All the Horses of Iceland - by Sarah Tolmie (Paperback)

About the Book

Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more.

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Best Fantasy of 2022!

"All the Horses of Iceland is a slim and beautiful chronicle in the tradition of Naomi Mitchison and Ursula K. Le Guin. ...The result is a sorcerous journey through hospitality and enchantment." --The New York Times

A hypnotic historical fantasy with gorgeous and unusual literary prose, from the captivating author of The Fourth Island.

Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more.

All the Horses of Iceland is a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, brought to life by an expert storyteller.

Review Quotes

A New York Times Best Fantasy of 2022!

"All the Horses of Iceland is a slim and beautiful chronicle in the tradition of Naomi Mitchison and Ursula K. Le Guin. ...The result is a sorcerous journey through hospitality and enchantment." --The New York Times

"Sarah Tolmie has a light touch, a powerful voice, and a vivid sense of place and period." --Elizabeth Bear

"Tolmie brings a scholarly precision to her fantasy that makes magic mundane and the mundane utterly sublime . . . deeply refreshing, a kind of grace." --The New York Times

About the Author

Sarah Tolmie is the author of the Tordotom novella The Fourth Island, the poetry collections Check and The Art of Dying, the 120-sonnet sequence Trio, and the chapbook Sonnet in a Blue Dress and Other Poems. She has also published the novels The Little Animals and The Stone Boatmen, as well as the short fiction collections Two Travelers and NoFood. She is a medievalist trained at the University of Toronto and Cambridge and is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo.