North is the Night

Emily Rath

WHEN a teenage girl is kidnapped from the shores of a fishing lake in Finland by a cruel goddess, her friend is determined to rescue her. But legend says the land of the dead is a terrifying place... and no one has ever returned.

Welcome to this spectacular imagining of the world of Finnish folklore where warring gods abound, dark magic casts a thrilling spell, and two daring young women are ready to defy the living and the dead, the gods and mortals, and the patriarchal expectations of human society.

North is the Night – first book of the Tuonela Duet, a fabulously feminist fantasy duology – is the stunning creation and new venture of Florida-based author Emily Rath (pictured below), best known for her chart-topping ‘sex-positive, queer-inclusive’ fantasy and romance novels. After achieving phenomenal success as a self-published author, Rath used her lifelong love of mythology, her own Finnish family heritage, and the medieval Finnish epic saga the Kalevala, as inspiration for this remarkable story of love, courage, friendship and magic.

Sharing themes with the Greek legend of Hades and Persephone, the author’s breathtaking world-building sweeps us away to the wintry wilderness of pagan Finland as it struggles to stay true to its ancient gods in the face of Christian invaders from Sweden, and on to a mesmerising underworld packed with magic, mayhem and malevolence.

Best friends Aina and Siiri live in the harsh interior of the Finnish wilderness, and are inseparable despite their opposite natures. Aina is gentle, cautious, and hopes for marriage, a loving husband and children, while Siiri is headstrong, brave and would rather be free to spend her life with Aina. Their families make a living from fishing the nearby lake but young women have been going missing from the lake’s shore with reports of ‘creatures with eyes that glow red’ and ‘a lingering stench of death in the air.’ But since the arrival of Swedish settlers – who have uprooted thousands of families, stolen their farmland and threatened their way of life – there is talk of a ‘new god’ and the old Finnish gods have abandoned them.

And when, one terrifying evening, Aina is kidnapped by an evil death goddess whose breath smells of ‘moist decay’ and ‘sour rot,’ and taken to ‘dark oblivion’ in the mythical underworld of Tuonela, the girls’ friendship is put to the test.

Determined to save Aina, Siiri embarks on a dangerous journey north to seek out Väinämöinen, the only mystical shaman to travel to Tuonela and return alive. As the dark winter looms, Siiri uses all the strength she possesses to survive her journey, which is plagued by trappers, a band of roving wolves, and a cunning snow witch on her own quest for power. But finding Väinämöinen is only the beginning... Siiri must convince him to share his magic so she can sneak into Tuonela and save Aina.

In Tuonela, meanwhile, Aina is forced to play the sadistic games of Tuonetar, the cruel queen of the underworld, alongside other captured girls. But Aina’s kindness allows her to make allies in the harsh environment and she soon discovers that Tuoni, the deposed king of Tuonela, is also a victim of Tuonetar’s spells that can only be broken when he remarries. To save him and the other girls, Aina offers herself as his bride... but what she doesn’t know is that her fearless friend is on the way and plotting a daring escape.

Siiri and Aina face an enthralling battle on all sides in this fantastical feast of powerful storytelling as they grapple with their own sexual identities, the arrival of the new and unwelcome religion, the expectations of society that they will marry and have children, and the vindictive gods who have only death in their sights. But it is the two very different girls’ fiercely feminine friendship – and the trials that it will undergo – that lies at the dark, beating heart of Rath’s magical, malign and multi-faceted adventure which cannot help but hold you fast within its wintry and wonderful depths.

Life, death, the love of both friends and family, and a slow-burn Sapphic romance, which threads a dangerous path through the icy chills of the mythical Finnish underworld, all come under Rath’s watchful eye as this epic odyssey wends its majestic way through despair, dread, determination, awe-inspiring bravery and self-discovery.

With a fast-paced plot, plenty of twists and turns, a cast of characters straight out of a pagan playbook, and the promise of resolution in the second gripping adventure, South is the Sea, the grisly realm of Tuonela still has one more extraordinary story to tell!
(Arcadia, hardback, £20)