Black Shield Maiden

Singer-actor Smith and screenwriter Hendel debut with a sweeping historical fantasy epic combining African and Nordic lore. In Ghana, heroine Yafeu, named for her now absent father and taught by him—as a boy would have been—that “belief is power,” accepts her tutelary spirit, a painted wolf, just before her village is razed and she’s abducted by slavers. After a horrendous desert journey, she’s rescued by a ferocious female Viking and brought as a slave to a pagan Norse village where she despairs of ever achieving the great destiny her mother predicted for her. Eventually she becomes a servant to Freydis, the local king’s daughter. As the women grow close and share their African and Norse heritages, they see in the blend of their two cultures a path to overthrowing their barbaric male-dominated society. Though ambitiously loaded with snippets of Scandinavian and African history and mythology shaped to the authors’ feminist orientation, the story does not quite convince. Little anachronisms (a warrior dressed in plate armor rather than ring mail) will throw off the historically minded, while cartoonish male villains weaken the empowerment plot. Still, fans of Norse fantasy frustrated with the genre’s overwhelming whiteness will appreciate this refreshing take on the milieu. (May)