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Title details for The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel - Available

The Wild Hunt

by Emma Seckel
Ruth Urquhart
Audiobook
3 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
3 of 3 copies available
The islanders have only three rules: don't stick your nose where it's not wanted, don't mention the war, and never let your guard down during October. Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past-her mother's abandonment, her brother's icy distance, the unspeakable tragedy of World War II-and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, bird-like creatures of Celtic legend-whispered to carry the souls of the dead-have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war's wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a local boy disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island's dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 2, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696608534
      • File size: 254675 KB
      • Duration: 08:50:34

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 23, 2022
      A young man’s disappearance rouses old superstitions in Seckel’s intoxicating and atmospheric debut. Several years after the end of WWII, the death of Leigh Welles’s father brings her back to the Scottish island she grew up on and leaves her feeling unmoored ahead of the arrival of the “sluagh,” a flock of supposedly haunted crows that menace the island each October when “the border between this world and the next” is believed to be most porous. Rumored to “carry the dead’s souls,” the birds have been growing more aggressive, killing farm animals and attacking a schoolgirl, since the war took the lives of many of the island’s young men. When Leigh’s family friend Hugo vanishes after the annual festival to scare away the sluagh, the locals suspect the birds of evildoing and take Hugo for dead after a thorough search of the small island comes up empty. Unwilling to give up so easily, Leigh joins forces with Iain MacTavish, a war hero and widower, to find Hugo, in the process uncovering forces stranger than either had imagined. Seckel’s descriptions evocatively conjure the roiling dread that permeates the island (“The sluagh had grown so numerous that their once elegant ballets in the air had blacked out the sky. Great unnatural clouds”), underscoring the elegiac reflections on grief and the toll of war. This moody meditation delivers. Agent: Catherine Drayton and Claire Friedman, InkWell Management.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Ruth Urquhart takes on this long-winded tale of a mysterious disappearance and the hunt for a missing lad on a sparsely populated Scottish island. Leigh Welles, depressed and disappointed with life, believes in the mysterious sluagh--legendary, bloodthirsty, soul-stealing Celtic creatures who haunt the island in October. When a local boy goes missing, Welles searches for him with the help of sad- toned Iain MacTavis, an RAF veteran and widower. Urquhart's fluid performance, sprinkled with Gaelic and hard-edged Scottish accents, seems relentless and mind numbing. It is replete with descriptions of magic, the wild highlands, and empty rocky shorelines. Haunting scenes of the missing, past and present, overshadow the mystery. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 10, 2024

      Seckel's haunting debut describes life on an isolated Scottish island just after World War II. Leigh Welles left the island for the mainland, but now receives the news that her father has fallen from a cliff and died. Leigh returns home and finds the island folk in a state of unease. The war was hard on them, and now it's October and the sluagh--crowlike creatures believed to "carry the dead's souls"--have come back and are attacking them out in the open. After islander Hugo McClare kills one, he disappears. The island folk look for him, but somehow, they aren't surprised when they don't find him. As Leigh and Iain MacTavish, a possible love interest, join in the search, they learn that the island is stranger and more dangerous than they ever suspected. Narrator Ruth Urquhart's wonderful Scottish accent perfectly complements the book. Her understated narrative style heightens the horror of the sluagh. She immerses listeners into the insular, superstitious, and failing island with its many secrets and air of danger. Urquhart's narration deftly alternates between intense and despairing. VERDICT Recommended for listeners who enjoy atmospheric, Scottish-set mysteries with a hint of the supernatural.--B. Allison Gray

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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