Joanne Harris - Runemarks <AudioBook>

Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the end of the world, and goblins had been at the cellar again. . . . Not that anyone would admit it was goblins. In Maddy Smith’s world, order rules. Chaos, old gods, fairies, goblins, magic, glamours–all of these were supposedly vanquished centuries ago. But Maddy knows that a small bit of magic has survived. The “ruinmark” she was born with on her palm proves it–and makes the other villagers fearful that she is a witch (though helpful in dealing with the goblins-in-the-cellar problem). But the mysterious traveler One-Eye sees Maddy’s mark not as a defect, but as a destiny. And Maddy will need every scrap of forbidden magic One-Eye can teach her if she is to survive that destiny.



Review
This book has a great opening sentence: "Seven o'clock on a Monday morning, 500 years after the End of the World, and goblins had been at the cellar again." Joanne Harris, best known as the author of Chocolat, is good at beginnings and pay-offs: each of the chapters in this nine-part fantasy epic has a punchy finish that makes you want to read on. This is despite the complexity of the story, which is based on Norse myth and uses elaborate geography and hierarchies. Maddy Smith, the novel's young heroine, who was born with a rusty-coloured rune mark on her hand, has powers that make her an outsider in her village, where dream, imagination and magic are frowned upon. A nasty incident in the cellar, however, throws Maddy into the company of Norse gods, goblins and monsters, revisiting the 500-year-old conflict of Ragnarok in which the Old Order of deities was overthrown and a rigid, puritanical regime came into force. Identities and loyalties shift as the plot thickens. Especially enjoyable are Harris's aphorisms, her satire of joyless piety, and the comically irreverent vernacular spoken by a dissolute goblin and the trickster god Loki –The Sunday Times, August 27th 2007