Review: Grand Harvest: From Field to Fable

Grand Harvest: From Field to Fable by Jaakko Koivula
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like to read books by writers from outside the US and UK (and Canada/Australia/NZ) occasionally, to broaden my exposure to other world traditions, and I don't know much about Finnish folklore (or, really, Finnish anything) apart from knowing that it was a source for Tolkien, who based Gandalf on a character from the Kalevala and whose Elvish languages were influenced by Finnish. So when this came up on Netgalley - with a cover that playfully references the famous American Gothic painting by Grant Wood - I picked it up.

English has a lot of idioms. I don't usually notice this until I read a book by someone who doesn't have English as their first language (or, occasionally, does have English as their first language but isn't very good at it) and doesn't write it idiomatically. Many of the issues here are, as usual, with the wrong preposition being used, but sometimes it's word order, or whether something is plural or singular. The author mentions the book having had a lot of editing; unfortunately, it still could do with some more, not just for the non-idiomatic English but for some typos, occasional errors in dialog punctuation, and other minor glitches.

Setting that aside, it's an enjoyable fantasy, which walks an unusual line between an overall cozy feel (small town, people just living their mundane lives as farmers and traders and crafters) and a darker undertone; the town is under what could be described as a curse effectively disguised as a blessing, the dwarves who live there (especially their leader) have a harrowing backstory, and there are some bandits who... do not come to a good end. Also, there's been a (possibly natural) disaster which has rendered magic largely ineffective, because what runes do has changed. The dwarves and their human fellow townspeople don't think this has anything to do with them, because, for reasons connected with the harrowing backstory, they don't allow magic in the town, but... it does have something to do with them, and a couple of young wizards have to convince them of this fact in order to save everyone's lives - which they are determined to do, despite some danger to themselves, because, like everyone apart from the bandits, they are basically decent people.

If the book has a weakness, it's that most of the various dwarves aren't distinct enough that I could easily keep them straight in my head, a problem that could be alleged of the dwarves in The Hobbit or, for that matter, Snow White as well. Perhaps it's inherently difficult to make dwarves individual, for some reason. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable story with good emotional beats and arcs. The ending could have been crisper and more decisive, but it's not a big fault. I don't know that I'd bother with a sequel; it didn't grip me really strongly, and the non-idiomatic English was distracting. But it's not a bad book by any means.

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