Castle of the White Wolf

Andrei Belyanin’s new novel “Castle of the White Wolf” in some way brings us back to the time of the novel “The Sword Without a Name” and awakens nostalgic memories. The hero of the novel is a sort of grown-up and wiser Lord Skiminok, the thirteenth Landgrave of the Sword Without a Name. He is a widower raising his grown daughter Helga.
And the first main question, when we begin to delve into the life of this little family, is: “And who do we have for a mother?” Because there is a father — border guard Stavr Godinovich — an antiquarian in the 21st century and lord of Castle Kost in the Middle Ages, as well as a certain Uncle Edik — a madman and former god who is constantly searching for his hammer… well, you understand which god we mean. From the fact that the girl is inhumanly strong, resistant to fire and blows, and also bears the name Helga, anyone who has ever been interested in Old Norse epic can name the mother. Of course, it is Hel — the goddess of death in the pantheon of the ancient Vikings, and the harmless YouTube hero Uncle Edik is her beloved brother Thor.

In fact, he became the stumbling block between the spouses, and in the end it turned out as it did — after Ragnarok, Hel lives abroad, while Stavr is raising the young princess of Asgard in modern Astrakhan, periodically leaving on duty-related business for the Middle Ages. And things are restless there — now dwarves raid from beyond the boundaries, now slave traders, now a dragon flies in to burn villages, now the notorious Father Goriot from Verona shows up.

But this cannot go on forever — Helga must choose which side to stand on, and even before she comes of age, all who possibly could have clashed in the struggle for the future power capable of destroying and creating worlds have already collided: the White Committee, the Frost Giants, vampires and necromancers, in short, half-finished gods, humans, and undead of every sort and rank.

However, not only her father is capable of protecting his daughter; the girl herself can quite stand up for herself. And in the company of the talking-and-reading horses Centurion and Rebecca, the beautiful dhampir Dana, the Czech vampire Vaclav, and the entire adult population of Castle Kost — they are simply invincible! And no hysterical villains sending text messages with an army of corpses can cope with our heroes! And family ties are no water, even among goddesses and their daughters.

This alignment of forces, together with Andrei Belyanin’s trademark humor, creates an excellent foundation for a series about the lives of Scandinavian gods and ordinary Russian officer-antique dealers. It should be noted that Andrei Olegovich, whenever he turns to one epic tradition or another — whether Europe, Russian folk tales, or legends about the Aesir gods — always treats the source material very carefully, even while adding qualities necessary to move the plot forward. So it is in The Border Guards — all the characters present are quite real and have lived thousands of years in legends, and now they gain a new life on the pages of the Astrakhan writer’s novel as well.