The middle books of a trilogy are often ‘the problem child’. Gone is the initial excitement of the first instalment and the denouement needed for the final book – all that alongside the need to keep the reader engaged. It is a weight that hangs heavy over Aslak Nore’s The Heirs of the Arctic, the middle instalment of the Falck Saga that follows on from last year’s The Sea Cemetery and it’s not a burden it entirely shifts.
Part military and political thriller, part family drama that wouldn’t feel out of place in an episode of Dynasty, The Heirs of The Arctic picks up the action two years on from The Sea Cemetery. The turmoil within the wealthy Falck family, however, shows no sign of abating; the events around the hidden secrets dating back to the Second World War in the first book still reverberate in the second. One of the chapter titles in this second book is ‘History repeating itself’ and, in many ways, it could be the subtitle of this middle book.
There’s a similarity of construct deployed by Nore here. In The Sea Cemetery the action revolved around a two-part reveal of a long-hidden document – a testimony relating to family history – and the author deploys a similar vehicle in Heirs of the Arctic, in this case two unopened letters from decades earlier. It provides a sense of continuity but also risks the reader think they are revisiting old ground.
There’s also a repeating motive of the power a woman’s deeply held secret holds over family ties. In book one, Vera’s wartime secret causing upheaval decades later, here it’s Connie Falk lighting the fuse with repressed secrets from the 1970s.
The family infighting and power struggles that form the backdrop of this multi-volumed drama remain as intense as the first instalment. This time around action centres around the aftermath of the implementation of the will of matriarch Vera, whose shocking family revelations powered the first book. With control of the family company SAGA finely balanced between two scions of the family, distant relatives are drawn into powerplays to try and secure controlling interest on the board.
In the northern outpost of the Svalbard archipelago, a remote property holds a surprisingly powerful card in negotiations – not just in the Falck family but in the much more volatile Norwegian/Russian relations. When a Russian collapses in Longyearbyen from suspected poisoning, his dying words suggests there’s more linking the family infighting to the geopolitical situation than anyone could have imagined.
With current world tensions it’s a highly prescient plot and incredibly ambitious for Nore to plot across a larger trilogy. Overall, he succeeds but it’s not an entirely satisfying or fully accomplished work.
Nore revels in the detail, leading readers on a journey across Norway, Russia, and the Middle East. Alongside the central Falck family, we’re introduced to a multitude of secondary characters from Norwegian and Russian politics, police and military and even Jackie Kennedy, Eva Perón, Winston Churchill and Aristotle Onassis. Over 450 pages this huge cast of characters weave in and out of a storyline that shifts back and forth in time, refers back to the previous book, and even manages to look at the Communist dislike of ABBA.
While all that detail adds to a sense of epic to the storytelling, it does make it a hard read for the reader. This isn’t a book you can half-dip into for escapism. The Heirs of the Arctic requires full attention to keep track of the myriad plot lines, shifting allegiances and references to the past. It all threatens to overwhelm the reader but like world tensions just manages to keep from fully derailing.
Persevering to the end is worth it and there are plenty of loose ends still to be resolved to make the conclusion of the saga in book three a tantalising prospect. Here’s hoping that Nore resists the temptation to cram in as many threads in the finale and has confidence in the strength of his central story.
Heirs of The Arctic by Aslak Nore, translated by Sean Kinsella, is published by MacLehose Press on 24 April 2025.
