The Savage Altar [Import] [Hardcover]

Asa Larsson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking; First Edition edition (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670916145
• ISBN-13: 978-0670916146
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #754,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, but it's the same book as Sun Storm, October 27, 2008

By 

H. Darmara "Committed to Reading" (Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Savage Altar (Paperback)

This is the same book as Sun Storm, Asa Larsson's first Rebecka Martinsson novel.

It's a very engaging novel, set in northern Sweden. I'm currently on a binge of Nordic mysteries: Mankell, Indridason, Larsson. Some novels with a female protagonist lean toward romance, this doesn't.

Instead, we find an isolated heroine, returning to her childhood home and friends. Her isolation is not magically resolved; her life is not magically cured. Life is shown as complex, painful, with moments of connection and joy. I highly recommend this series.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you like crime novels you will love this, August 15, 2010

By 

mummazappa (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Savage Altar (Paperback)

From the back cover:
A church in the glittering frozen wastes of northern Sweden. Inside, a sacrifice: the body of a man - slashed to pieces, hands severed, eyes gouged out. The victim's sister, Sanna, is the first to discover the body and immediately finds herself the police's only suspect. Terrified and confused, she calls on a friend: hot-shot city lawyer Rebecka Martinsson. Rebecka doesn't want to return to Kiruna - the small town she fled in disgrace years ago. But Sanna is frightened and she needs a loyal friend to clear her name. someone not scared to dig deep and find the true killer. After years away, Rebecka is not welcomed back into the closed-lipped community. She might know the town, the people and how suspicious they can be of strangers, but she has still to find out how dark the town's secrets have become in her absence.

Review:
I had heard that this book was pretty heavy reading, and it was utterly gory - but not gratuitously so, and (apart from the murder) the kind of violence that most people could probably be pushed into doing if they were in similar circumstances, fighting for their life.

I think this is a less formulaic kind of crime novel, probably leaning more towards the thriller end of the spectrum, and kept me interested and guessing right up until the end. There were several moments of tension that made me want to read with my hands over my eyes, only peeking at the words through a gap in my fingers, and other parts that made me want to yell out loud 'run! ruuuuuuuuuuuun! and 'for god's sake shoot him already!'.

Rebecka Martinsson is a great character, and I believe that this is the first in a series about her. I don't think I will read any other of the books in this series, not because they aren't good, but because I have sooooooooooooooooooo many books on my TBR pile and list that crime novels rank pretty low so its unlikely I would ever get around to deliberately going out of my way to hunt a copy down. But if a copy came my way I could be persuaded to read it.

If you are a lover of the crime and thriller genre I highly recommend this book to you, I think you will love it.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just awful, October 19, 2011

By 

Just Me (Darwin, NT Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Savage Altar (Kindle Edition)

I'm an avid fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, love the Icelanders Arnaldur Indriðason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir, quite like the Norwegians Kjell Ola Dahl and Karin Fossum and don't mind a Swede or two, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Johan Theorin come to mind. Åsa Larsson on the other hand, or at least this particular novel: Sun Storm/Sacred Altar is just awful!

I was intrigued by the first page or two, as the author invokes the magic of the aurora borealis as a background for the initial murder, but I'm afraid the rest of the book doesn't deliver. An unbelievable and lame plot: young, born again religionist gets butchered in his crystal cathedral in some far away corner of Sweden! Characters are shallow and just as unbelievable: young lawyer (TAX lawyer at that) outclasses a seasoned police prosecutor; gravely pregnant detective gets dragged in because her underlings don't have the confidence to work under that same prosecutor, etc. etc. Even the writing is disorganized and confusing.

I must admit that I only read the first 50 or so pages before giving up, but that's a couple of hours of my life I won't get back...