Description:
"Some books make you laugh, and others make you think. It's a rare literary offering that prompts both. Return of The Secret Viking achieves this unlikely feat and much more. Martin Myers does it again in a novel filled with humour, insight, and a love of language. Bravo."
- Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
PREPOSTEROUS, POETIC, PROFOUND AND EXTREMELY FUNNY
When 1300-year-old Viking warrior poet, Thorsten the Rood, realizes the novel he has been writing is becoming reality, his efforts to escape a world of his own design include hiding himself away. But the renegade plot has its own ideas and won't let go; it twists and turns and now the long-lived Viking's life is in danger. How and when did he become a character in his own book? And who is writing it now? Is it the mysterious know-it-all search engine called Giggle? Or is it the malevolent diet doctor, Lion Rampa? Or has his friend and confidant, Professor August Dallou, become his enemy, and his downfall? Return of The Secret Viking is the mind-bending second installment in the saga of Thorsten the Rood by internationally acclaimed author Martin Myers, and a journey not to be missed.
Review Quotes:
"Some books make you laugh, and others make you think. It's a rare literary offering that prompts both. Return of The Secret Viking achieves this unlikely feat and much more. Martin Myers does it again in a novel filled with humour, insight, and a love of language. Bravo."
- Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour"Reading a Martin Myers novel - the latest is Return of The Secret Viking - is like riding in the front seat of a rollercoaster In the most recent instalment of his Viking series, Myers has 1,300-year-old Norseman Thorsten the Rood penning his own novel and along the way meeting up with the impediments any writer faces and wondering how to deal with them. Heaven and hell. Good and evil. Why am I here and what's it all about? The whole experience leaves you breathless and, as with the rollercoaster, when it's over there is only one thing to do. Ride the damn thing again. Which is a good thing if we're talking about a series.
- Jerry Amernic, author of The Last Witness"Did a 1300-year-old Viking ever run a pushcart? Was he a projectionist? Did he try to hold a class reunion at which none of his fellows could recall him? And all this time was he in a coma in a well-known hospital? These are the sorts of queries that plague the reader of Marty Myers' latest piece of magical realism, a dense (yet diffuse) novel (or hallucinogenic autobiography) part of which involves an ice cream shop in Niagara-on-the-Lake (where there is no Baskin-Robbins) and a bookstore on Queen Street in Toronto (which is, indeed, on the south side of Queen Street in Toronto). Return of The Secret Viking also involves a wheaten terrier who writes a blog; an AI that is clearly more A than I; Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly (who runs a b&b), and an annoying Thalia, a pink muse.
"If you think you might meet Gogol's nose, dressed as a privy counsellor, or find yourself on García Márquez' island of Macondo, or in a universe created by Salman Rushdie or Kurt Vonnegut, you'll be right at home here, in a Toronto in which a Viking (re-)encounters a millennial sorcerer.
"Maybe not. I was."
- Peter H. Salus, linguist, computer scientist, and author in many fields