The Shapeshifters

April 6, 2015
Four-year-old Matthias Mickelsson has been kidnapped from his home in Sweden. The only lead is a picture of a small, odd-looking man snapped by a motion-sensitive camera belonging to Susso Myrén. She has devoted her life to proving that trolls exist, after seeing one in a picture her father took years before. But after the suspect’s picture gets national attention, Susso is attacked by those who hide and protect the stallo—shape-shifting trolls and other creatures from legend. Susso must race across Sweden looking for clues about the stallo, the kidnapping, and a similar crime from 25 years before, while stallo and their guardians hunt her. Shape-shifting isn’t the only dangerous stallo power threatening Susso, and the creatures have spent centuries learning how to protect themselves. The story is understated even at its most tense. Spjut’s prose evokes a cold, mythical Scandinavian landscape, with creatures as ephemeral as a remote forest’s mist yet as solid as mountains. Spjut turns Scandinavian mythology upside down in a shades-of-gray world built for lovers of fantastical suspense.