linguist | Ad Librum Aeternam

*I received a physical ARC in exchange for an honest review. No compensation has been given and I write this book review willingly. A big thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada and Scout Press Books!*

Introduction

I’ll be honest, when came the time to choose for physical galleys with Simon & Schuster Canada, I picked Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik thanks to its intriguing but striking cover and the blurb which mentioned two things I love (the Arctic and languages). But did I truly believe I would like it, even more love it? No.

What a mistake!

Thankfully, it proved me wrong. I still feel shame about this doubt, but damn, it’s one of the best suspense/mystery books I ever read, if not my favorite.

I guess you could say me and the book had a bad start, but fell in love hard?

Best Yep GIFs | Gfycat

Wish to go explore the reasons Girl in Ice is so surprising and unique?

I bet you do!

Come on, grab my hand, and let’s thaw the coldness of doubts and warm it into love!

Blurb

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North and meet this girl, try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

The Positive Sides

Honestly, I’m sorry but I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. So that’s a victory for it, the author, and even me who discovered such a great read!

It is so, so rare and unique for the setting to be in the Arctic, and the main character to be a linguist! And to BOTH be in the same story and so intricately intertwined. LOVE IT! As a polyglot, translator, and language teacher, I relate so much to her, I connect deeply with her thoughts and views of language and culture, and it warms my heart to see us being portrayed this faithfully (and for once!) in an amazing story. The linguist, Valerie, is a hero, too! As the author and her character Val demonstrate it cleverly in Girl in Ice :).

Furthermore, the writing and descriptions of Inuktitut words and meanings as well as their culture and perspectives are like poetry to my soul! This books is also a lot about climate change from the ice, glaciers, freezing winds, and science. A great environmental read for sure! But its strongest tie is love, truth, and language.

I love how the surroundings of the characters, their settings, aren’t static. Animals and nature are constantly in movement, the characters actually exist IN a place, not just in a spot with the environment fading in and out for the plot. It’s fun and involving.

As for the characters, Val is lovely, crippled with anxiety (believably too!), low self-esteem, the death of her brother…, yet she is brillant, stronger than she knows, kinder too, and much more compassionate than she deems herself to be. To me, she’s a heroine! A true one. I also love how she isn’t good around children, but ends up risking everything left in her life to save a little girl she came to love. 🙂 Amazing.

The villains are… irky. And I say this with much reverence and admiration. They are dangerous, changeable, both with motives that run deeper than they let on, they keep us shifting from foot to foot, wondering… and they irked me. I love it when it happens. Most “villains” in contemporary stories are… two-dimensional, if not only one-dimensional; but these are much life-like. Scarily so, too. I love to hate them, and despise when I can relate to them here and there. Wonderful job!

In terms of intrigues, the mysteries are so well-woven you catch glimpses of the answers, but never the whole image of the puzzle. And it is so rewarding at the end to see the full image solved. A real thrill to unfurl all of this alongside Val.

Lastly, the ending is beautiful, hopeful in its own way, poignant, raw; not cold at all! But quite warm, indeed. The very last sentence is so true to a linguist. Charming and evocative.

I kept reading through the climax and ending even though I had work to do. I just HAD TO KNOW how it ended. How all those mysteries, rendered believable in this intricate tale, unfolded and resolved. So, yeah, I guess that’s quite a proof it’s a book worth reading, don’t you think? It’s just that unique and great!

The Negative Sides

Sometimes the pace seems frozen (ha!), but this is more of a statement that it will happen than a real negative side. Why? Well, when this happens, the mysteries thicken subtly and the characters and their relationships unfurl even more. In the end, these slow passages are essential to this story. So, just keep wading through it like you would through snow, and you’ll soon find yourself enjoying the wild ride again.

In Conclusion

* stands up and applauds *

Such a unique, bold, and touching story! Finally, a story set in Arctic with language at its core for the plot. A lovable main character, a perfect representation of a linguist (which puts us in a hero’s shoes!!!), an amusing cast of characters, and real suspense. A thrill! Thus, I give Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik a rating of 5 out of 5.

Verohnsaht! Joy!

If you want to learn more about the author, you can visit her Web site, you can also follow her on Facebook author page, her Twitter account, her Instagram, and Goodreads. You can also add Girl in Ice to your bookshelves on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Beginner’s Croatian with Online Audio: A Book Review

Book Reviews, languages June 28, 2021 Leave a comment

Hippocrene Books Website

By Aida Vidan & Robert Niebuhr

Genre: Non-Fiction, Language, Language learning, Travel
Number of pages: 369
ISBN: 9780781814089
Format: Paperback (MP3 online audio)
Publication date: March 24th, 2020
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
Type: Book, language learning book, language learning textbook

*I received a free physical copy in exchange for an honest review. No compensation has been given, and I write this book review willingly. A big thanks to Priti Gress and Hippocrene Books!*

Introduction

I’ve been a fan of Hippocrene Books for a few years now, following them on social media and craving their books. As a polyglot, their books, both language learning guides and cultural books, seemed to be of quality and they’re quite varied. They cover languages rarely tackled by other language publishers, such as Croatian, Romanian, and Icelandic. I’m always looking for new resources and tools to improve my own learning, and I love exploring. So, when I contacted them, they kindly agreed to send me a few, including Beginner’s Croatian with Online Audio. I wanted to learn Croatian since I was fourteen years old (I’m double years old now… shhhhh), so it’s exhilarating to review this book for them. Plus, finding good quality Croatian language learning materials is hard, even more so in physical format.

A huge thanks to Hippocrene Books for sharing Beginner’s Croatian with me and helping my learning process! I discovered a great new resource, and definitely fell in love with their products.

Let’s break down its several qualities and few flaws together, shall we?

That way you’ll get a better idea to enhance your own language learning!

Let’s go!

Blurb

An affordable and modern guide to learn Croatian as a beginner from Hippocrene Books. It is made up of fifteen amusing lessons with colloquial dialogues, grammatical units, vocabulary and verb lists, and audio files in MP3 format (downloadable on their website). It features a History overview of Croatia, a bilingual glossary, declension tables, exercises and answer keys.

The Positive Sides

I’ll start with one of the best points about this book: the audio is free! And downloadable! Yep. No CDs—you get the audio files as downloaded MP3s, which is highly modern and useful as you can listen to them on your computer, iPod, smartphone, tablet, name it! Kudos to them! After which comes the price, which is very affordable for all the knowledge contained within its pages. Speaking of its pages, this is a quality book; its layout and format is well done, always followed. The language is excellent as I found no typos or mistakes, except in the Audio Track List at the end where it says “Dialgoue” instead of “Dialogue” a few times.

The cover is gorgeous and inspiring (look at it!), it makes you want to jump into it, much like with the language itself.

Also, the table of contents is really clear and even mentions what types of grammar explorations each lesson introduces you to.

Moreover, the historical introduction is priceless. It really helps understand Croatia and how it came to be. It also makes you travel a bit and connect with that country on a more personal level. The grammatical sections are clear, precise, and informative, and their instructions are clear and easy to follow and grasp. I love that there is an English-Croatian/Croatian-English glossary with the most useful vocabulary, a verb list with indications as to whether it’s a Perfective or Imperfective verb (trust me, you’ll be grateful this was included!), as well as declension tables (thank God for these!!! They’re life-savers what with cases and how to mark declensions in words), and a prepositions table!!! This is all so useful. I looooove when there is “extra” content (note: grammatical content) in such books. It makes my inner nerd (… more like the whole of myself, but shhh) thrilled!

Back to the free audio! The location of the audio files is made clear at the beginning (in the TOC) and on a single page at the end of the book. Also, the audio is fantastic! It’s high quality, sharp, and I love how in the vocabulary the woman will say one letter and word, and then it’s the man’s turn. We can hear both sexes! The dialogues are great, too! I love how natural they talk. The way the dialogues are used in audio is amazing. First, on one track, you have the dialogue said at a natural pace, but the words and expressions used are very much natural, what you’d encounter in a normal conversation with natives (wonderful info!). Then, on the next track, you have the same dialogue with pauses so you can repeat each sentence for practice! It’s brilliant!

As for the exercises, they’re very interesting as I had barely a headache while doing those—when exercises are hard or displeasing I get a migraine. Plus, they have answer keys at the end of the book, which makes it even more practical and useful. I love how varied the exercises are! We go from blank phrases to translations (whole paragraphs) to marking genders and filling in with the correct verbs. It’s different from most learning guides where you only have blank phrases and filling-in exercises. It made me so giddy! I loved two exercises in particular: translation and categorization! Translation is always fun (sue me, I’m a translator!), though daunting. But damn does it help to think in Croatian. As for the categorization exercise, I wasn’t sure about its effectiveness but I was proven wrong: it sears the words in your mind and you can recognize them afterwards.

Overall, I meant to study a few lessons throughout the book for reviewing purposes, but I loved it so much I found myself to be actually doing them progressively… So, surprise! I am now even more into my Croatian learning than I was before reviewing this language learning guide! Win, win!

The Negative Sides

My first negative side isn’t so much a flaw to me, but more of an acknowledgment that this could be lacking something for other Croatian learners. So, despite the gorgeous, colourful cover, there are no images and no colours inside the book. It might be too academic for some readers for it reminds me of high school and university textbooks. As for me, I don’t mind it as I love such straightforward books. I just wanted to mention it in case you find this an important aspect of your learning.

Unfortunately, the vocabulary, verb and greetings lists aren’t included in the audio. I would have loved it as sometimes we’re not sure how to pronounce those either, mostly the vocabulary. And especially in the beginning of our learning.

Lastly, the instructions for some exercises are not clear and precise enough, such as blank logical answers with no prior “logic” nor hints.

These last two points are really what I think could be improved in future editions of this language learning guide in terms of learning: more audio files and clearer instructions for exercises.

In Conclusion

All in all, thanks to this wonderful language learning guide, Beginner’s Croatian with Online Audio, I can now identify specific words in the songs and videos I watch and already remember two handfuls after only two lessons! It’s an excellent teaching manual for self-taught language learners and all kinds of language learners. For these reasons, and for the sometimes unclear instructions, I give this beloved book a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5. If you want to learn Croatian, I highly recommend this book. Don’t miss out on it or you’ll miss the opportunity to learn fast and well with pleasure!

If you want to learn more about Hippocrene Books, you can visit their Web site, you can also follow them on Instagram. You can learn more about the authors and their impressive credentials on Aida Vidan's official Harvard page and on Robert Niebuhr's official Arizona State University page. You can also add Beginner's Croatian with Online Audio to your bookshelves on Goodreads.