The Craftsman and the Wizard by Joel Newlon

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Craftsman and the Wizard is a flawed but entertaining story, a high-fantasy novel with the trappings of an old Norse tale, but which is firmly rooted in the present day.

The village of Two Rivers has a terrible problem. Ever since one of the farmers disturbed an ancient runestone in the middle of his fields, the village has been haunted by a draugr, the revenant of an old burial mound. The monster has been taking children from the farms all around, binding them beneath the earth and leaving their families to mourn.

Two unlikely heroes, and later a third, come on quest to help Two Rivers. The dwarven smith Dvalinn is called to answer an ancient debt, bringing all his skills as a warrior and craftsman. The apprentice wizard Asmund is called by a series of terrible dreams. Later, a woodcutter girl named Kolga joins Asmund, at first out of a yearning for adventure, later out of love.

Most of the story follows first Dvalinn, then Asmund and Kolga, as they make their way separately toward the stricken village. The two sets of heroes move independently – they know nothing about each other and don’t interact until the very end of the story.

The two plot threads have very different flavor and feel, almost as if the heroes are moving through two completely separate worlds. Dvalinn’s scenes are more entwined with Norse myth, involving epic battles against supernatural foes. Asmund and Kolga seem to be moving through a more generic fantasy world, facing down human bigotry and corruption. In fact, some of Asmund’s scenes turn into rather unsubtle political satire, of a kind that would only make sense in today’s world.

In fact, this dichotomy is what I had the most trouble with while reading The Craftsman and the Wizard. It was as if the novel didn’t know what it wanted to be. One moment I might be lost in a truly audacious scene built out of deep myth, the next I would find myself plodding through a scene about a cowardly warrior or a pathetic mad king. I kept getting pulled out of the story as a result.

Still, Joel Newlon has done a good job with this story. His prose is clean, with only a few copy-editing errors (and one consistently irritating misspelling). The story has plenty of emotional heft, especially when it focuses on the heroes and their motivations. I found myself caring about the characters and their struggles, turning the pages to see how the plot threads would resolve. The conclusion was entirely satisfying. Recommended.