... the best type of historical fiction — electrifying, edifying and set in an utterly enthralling place and time ... Pylväinen positively shines throughout, whether portraying the day-to-day activities of the Sámi or the all-consuming romance between Willa and Ivvár. The late introduction of an almost comically evil but unquestionably realistic villain changes the novel's tenor, but given its overall scope, the episode simply feels like the flashy finale for a saga that you will desperately wish was already renewed for another season.
Engrossing ... Pylväinen... drops the reader immediately and arrestingly into a bitter northern climate that she makes intimate and familiar through the richness of her descriptions and the honesty of her characterisations ... Pylväinen conjures all these lives with great depth and power as the novel moves inexorably towards a brutal climax. She creates suspense through her atmospheric language but also through her understanding of and sympathy for the landscape and people she is depicting.
Pylväinen carries forward her sensitivity to the power, comfort and destructiveness of belief into her second novel. With engrossing details of reindeer herding, a beautifully rendered setting and powerful echoes of America’s own dark history of settlers forcing their religion on Indigenous peoples, The End of Drum-Time will leave a lasting impression on all readers of historical fiction.
An exquisite story that combines historical fiction, romance, and social commentary ... Pylväinen uses these themes as a foundation upon which she embroiders an exquisite variation that illumines a lesser-known culture as well as an earlier religious movement ... With her lush prose and balanced perspectives, Pylväinen tells the story with a fairness that does not cast one culture as "advanced" and the other as "primitive" ... This contemporary account of a dark chapter in Scandinavian history benefits from the author’s imaginative storytelling and her brilliance as a writer.
... captivating ... the author evocatively captures two cultures and shows what happens when Christian mores collide with the customs of the remote Sami. This is transcendent.
Beautifully written and masterfully researched, the book's greatest triumph is the characters, full of human foibles, passions, and tenderness, jealousy, courage, doubts, and moments of transcendence ... Ambitious and resonant, a vivid, fascinating, and moving novel.
