Book Review of The Keepers of Metsan Valo by Wendy Webb

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This novel gradually transforms from a crime thriller with a supernatural undercurrent into a tale of the supernatural. As such it makes for a good read and it is an excellent story about stories and their power. The heroine, Annalise Halla, returns to Metsan Valo, the family seat of the title, in order, so she thinks, to lay her late and beloved grandmother to rest. In the process she has some terrifying experiences before she learns that, for centuries, the wealth, prestige and indeed “power” of the Halla family has depended on at least one member of the family always being in communion with the Vaki, which the author uses to mean the elemental spirits from Finnish folklore (the story, though, is set in a small community on Lake Superior). Annalise does not know whether to believe any of this, and she certainly does not know whether she really wants to get involved with the Vaki, should they really exist!

It becomes clear that the help which the Vaki give to the Halla family comes at a price, the dilemma is whether or not to pay this, but a more pertinent question is whether or not Annalise is really being given any choice at all. The author’s view of the Vaki ends up being a little rose-tinted, and it is worth pointing the reader towards other novels which offer another view. Sally Magnusson’s “The Ninth Child” has a very clear message that Scotland’s equivalent to the Vaki are completely ruthless and delight in sacrifice rather than mercy.

The big problem with most modern treatments of folklore about the Vaki and similar beings from other cultures, is that they habitually confute a beneficial balance of nature with keeping on the good side of (paying unfailing homage to) supernatural beings who are wholly unnatural. They, themselves, do not obey or respect the laws of nature, nor do they love anyone but those who love them -and that entirely on their own terms. To commune with such is to abandon both the physical laws of nature and any objective moral law by which one may tell good from bad.

This book may be read and enjoyed as a fairy story, which is precisely what it is. It is telling, though, that the large white dog called “Pascal”, the bravest and most sensible character in the book, is left stranded by the author as soon as she takes the story towards honouring the Halla family’s ancient bargain with the Vaki. 

 

The Keepers of Metsan Valo is published by Lake Union Publishing on the 5^th of October 2021