Wednesday 20 January 2016

Skammertegnet by Lene Kaaberbøl




This is the second book in the series about the Shamer's daughter. The title of this one translates to The Shamer Sign, or something along those lines.

Unlike the first book, this one hasn't been made into a film, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. From what I understand the first film did very well in Danish cinemas. Well, I quite liked it anyway.

The second book follows both Dina and her brother Davin, with the POV alternating between the two. The family has relocated to a highland country to get away from Drakan. Unfortunately they are still not safe as Drakan via a relative, the equally unpleasant Valdracu, continues to stir up trouble. Valdracu manages to kidnap Dina and Davin learns a lot about himself and about growing up as he tries to rescue his sister.

I think all in all I liked the first book better than this one, probably because I was never entirely keen on Davin's chapters. The boy just annoyed me. Oh, probably he was being pretty typically teenager, but he just kept making really stupid decisions. I would much better have liked to have heard more about Dina, really.

Valdracu seemed a little over the top as a villain. Mind you, Drakan, in the first book, was also a bit over the top, but we know a little about his motives and why he's just generally messed up. We don't know anything about Valdracu at all except that he's just plain and simple old-fashioned evil. I wonder if more details about him will come to light in the other books, but I'm not really holding my breath for it. As evil as he is, I get a sort of 'small fish' vibe from him.

I still enjoyed the book. It had a few fairly predictable twists here and there, but on the other hand I'm probably rather older than the target audience anyway. I can easily imagine being completely blindsided by a few of them if I'd read the book twenty years ago.

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