The Brothers Lionheart

This book has the most brilliant beginning. Narrator Karl is ten, living in poverty in yesteryear Sweden...and he's dying. The moment when he overhears this fact, the terror and sadness are allayed by his wonderful older brother promising him a wonderful time 'on the other side'. But this fabled other world is no land of angels and harps, but an adventurous world of sagas and campfires, the land of Nangiyala.(Spoiler alert) Yet things don't quite work out that way; after a house fire, in which the elder 'Lionheart' brother, Jonathan, saves his invalid sibling's life, it is in fact he who arrives there first. When Karl eventually meets him, it is in a glorious land, but one ravaged by an evil force...A bit CS Lewis, but the reader can't help seeing similarities with the rise of Nazism: evil overlords in helmets building walls, enforcing curfews, issuing death sentences and despoiling the villagers; locals turning traitor...albeit with dragons, sea serpents etc adding to the drama.Certainly a religious sub-text, which the reader can engage with or ignore.And an absolutely brilliant and beautiful ending, which takes the reader (who thinks all is now well) entirely by surprise. Fabulous!

Just nice