A bandy-legged warrior

Halli Sveinsson loves to hear stories from the days when the valley was a wild and dangerous place, besieged by bloodthirsty Trows. He likes to imagine the night the 12 legendary heroes joined forces and fought till dawn to expel the ancient foes from the valley. Now farming has taken over from fighting Trows, and to Halli’s bitter disappointment, heroics seem to be a thing of the past. But when a practical joke rekindles an old blood feud, he sees a chance for a daring quest of his own. He is joined by Aud, a girl every bit as reckless and headstrong as he is. Together they challenge everything they have ever known and discover the truth about the legends, the valley and themselves. Those who have read the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud will hardly connect with Heroes of the Valley though the protagonists of both, the Bartimaeus books and this one, are teenage boys. But the similarity ends there. While the earlier series set in an imaginary London is full of djinns and afrits and plots about overthrowing the government, Heroes is set in a valley surrounded by mountains and populated by descendents of the 12 “heroes”.

Since he was a child, Halli has been told that his “house” had descended from the greatest of the heroes, Svein. It was he who got the other heroes together and cast the flesh-eating Trows out of the valley. Halli, like every other Sveinsson, believes implicitly the heroic tales of Svein and his two great misgivings are that there are no heroes around anymore (tired of the blood feuds among the 12 houses, the valley council has long outlawed war and all swords have been melted into ploughshares) and that he does not look like the rest of his family: Tall, blonde and well-built.

As his old nurse always reminds him with great glee, a puny bandy-legged child like him who was born in mid-winter is bound to meet a horrible death sooner or later (but he might as well eat his sprouts while he is still around).

The young Halli, however, soon realises that every other “house” in the valley has almost exactly the same tales involving their founding fathers which the Sveinssons are positive are Svein’s. Thus when Halli meets Aud, the daughter of House Arnesson, during the yearly gathering of “houses”, the two have a tough time sorting out whether Arne was the greater hero or Svein. Halli soon learns that the same is true for every other “house” and the only thing common among them is that each thinks their “house” is the best and the rest are “scum”.

Undaunted, young Halli is always on the lookout for adventure and what he lacks in brawn, he makes up with brain and sheer pluck. Unfortunately for him, not everyone thinks his deeds to be very heroic and more often than not, he spends his time undergoing some punishment or the other.

Things take a nasty turn when Halli’s uncle, Brodir — generally regarded a the black sheep of the family — is killed by the leader of House Hakonsson, Hord, and his brother Olaf. Halli is witness to the murder and his life changes drastically from then on. While his parents, the leaders of the Sveinssons, would rather take land from the murderers, Halli wants revenge and nothing short of Hord and Olaf’s deaths will see justice done.

So our bandy-legged hero embarks on an adventure of a lifetime and sets off a chain of events that will change life in the valley forever. Straud spins a masterful tale in Heroes and the result is a book that is refreshing, hilarious at places and suitable serious when the plot demands it. For once, the hero is not a strapping youth who lops off the heads of his enemies with consummate ease (Svein, of course was a master head-lopper), but instead is one who can think on his feet and is not afraid to take on any task, however difficult.

During his adventure, Halli finds the truth about the heroes and of the dreaded Trows and, as a credit to Stroud, you will not put the book down till you find the truth for yourself.