The Devil Book Review: A Scandinavian Series Aflame with Purpose

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's series books will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it leads.