A stunning tale of courage and love which is very thought provoking long after it is finished. Well written and a gripping read

Beautifully written historical piece that got the right point to give the readers enough information to immerse us in the time period without sounding boring or like a textbook.
The story flows easily and each character is strongly built. I specially loved Diina, Maren, Kristen, and Ursa. But the best point is that even the characters we are supposed not to like, are still relatable in some way, because the author is that good at building up people that feel.real.
To know that true events inspired this fiction makes for an even better experience.

I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with and ARC of this novel in exchange of my honest review.

What makes a witch? In this chillingly dark tale Kiran Millwood Hargrave. gradually reveals how a storm changes the lives of the women of Vardø, forever. She skilfully portrays the horror that befalls a fractured community, who are furthered divided by incomers - People from a whole different way of life who have little or no empathy with the rhythms of Vardø and the measure the women had to take to survive.

This is a powerful story based on a true historical period. One of which I knew nothing and now wish to research. It took me a little while to get into the story, but it was obvious from the beginning this is not going to be a happy ever after story. As I became involved and engrossed in their world and the vivid description help me to place myself there and I cared about the women. I was left wanting more and yearning to find out what happened to them.

I loved this book, and very quickly became drawn in to the very claustrophobic lives of Maren and Ursa. The author conjured up a real sense of remoteness, and isolation in Vardo, and there was a constant feeling of dread following the arrival of Absalom, which made the book almost painful to read at times. The characters are believable, even if they are hard to relate to. The harsh existence of the women of Vardo is always made clear, without interfering with the story. This was an engrossing, and enjoyable read, and I would heartily recommend it.

"Even after all this, Maren thinks, Ursa believes herself to have power over him. Witch-hunter or no, Absalom is, after all, still only a man."

The Mercies is inspired by a historical event, the Vardø storm of 1617 where a terrible storm sank ten ships and killed forty men- the majority of Vardø's male population. This storm ultimately led to one of the biggest witch-trials in Scandinavia, and the first major witch-trial in Norway under the new laws of witchcraft and sorcery.

Maren Magnusdatter watched her father, brother and her husband-to-be die in the sudden storm, along with all of the men in her village. Left behind are just boys that were too young to go out to fish, and the women. They must learn to fend for themselves. And they adjust, as women often do, learning to cope with their collective grief and teaching themselves to fish and to slaughter and to take on the jobs that were traditionally male. They survive that way for eighteen months, before a pious Scotsman is sent to regain control of Vardø and the women who live there. Absalom Cornet isn't just a religious man, he is also a violent witch-hunter and where his young wife Ursa sees independent, strong women, he sees danger and evil that must be rooted out at all costs. This story is as twisted by suspicion as it is empowered by love, and shows the best and the worst that can come of a very human desire to survive.

My full 'why to buy' will be available in February, in time for the release of this book, but these are my initial impressions. The Mercies is a haunting, beautiful story about human nature and the impact of fear and suspicion on a small community. The storm took their menfolk, and the women were suddenly under pressure. This caused tiny fractures to appear, but there were more important concerns so the women kept keeping on, and made things work. It wasn't until eighteen months later, when Absalom and Ursa moved to the village and Absalom began to apply pressure to those fractures that the whole community suddenly and violently broke apart.

The Mercies pretty much broke my heart, but I knew that was going to happen from the start. This book doesn't give you any allusions that you're going to get a happy, glorious ending, and what else would you expect? It's the 1600s, and we're talking about witch-hunters and sapphic characters. I was pretty sure I was getting an unhappy ending from the start but I still let myself get overly attached to the women in this story, and hoped somehow that they'd overcome the injustices of history and create a happily ever after. I finished the book, and I'm now genuinely kicking myself that I've read this book in September, and now I've got to wait until February before more people read it and I can talk about it with everyone I know.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave's writing is beautiful. It's poetic and powerful, and I was drawn into her vivid descriptions of the environment so much that I was half-convinced I could feel the chill of the ice, even when I was laid reading it in the sunshine. If this is any example of her writing, I can't wait for my copy of The Deathless Girls to show up at the end of the month, because I'm desperate to read more of her prose. Her characters in particular were masterfully created. I felt for the women, even the kirke-women to a certain extent, because it felt so much that they were being manipulated by their society, and I felt even more for Maren and Ursa. Both women had lost everything, families fractured by loss and distance and they found each other as a tiny haven of gentle peace in a harsh and unforgiving environment.

And then there's Absalom. At this point, there's not much else I can say about Absalom, given that at every opportunity I write essays about how much I hate him. At first I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, reluctantly writing up his treatment of Ursa as a symptom of the way society treated women in general - still wrong, but didn't necessarily mean that Absalom himself was a bad person. Absalom is a TERRIBLE person. I'm not going into it in much detail, because a lot of it is tied into Ursa's discovery of her husband's history and that's much more powerful to read from her perspective than from mine. But let it be said: I hate him.

I don't tend to read historical fiction, but character driven fiction is my bread and butter, and Kiran Millwood Hargrave has created a masterful character piece here, worth picking up no matter what genre you tend to read.

Blog review #1 : https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2019/09/04/review-the-mercies/
Blog review #2, will go live 05/02/2020: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/02/05/why-should-i-buy-the-mercies/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2957063869

The Mercies is not an easy read - the writing style employed by the writer is sparse (to reflect the landscape, I imagine) but ends up being a distraction until the reader can get far enough into the book that the writing style becomes submerged by the intriguing storyline (about 15-20% of the way through). This is a shame - in the 'letter' sections of the book, it is apparent that the author can write in a much 'easier' way, and I can't help wishing that the author had chosen to do this all the way through the book. As it stands, I worry that many will hate the writing style so much that they will 'give up' on the interesting story being told.
While the story is a fiction, it is roughly based on events that did happen, and these events should certainly have been a good basis for a novel concerned with the clash of three or four different cultures.
I have read books in the past that have been like wading through mud, each word serving a dual purpose of both description and story-building, this book certainly falls into that category, but seems to end just as the story is truly becoming fulfilling.
A flawed book, that should have delivered far more than it did.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my review copy.