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.

May 15, 2015

This Swedish thriller, the author's second but the first to be translated into English, begins with a young mother and son taking a holiday at a remote country cabin in the late 1970s. A couple of days into their stay a giant creature snatches the boy from the front yard. The mother insists to the police that it was a troll. The story then flashes forward to the present to introduce Susso Myren, a part-time cryptozoologist. Susso has always believed in the stallo (trolls) and runs a website about their existence. When a young boy disappears after she posted a clear photograph of a small troll on her website, Susso follows the trail to northern Sweden. Spjut's unfolding story line alternates between a small group of humans who guard the shapeshifting trolls and Susso's investigation that will expose them to the world. The human keepers are as dangerous as the creatures that they protect. They will stop at nothing to keep the truth from Susso, and the measures they must take to keep the trolls happy are spine tingling. VERDICT This spooky novel is great for open-minded mystery/thriller readers who enjoy a bit of genre blending as well as fantasy fans. [See Kristi Chadwick's Mystery Spotlight feature, "Not Your Usual Suspects," LJ 4/15/15.--Ed.]--Kristen Stewart, Pearland Lib., Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
Swedish author Spjut offers an atmospheric tale of mythical creatures set amid an unforgiving Nordic landscape. Susso Myren has been searching for proof of trolls ever since her grandfather took an aerial photograph of a strange creature riding on a bear. When her remote-control camera catches a mysterious and very small man near a home where a boy has been kidnapped, she believes she has discovered one of the stallo folk, creatures from sami, or Laplander, mythology who can control human thought and take on animal form. Susso, along with her mother and ex-boyfriend, chases clues across the Swedish countryside, finding links to another kidnapping and a connection to John Bauer, an artist who depicted trolls and gnomes in the early twentieth century. However, an ancient society tasked with protection of trolls works to thwart Susso's investigation. Exhaustive detail of everyday life in the north of Norway slows the pace, but the plot quickens toward the end, and the author offers a chilling and plausible conclusion. A promising debut that will entice fans of Scandinavian fiction and fantasy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)