A Left Turn to Finland
Review: North is the Night by Emily Rath
I’m not hugely familiar with Finnish mythology and the Kalevala, although Rath does admit she takes a fair number of liberties. I am familiar with the tropes of fairy tales, and in addition to being steeped in Finnish mythology, North is the Night is emphatically a fairy tale.
Specifically, it is the trope of the young woman taken by the monster to be his bride, with the variant that she agrees to it in order to protect others. But in this case, the monster is the ruler of the realm of the dead…so in many ways this is also a riff on Persephone (or possibly some Finnish version I’m less familiar with).
It uses all of its 540 pages well…I was given this book in hardcover form. In Kansas City. I was worried my luggage would be overweight. But the story genuinely needs all of that length as it unfolds through the world of the dead and the Arctic north of Finland. And yes, there are reindeer. And yes, they are cute.
But the deep relationship in the story is not between the stolen Aina and her divine husband, Tuoni. It’s between Aina and her “best friend” Siiri. (No spoilers on what is obvious from the first page, although perhaps not to them).
North is the Night feels like a fairy tale and a myth rolled into one. It feels like a story that should be told around campfires, perhaps with some drumming. It’s an emphatically pagan book, with Christianity featuring only as an antagonist, but unlike many such books it manages not to be preachy.
Interestingly, this is the first fantasy novel by Rath, as far as I can tell. She’s best known for the Jacksonville Rays series of…hockey romances. Yes, hockey romances. Spicy ones, too. Up to foursomes in one of them. North is the Night is, thus, a bit of a left turn for the author…it’s not clean, but the heat level is fairly low. The content warnings are more about the abductions, violence, and…yeah, a few people die. The bear, however, does not.
I found this book enjoyable, although I do wonder what fans of Rath’s other work make of it…this is the kind of genre hop that triggers a pen name change for many authors, although I respect Rath for not doing that. It’s on the dark side…like the best myth-based stories.
Recommended for myth lovers and those people who can’t get enough of Hades and Persephone but are also bored of Hades and Persphone ;).