24 Festive Tasks: Door 8 – St. Lucia’s Day, Book:
Read a book set in Scandinavia / Northern Europe, by a Northern European / Nordic author, with a predominantly white cover (or white with red lettering), newly released in November or December of this year, or set in the candle-lit world (i.e., before the discovery of electricity – roughly, that is, before the late 19th century).
My book for this square was Michael Jecks’s The Mad Monk of Gidleigh (book 14 of the Knights Templar series), which is sort of Jecks doing Follett — not stylistically but topically, in that all sorts of murder and mayhem results from a medieval English vill(age)’s Lord of the Manor, his misbegotten son and other men of the community (including several members of the clergy) not being able to keep their breeches on — or their robes, in the case of the clergy. I was a little dismayed when I found this was the direction into which Jecks was going with this book (also, this being the kind of story it is, part of the reveal really wasn’t one), but by and large Jecks pulls it off (no pun intended) with his customary panache; even if there were a number of plot twirls that I could have done without (including towards the end).
