Captivating. Enthralling. Utterly engaging. These are the first words to flit across my mind upon finishing this book. It is beautifully written and flows with complete grace from chapter to chapter. Each character seems to leap off the page, not simply a lifeless imitation of a historical figure but a real flesh-and-blood person who you bond with over the course of the novel. It is the first novel in a long time that has captured my imagination so fully- the first day I picked it up, I struggled to let it go again. I resisted the urge to wax lyrical about it all day. I plan on buying a copy for each of my friends upon its release (not a modest promise when one subsists on a student budget).

There is representation of the LGBT+ community and the mentally ill community here, and I admit that at first I flinched away. I have had too many negative experiences. This book, however, did everything right. It felt as though there was no judgement, no criticism. The characters were set loose across the page and allowed to tell their own tales as they would.

This book is truly an incredible achievement for historical fiction.

I could not put this book down yesterday. Set in the 1860s to 1890s, it tells the story of Prince Albert Victor, the would be Uncle of Queen Elizabeth II.
Albert is known as Eddy and he is the heir while his younger brother Georgie is what you'd could the spare, but everyone sees Eddy as weak, naive, and undecided- and his ability to reign is unknown to everyone including his parents. They send him to university at some point.
It's at the university that he meets Jem, his new tutor, but it’s at that first sight that Jem knows he could never walk away from Eddy. “For most of his life, his heart is a passive, sleepy thing. Then it sees a young face peeking out from under a floppy hat in the morning sun. And when his heart awakes, it roars. He panics. He does not know what to do….to reach out towards it might bring discovery, scandal, and disgrace.”
I also cannot comprehend why in reading this, there were times I felt Alan Hollinghurst’s vibes. The characters reminded me of The Line of Beauty…only here each was a intricate as they were dynamic.
Eddy faces the surmounting pressure to live up to the beloved heir and though he's of good heart and loves wholly, there's the feeling of an impending doom from the beginning.
The author's writing makes for an easy and delightful read. His characters are as lively as they are full of secrets and ambitions. If you are into historical fiction, anything set in the 18th and 19th Century, then this book had better be your first read.
I would love to read Valhalla because the author succeeds in blending fact and fiction in a surreal and intriguing way. I requested to read this book off NetGalley, and it’s been a thrill, a trip down history at a time that I believe the kind of love Eddy and Jem shared could never thrive, but with every turn of the page, every scroll, I felt their passion, commitment, struggles and most of all their wishes for the future.