Icefall

Before my trip to Mexico, Emily pressed her library book into my hand and made me swear that I wouldn't lose it.  She said she had read it over and over and still wasn't tired of it.  I would love it, she said.  She was right. 

Matthew Kirby has written a first-person fantasy novel that avoids all of the cliches.  There are no dwarves, elves, rings, schools of magic, quests, or orphans with a destiny, only the children of a Norse warlord waiting out the war in a tiny keep pressed against the edge of a glacier and a freezing fjord.  I guess this is juvenile fiction, but the best kind.  

This was the best book I have read this year.  I read it three times through in Mexico and I wasn't tired of it either.