Third Realm - Tak's Reading Room

English language

Published 2024 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 978-1-78730-419-2

(1 review)

From bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a kaleidoscopic novel about human nature in the face of enormous change—and the warring impulses between light and dark that live in all of us

For several days, a strange and bright new star in the sky above Norway has sown an unyielding sense of foreboding, of agitation, and of fear. Tove, a painter on holiday with her family, has spiraled into a psychosis that stirs her into a flurry of unbridled creativity. Geir, a policeman who has been investigating a grisly triple murder, comes to a sinister revelation he must keep to himself. Nineteen-year-old Line falls in love with the lead singer of a metal band and is lured into a secret and frightening world.

But most bewildering, and disquieting, is the discovery made by Syvert, an undertaker: since the star has appeared, no one has died.

In The Third Realm, Karl Ove …

From bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, a kaleidoscopic novel about human nature in the face of enormous change—and the warring impulses between light and dark that live in all of us

For several days, a strange and bright new star in the sky above Norway has sown an unyielding sense of foreboding, of agitation, and of fear. Tove, a painter on holiday with her family, has spiraled into a psychosis that stirs her into a flurry of unbridled creativity. Geir, a policeman who has been investigating a grisly triple murder, comes to a sinister revelation he must keep to himself. Nineteen-year-old Line falls in love with the lead singer of a metal band and is lured into a secret and frightening world.

But most bewildering, and disquieting, is the discovery made by Syvert, an undertaker: since the star has appeared, no one has died.

In The Third Realm, Karl Ove Knausgaard returns to the spellbinding world of The Morning Star and The Wolves of Eternity, as a cast of new and familiar characters continue to reckon with the meaning of this star. What is haunting them, and why?

As supernatural forces collide with the mundanities of everyday, and the threshold between life and death becomes diffuse, people are forced to live their lives as before while the world around them slowly changes in inexplicable ways. Piercing through human existence into the bestial and phantasmagorical, Knausgaard flings opens the gates to our most distressing neuroses and forces us to ask: What happens if the dark forces in the world are set free?

4 editions

sol2070@velhaestante.com.br reviewed Third Realm by Martin Aitken

Hell breaks loose

5 stars

(em português com links: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-the-third-realm-karl-ove-knausgard/ )

In "The Third Realm" (2024), Karl Ove Knausgaard continues his captivating kaleidoscopic saga that mixes literary realism with science fiction and even horror, in the third installment of the "Morning Star" series.

The previous book, "The Wolves of Eternity" (2024), seems almost independent, while this one is clearly a sequel. Although the author envisioned the books as a loose series, in which it would be possible to read any of them without having read the others, "The Third Realm" picks up where the first book left off, when a great star takes over the sky and the unexplained begins to interfere in the characters' lives.

Although the supernatural becomes more explicit, the book retains the style of delving into the routines and minds of the various characters, each with engaging parallel stories. It's as if there were several short stories embedded in the main …

(em português com links: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-the-third-realm-karl-ove-knausgard/ )

In "The Third Realm" (2024), Karl Ove Knausgaard continues his captivating kaleidoscopic saga that mixes literary realism with science fiction and even horror, in the third installment of the "Morning Star" series.

The previous book, "The Wolves of Eternity" (2024), seems almost independent, while this one is clearly a sequel. Although the author envisioned the books as a loose series, in which it would be possible to read any of them without having read the others, "The Third Realm" picks up where the first book left off, when a great star takes over the sky and the unexplained begins to interfere in the characters' lives.

Although the supernatural becomes more explicit, the book retains the style of delving into the routines and minds of the various characters, each with engaging parallel stories. It's as if there were several short stories embedded in the main story, all interconnected.

One of the main subjects is the Norwegian black metal scene, which connects multiple characters, even though they are not part of that. The members of one of these satanic bands are found dead, in a hideous and ritualistic way. There is a fascinating investigation into what drives young people to extreme forms of transgression, including a secret new movement that breaks with social standards in an unprecedented way.

The title of the book is about a related religious aspect, the belief linked to Christian mysticism that there would be three sequential realms on Earth: God's, Christ's and a future third realm of the spirit. The idea was appropriated by the Nazis in their “third reich”.

You could say that, in this book, the floodgates are wide open, hell breaks loose.

The problem now is waiting for the next ones.