Soul Eater

This is the third of Paver’s projected six ‘Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’. The earlier books earned a lot of praise and this one is equally deserving. It’s the tale of the two children from the earlier books, Torak and Renn, tracking their kidnapped companion Wolf across an icy waste.

It’s a story with a relatively small cast of characters and a single narrative trajectory, yet Paver finds interest and excitement everywhere. The relationship between the three protagonists is expertly played, particularly when the story turns on the trust between the boy Torak and his wolf brother; and Wolf’s view of the world, firmly based in real animal behaviour, is entirely convincing.

The story falls into two parts: the children’s survival in their journey across the ice; and then their struggle with Wolf’s kidnappers, the sinister soul eaters, first, in the labyrinthine passages beneath the earth and then on the shifting ice floes. The excitement of the surface adventure draws extra power from Paver’s creation of a way of life, myth and magic that is rooted in people’s relationship with an unyielding environment. The author’s note at the end of the novel shows the extent of the author’s research and hands-on experience, in present day Canada, Greenland and the Carpathian mountains, which have gone into the making of a story set 6,000 years ago. The result is a triumph of the imagination.