Daughter of the Wind: by Michael Cadnum-Setting

Daughter of the Wind, by Michael Cadnum, takes place during the Middle ages. The main characters in this story are Norsemen/ Norse. The first few chapters of the book are about two boys who go hunting for a bear. Both boys are from the village of Spojothof. In the place where the two boys are hunting, it is quite cold and icy. The two boys manage to kill the bear, but only one survives.

Moving on to the next few chapters, the point of view shifts, and a girl is introduced. Whereas the environment in the hunting place is cold and icy, the environment in the village of Spojothof seems warm, and the land lush and fertile. The village of Spojothof had never really liked the Danish. The Danes often came around the village just to steal a bride for them, and that is exactly what happens to Hallgred.

In my opinion, this book is extremely boring. The pace of this book is really slow, and the author takes too much time and space to explain about the most randomest things. The names of the places and people were too hard to remember. Especially the names of people. I would read the first few chapters, and when I came back to read, the same character comes back, and I can’t remember who he/she is, due to the weirdly spelled names. Besides, the author doesn’t really give much background info of the characters. Also, what happened more than once, was that a new character would pop out and not much would be described about them. There’s just too much characters.

Moreover, the shift between characters is really confusing, because it shifts between three different characters, and the chapters don’t have any title’s whatsoever. Just a number. It would be easier if the chapter title had something like “Hallgred” to show the reader that the point of view was now on Hallgred; but it doesn’t. Besides, why is the title even called "Daughter of the Wind"? The book has nothing to do with "wind" or anything. Cadnum should have named his book something like "Daughter of the Jarl", since that's basically who Hallgred is. Overall, my group and I agreed that this book isn’t very well written, and we will probably abandon it, and hopefully, we will choose a more interesting book next time.