1793, Niklas Natt och Dag, was published in 2017 and shortly after the Swedish Black Novel Academy considered it the best debut of the year. It was also awarded as Best Book. Critics and readers also agreed and this thriller Historical became a sales phenomenon throughout the European continent. In this time the trilogy has been completed with the titles of 1794 y 1795. It has recently arrived in my hands and this is my review.
1793 — Review
About
One year after the death of King Gustavo III the winds of the French Revolution they even reach Sweden, where the tension is palpable throughout the country. in this environment Mickel cardell, a veteran of the war against Russia, discovers a mutilated body in a lake of Stockholm. Who is in charge of the investigation of the case will be Cecil Winge, tubercular lawyer, the (perhaps too) sagacious and incorruptible. But he must hurry because his health is very fragile and street riots are daily.
The two will have to enter a world of thieves, rich and poor, pious and sinners, mercenaries and harlots. shall fight evil and corruption prevailing to discover who is behind this crime.
Modular
The book is divided into four parts coinciding with the seasons of the year:
- The ghost of the Indebetouska house (fall)
- the blood and the wine (summer)
- The moth and the flame (spring)
- the best of wolves (winter)
In the Part the first steps are counted in the research projects.. In the next two we have dthe stories that, initially, they have nothing to do with each other or with the investigations. In which occurs in summer we know the life of a newcomer to Stockholm, a young rogue who wants to thrive while enjoying life. To achieve this, she partners with another rogue in an alliance that is quickly seen to not have a good ending.
The part of the spring takes us to a small town to learn the history of a young who lives with his mother and earns his living with a Fruit stand. When the mother moves, she is left in a defenseless situation, because the fruit vendors are considered prostitutes, since many of them actually do it as a pretext to be able to practice the profession.
And already in the final part, they go closing the plots How are they all related?
Listen to me. If you intend to die, have done so before, when the situation was less desperate. Because it turns out that we are not finished yet, far from it.
Comment
very well writtenPersonally, the present tense continues to hold me back, now so fashionable to tell stories. It is true that 1793 is a great portrait of the historical period so convulsed in which it is set and has well defined characters. But they have not convinced me. Maybe something more than Micke Cardell, the veteran guard of the war with Russia, who lost an arm. What happens is that I have a weakness for characters with some physical defect, so they always attract my attention and manage to seduce me.
He is a wolf or he will soon become one. No one can run with the Wolves without accepting their rules. You have the fangs and glowing eyes of a predator. You deny your bloodlust, but it emanates from you like a scent.
However, the holmesian couple that Cardell forms with the consumptive and very acute Cecil Winge it stays before I arrive for too obvious and read. They and the investigation they carry out —interrupted in the middle by those two stories of secondary characters— seem to me an excuse for the detailed description of the worst human reflection of that time.
Worst: see that my finger was turning pages with too much speed reading. But I understand that perhaps this has not been my moment for the macabre and creepy darkness that it exudes. In addition, I must specify that for some time this part I consider a little gratuitous the use of so much truculence in novels of the genre, especially set in the XNUMXth century. That more authors and titles have been infected, I imagine it is a matter of the market.
Ultimately
Without a doubt, success is rightly so —evil, cruelty and horror always fascinate and work in all genres—and, in fact, this Swedish Viking with an aristocratic pedigree has continued to reap it with his sequels.
Fear of revolution and treason is an epidemic affecting all those who come too close to the throne. His Majesty asked my predecessor to recruit a whole cadre of informers to obtain information on the rumors and conspiracies circulating in the streets.