like state like after a great Thanksgiving meal. There is a sense that things worked out just as they should, even if I personally would have liked it another way. I recommend this book, especially if you were disappointed with Wolfskin, it does get better, I promise.

I loved it. Couldn't put it down. Actually I checked out the author's other book in the series (Wolfskin) from the library a few days ago and devoured that book in a day. I already owned "Foxmask" since I had bought it at the Dallas airport (but never read it) on a trip to Texas in 2006. I was on such a high after reading "Wolfskin" that I simply had to dig in and finally read "Foxmask." I wasn't disappointed.

I tried finding online a plot summary for the book before I got too involved. I couldn't find one. So I had to read the book kind of blindly. That was kind of easy since the author drops loads of hints in the book so the reader can pretty much figure out what is going to happen before it does. For example, the conversation the hermit had with Creidhe and it was clear she had identified who Thorvald's father was.

This book was definitely well research and planned. It all fit together. Although I found parts of it a little slow, I think that was because I was more interested in Creidhe's tale rather than Thorvald's tale. The book really is two tales interrelated, and a wonderful follow-on to THE TALE presented in "Wolfskin."

I think I would have liked the book better if Creidhe has been able to read and write. And I think I would have liked the book better if there had been at least one more glimpse of how Foxmask has ultimately fit into the culture (tribe) he has been produced to serve. But maybe that will be handled in the next book in the series if there is one. I also hope the next book will explain how Creidhe and her hubby fit back into society. 5 stars!

Like many people, I enjoy curling up next to the fire with a good book in the winter time. The weather has been more than cooperative this year with colder than usual temps. My chosen reading material was very engaging as well.
This is a great continuation of Wolfskin, the story of Eyvind and the lovely Nessa focusing on the adventure and life lesson of their daughter, Creidhe. Feeling compelled, Creidhe stows away on a boat with her childhood friends, Thorvald and Sam, who set off to find Thorvald's long lost (and maybe lost for the best) father, the banished Somerled.
What they find when they reach the Lost Isles is that nothing and no one is as they seem. The characters are drawn in a way that makes you care about them. They each have good qualities and bad, like real people. Watching the three young people grow and reach a better understanding of the world is a great way to pass the winter weather. There is just the right touch of mysterious magic combined with a good amount of real humans struggling to use the same skills we all have.
I look forward to the next installment in this series.

Thorvald, at the age of 18 years, has just been told about his true parentage. He immediately sets on a mission to find his father, with the help of his friend, Sam, an experienced sailor. What Thorvald doesn't expect is that his other friend, Creidhe, stows away on the boat and isn't found until it's too late to turn back. So the three journey together where they come across the Long Knife People. After hearing their story, Thorvald and Sam decide to stay on and help. Thorvald also believes that Asgrim, the leader of the Long Knife People is his father, so he decides to become a great warrior to make him proud. What he doesn't realize until too late is that Asgrim had other plans for Creidhe and when those plans go awry, she is thought to be dead. Instead, Cheidhe is on the Isle of Clouds, the exact place where the Long Knife People fight year after year to find Foxmask, the seer of their enemy. Thorvald makes it his mission to train the men to become true warriors and return Foxmask to his rightful place. On his journey, Thorvald learns about power, hope, sorrow, love and the importance of family.

Not being an avid fan of fantasy, I was a bit apprehensive when I first got this book, it being over 500 pages. After getting through the beginning, I couldn't put the book down. Thorvald's journey is fascinating. Juliet Marillier has a way of describing characters and places. With all the twists and turns in the novel, it was hard to predict what would happen next. I went from loving a character to hating them. This was the first book I've read by Juliet Marillier, but now I can't wait to read the rest. I'd recommend Foxmask to fantasy readers and nonreaders alike. I thought that this book was amazing and I can't wait to read more by Marillier.

Reviewed by a student reviewer for Flamingnet Book Reviews
www.flamingnet.com
Preteen, teen, and young adult book reviews and recommendations

This was truly a great book! Very "Marillier-esk." I read the Severwaters Trilogy and was AMAZED. I thought they were absolutely amazing. Then, I read Wolfskin and I wasn't so impressed. It was good, but I found myself getting bored at some point, which surprised me of course. I still wanted to read Foxmask though, and I'm glad I did. Although there are a couple of weak points at the end the book as a whole was GREAT! This time, we follow the adventures of the son of Sommerled and the daughter of Eyvind into a plot that reveals so much of their characters. I loved it. Now, I must say that I am female, which may be the reason why I didn't like Wolfskin as much. All in all, I recommend it if you liked any of her other books! Enjoy!

Like all of her books, Foxmask was a great read that sucked you in right away. I always have the problem that I can't put her books down once I've started one. It was a good follow up book after Wolfskin, taking you to that beautiful place filled with fascinating characters. I definitely recommend reading Foxmask if you love fantasy novels.

I've read nearly all of Marillier's books, loving the Sevenwaters trilogy and having mixed feelings about the others. I have not read Wolfskin, the prequel to Foxmask, but read this one anyway because so many of Marillier's fans adore it. My reaction: mixed. This book is a good example of Marillier's storytelling skills; it bears more resemblance to the original Sevenwaters trilogy than to the Sevenwaters follow-ups or Heart's Blood, which felt much more commercial (faster-paced, less lyrical, more conventional). Still, it's not one I'll re-read.

Foxmask follows two main characters: Thorvald, who embarks on a quest to a distant island searching for the father he never met, and Creidhe, who follows Thorvald out of infatuation but grows up along the way. Their parallel storylines are set up well, with a slow-paced, immersive start and gradually increasing tension up to the major events of the last third of the book. Creidhe is a decent but not spectacular heroine, and Thorvald was more interesting than I expected; in all the other Marillier books I've read the male lead was also the love interest, but Marillier chose wisely in not casting Thorvald in that role, allowing him to be selfish and pursue his own interests. Ultimately I couldn't tell whether we were meant to like him or not, and was glad of it. But Somerled was disappointing; from what other characters said about him, I expected someone with more drive and conviction, and was sorry to see he'd turned into such a conventional self-doubting character.

A few more words on the plot and characters. There are several mysteries and puzzles, to which the reader is likely to guess the answers before the characters; but, fortunately (and unlike the more recent books) Foxmask doesn't depend on mysteries, and characters figure things out as they go rather than wandering about clueless throughout. However, they did frustrate me in that I could often think of several better solutions to their problems than the ones they chose, solutions which tended not to occur to anyone.

And then the romance (which is the reason I keep reading Marillier books after all). This one didn't capture my emotions. It wasn't poorly written; I understood the characters' attraction to each other and liked that they shared many of the same values. But their journey from initial meeting to the consummation of their love happened very quickly and easily (as it had to given the structure of the book and the characters' situations), and for me to care about a romance it generally needs to take longer than that, and have more complications and obstacles. Just because it's not my thing doesn't make it bad, and the romance here is secondary to the larger story of the islanders' plight and the main characters' growth and development, but still I was disappointed.

Finally, there's that larger story; it's difficult to discuss without giving anything away, so some minor spoilers follow. This story felt a bit mythological, although I'm not sure where it came from. I really liked that Marillier managed to make the two major male characters enemies based on their circumstances without making either "evil." The characters face a variety of moral dilemmas, mostly revolving around the question of when it's acceptable to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many (or vice versa). While I would have liked the book to be a bit less conventional in its answers, the end certainly leaves room for discussion about who was in the right and how the characters should have handled their situations, and it isn't all clear-cut. The drawback to all of this is that the situation itself is contrived in a variety of ways, the characters hemmed in by a bunch of arbitrary rules. (The strangest: There's an extremely remote tribe with no blondes, which requires a blonde woman to conceive its seer. How do they typically manage this?) The book has a fairytale resonance that kept this from becoming too annoying, but the setup is not exactly logical.

What really irked me, though, were the modern beliefs of the characters. They're pro-democracy. They're anti-arranged marriage. I have a sneaking suspicion that they also support paternity leave and free universal health care. The phrase "due process of law" is used. (As an American, I'm proud to see phrases from my country's constitution pop up even when an Australian author writes about people living on the Orkney and Faroe Islands over 1000 years ago. But it makes no sense at all, given that these people have neither written laws nor a formal judicial system.) I know Marillier writes feel-good historical fantasy, but this was a bit much.

So this isn't a bad book; I see how it could work for a different reader. The writing style is decent and there's a couple of good coming-of-age stories in there. But readers new to Marillier should be buying Daughter of the Forest, not Foxmask.

I happened to read Foxmask (Book 2) before Wolfskin (Book 1) and it took me a few tries to get into it because it seems so bleak and dark compared to the Sevenwaters series, partially because the windy, stark, cold, inhospitable island scene just isn't as appealing to me as a lush forest. But I'm really glad I got into it. The characters, the mystery, the setting are all so complicated but they pay off in the end. Although many characters start off as cold and remote and you just want the heroine to give up on them and go home, they begin to reveal more of themselves as time passes and you begin to appreciate the depth of the problems. Everyone is trapped in seemingly impossible situations where the right path is very unclear, where they have to choose between loyalty to one's family, duty to one's community, and following one's own heart. It's kind of cheesy to say this but I think part of the reason I was able to get into the book was because at the time it helped me to understand the complicated feelings my dad had towards his own biological father- the emotions are just drawn with such care you can't but help sympathize with what drives people.

I thought Foxmask was darker and more "mythic" than Juliet Marillier's other novels. The setting and stakes are much harsher than in the other novels I have read by her. (I haven't read Wolfskin though, so maybe it's similar). I absolutely loved it. Marillier is a fantastic writer, and this is a heart-wrenching story. Really well-done.

I think both Foxmask and Wolfskin are great books - yes there are parts that are slow in each book and parts that are predictable in each book - however, that happens a lot with any book. They are both fine pieces of writing and I enjoy this author's work and research to make these books so enjoyable.
Foxmask's characters are strong - you either love them or hate them. Creidhe is a strong heroine. I enjoyed reading about her immensely. She did compare somewhat to the Sevenwaters women, in her own way. However, I really think she made a name for herself.
I enjoyed the book and I'm sure anyone who likes this author or historical fiction will, too.