Cover Image: In Search of Beira's Hammer

In Search of Beira's Hammer

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Member Reviews

In Search of Beira's Hammer; A Fantasy Novella by Kristina Young was not my cup of tea. I found it a little boring! Thankful to read this before it was published but it will be a pass for me. Thank you!

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Sitting in winter Germany, missing the Highlands of Scotland, this has been a great read for me.

The search for Beira's hammer lead me through a wonderful journey along the Westhighland Trail together with mythical creatures I already knew and others I immediately fell in love with.

This book leaves you with the same warm feeling as a Ghibli movie does ans I am eager to read more by this Autor.

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While I’m all on board with the idea of a whimsical novella about a modern day woman heading off on a nonsensical mythological quest where she gets to interact with, well, bits of mythology with opinions about modern times — and this story has all of the above — it’s the style that didn’t work for me. It has a certain momentum but I found it too chaotic and unpolished; I recognise it’s a matter of preference, so might work differently for others.

Thanks to #Netgalley for providing an arc of the book.

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Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a free copy of this book to read, it was a delight!

A short yet very sweet novella of folklore and a mystical adventure through the Scottish wilderness. Scarlet is out on a hike looking for a hammer to bring mountains to the rather flat Berlin in which she lives. In the process, she meets a troll who she enlists for help in finding it as well as a few other folktale creatures that that come across in the process.

This book reads much like a fairy tale, the main character not usually fazed by the many different creatures that she comes across. Her mind open to who she meets along her way, and respectful of their culture as well. It takes me back to when I had a book of short stories as a child, due to this, the language is just easy enough for a child to understand as they are falling asleep.

However that definitely doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable for the older crowd! It made me laugh multiple different times, especially over the phantom pebbles that had been cursed to fill hiker's shoes. If you want to have a short light hearted read, this is the book for you!

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Thank you for Netgalley for the copy.

I picked this up on a whim. The cover drew me in.

I generally avoid whimsy magical realism, but I really connected to this one. I would have finished it in one sitting, if I hadn't started reading it at midnight.
It breezy and fun, The setting was charming and full of magic. I loved finding out about all the fantastical details and learning about all the different creatures that populate this world.
I would read more by this author.

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On a walk along the Scottish Highlands in search of the resting place of Beira's Hammer, Scarlett crosses paths with a small number of fantastical and mythological creatures. Along the way she is assisted by Amhlaidh, the troll whose payment for his help is to be read Scottish Poetry before bedtime.
This is a fun book that can be read in one sitting and is a genuinely pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Kristina Young's humour is a little on the absurdist side, throwing in today's technology with mythological creatures as well as some talking grass and phantom pebbles.
It is well recommended.

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A Fun read but lacked substance overall. I really enjoyed the concept and the world where magical and reality collide. I feel like a full length novel would have been able to really draw you in and grip you.

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Very mildly amusing. There's mainly one joke, which boils down to "Hipsters, amirite?"

It's short even for a novella, and therefore quite linear. The main character lives in Berlin, and is bored by how flat the area is, so she goes on a quest in Scotland for a legendary hammer that can create lakes and mountains. Early on, she connects with a local troll, and they meet several other supernaturals while searching for the hammer. Everyone has exactly one quirk, and no more depth than that.

There are a couple of dozen footnotes that explain Scottish and, later, German phrases, most of which are clear from context or would be well known to a native English speaker (which I believe the author is not); few native English speakers will need a note to understand "rascal," for example. The German for the Department of Forestry is translated in the main text immediately after the footnote that translates it, making the footnote redundant.

It has the feel of someone who's been told about Terry Pratchett, and that he made jokes in the context of fantasy and put in footnotes, but who has either never read him or hasn't understood anything about his approach.

In the pre-publication version I received via Netgalley, the author also makes pretty much all the mistakes it's possible to make when punctuating dialog. I don't know how much editing it's going to get between now and publication, but I suspect not enough.

For me, unsuccessful.

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A delightful introduction to Young’s writing, In Search of Beira’s Hammer is also a series of introductions to a host of exciting characters. Unfortunately, the one character I felt wasn’t properly fleshed out was the first person narrator, which did leave me feeling slightly detached.

If this wasn’t quite a four star book for me, it’s largely because there wasn’t enough of it. I didn’t feel that the novella was long enough to give all the characters and the plot the space they needed to properly develop, and the plot especially felt both a bit rushed and also like an excuse to meet the characters (in which case just focus on the characters).

Despite that, I look forward to following Young’s writing, and hope that she’ll return to this setting and characters, or explore something similar.

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Thank you Kristina Young, BooksGoSocial and Netgalley for this free ARC in exchange for a review.

This was a cute, fun book, yet it lacked description. Maybe a full length novel would have been a better idea, rather than only a novella.

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This was really funny actually. I laughed out loud at numerous scenes. This idea that one day out of the blue an ordinary person could bump in something random like a troll - it was great

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