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Revolver
Revolver
Revolver
Ebook163 pages1 hour

Revolver

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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A LOADED GUN. STOLEN GOLD. And a menacing stranger. A taut frontier survivor story, set at the time of the Alaska gold rush.

In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with a corpse: his father, who has fallen through the ice and frozen to death only hours earlier. Then comes a stranger claiming that Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold. Sig's only protection is a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the cabin's storeroom. The question is, will Sig use the gun, and why?

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. This title has Common Core connections.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 13, 2010
ISBN9781429987004
Author

Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick was one of this generation’s most lauded and highly regarded writers for children and young people, having published over forty books including acclaimed Midwinterblood and The Monsters We Deserve. He won multiple prestigious awards, most notably the Michael L. Printz Award, the Branford Boase Award, the BookTrust Teenage Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award.

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Reviews for Revolver

Rating: 3.774011355932203 out of 5 stars
4/5

177 ratings27 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quick, suspenseful, but not scary read. The cold, and the primitive conditions of Alaska at the turn of the last century add to the story's appeal. Sedgwick is, as always, a great story teller. Still, I think this will appeal to adults more than teens, who tend to avoid historical fiction, at least at my school.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sig's father died trying to cross the ice. Now a man who has been stalking him has trapped Sig and his sister Anna and is threatening them. He claims that their father cheated him out of gold ten years ago and he wants it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Teen/adult fiction. Historical (Alaska gold rush); suspense. Sig is left alone with the frozen corpse of his father in a isolated cabin in the arctic when he hears a menacing knock on the door--a large, threatening man from his father's past that is demanding his share of the gold, gold that Sig doubts even exists. Sig's only hope is to get to his father's revolver, hidden in the store room, but the stranger is wary and Sig may never have that chance.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was another one of this years Printz Honor books. Sig finds his father frozen to death on the ice. The same day while his sister and step mother go for help a man he's met before as a child that he has no memory of appears in their cabin in Giron. Gunther Wolff claims to have been Einar's business partner and that he and Wolff were cheating prospectors and that Sig and his family ran off with Wolff's half. Sig must figure out what the truth is and whether he should get his father's revolver and try and get out. The story alternates between Sig and Wolff and what really happened ten years ago between Einar and Wolff.

    This story felt like it was all about the mood. The tension just built and built as Sig tried to figure out how to escape, what he should do and what could possibly have happened ten years ago. I felt like I was on the edge of my seat wondering what Sig would do. I really liked how the Sig chose to handle the situation in the end. He was true to himself by finding a mid ground between his parents and their feelings on the revolver.

    I also thought that learning about how Einar and the family survived in Nome in 1900 was interesting. I also thought the quotes between sections were interesting giving both an interesting idea of how the colt revolver has been perceived and a few other interesting elements of the story. I also liked the very ending of the story. I felt like it gave an interesting sense of realism to the story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sedgwick's books are always pretty hit or miss for me. This one was definitely more of a hit.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A few pages in I stopped thinking about the writing, and started following the story. Alone in the frozen Arctic circle with his father's frozen corpse a Bear of a man arrives at the door. A past that he doesn't remember has caught up with him. 'Love, sing, cry, and fight, but all the time, seek to know everything you can about the earth upon which you stand, till your time is done.' Both Einar and Maria had tried to teach Sig this same message. it was simply that they went about it in very different ways, and sometimes, like all parents, they both failed to teach their children anything at all."
    His mind turns to the memories of his past, his father's revolver, and his mothers Bible, but how will this help him survive and save his sister?
    I enjoyed the book and I liked the message that was revealed at the end, but it could be read as much for the tension of the situation.
    It's possibly more of a boy book than my typical favourites. Snow White, Blood Red is still my favourite Sedgwick book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the perfect book for teens looking for quick, fast paced historical fiction. Survival in Alaska during and after the gold rush is woven into a tightly paced mystery that centers on stolen gold, an old revolver and some familial advice. Winner of the Printz Award.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After reading Revolver, I am very pleased with it. I don't usually have any interest in YA books, but this one is more than good enough to be enjoyed by adults. It is a bit adult for younger children, but just right for young teens all the way up.

    I've won a copy on First Reads and I look forward to reading it. I like the description and think it sounds like a neat read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For a book about a gun it was kinda boring and incredibly frustrating. My issues was with the compellingness (I made up that word because I'm lazy.) More in a blog post later.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a very different young adult historical fiction book; it is written with a lyrical quality yet is very suspenseful. In the Arctic Circle in 1910 Sig is alone in his cabin well alone with the corpse of his father who died earlier that day when surprisingly there is a knock on the door and a scary looking man named Wolff is looking for his father, they have unfinished business. This starts the tension that flows through this book like a pulse. The title of the book comes from the revolver that is in a box in the next room and Sig’s decision to try to get to it or not. I can see why this has won many awards as it is so different than anything out there. But I think if you are a fan of Hatchet you’ll really like this book. This is definitely one I will be picking up in paper form for our local library because I do think this is one that male readers and /or reluctant readers will get into. This is a short book but packs quite a punch I enjoyed this story and will recommend it in audio & print. However for myself the audio version really brought it to life for me.Peter Berkrot is a new to me narrator and I was very impressed with his narration of this book, his voices were distinct and you always knew who was talking, he seamlessly went from voicing a 15 year old boy to the gruff and rough Wolff with ease. I will definitely look for more books narrated by, Peter Berkrot.All in all I highly recommend this one.4 Stars
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book was slow moving I did not enjoy it was very hard to read. It is all about a boy who's father died no the ice. A stranger comes and says that his father owes him gold. He says no and this who story begins I never finished it so I ca tell you the end but it was okay.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Dark and creepy. A really bad villain. An ethical choice for Sig. Some adult themes are insuated. Good suspense.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't say enough good things about Marcus Sedgewick or about this book. Though the reader has an inkling where the story is going, it is a taut, edge-of-the-seat read. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Booktalk: After finding his father's frozen body on the lake, fourteen-year-old Sig, with his sister and step-mother, drag the body back to their cabin in the Arctic wilderness; Sig's sister and step mother travel six miles back to the town for help while Sig waits with his father's body in their cabin for their return. Towards evening, a menacing, bear-like man arrives at the cabin looking for the gold Sig's father supposedly stole from him. The stranger is clearly intent on getting this gold that Sig doesn't know anything about, and it becomes increasingly obvious that he intends to kill Sig and his family if they do not produce "his" gold. Sig knows how to handle the colt revolver that is hidden in the storeroom, and now he must decide if he should take a chance of getting to the gun before this stranger kills him and his family. (A well-written and tension-filled "cat and mouse" mystery-thriller enhanced by the isolated setting in the Arctic wilderness.)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Not long after he finds his father's frozen body on the lake near his remote arctic homestead, Sig is visited by a menacing stranger who has unfinished business with his father. This taut thriller makes excellent use of its remote, punishing setting as well as the protagonist's moral dilemma: take advantage of the power of his father's revolver or protect the humanity instilled by his mother's bible?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A book full of suspense. Do you have to be violent to beat evil?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deceptively simple tale of a family living in the Arctic Circle in the early 1900's. Sig and Anna's father has fallen through the ice and died. While waiting at home for men to come take the body away, Sig meets Wolff, a terrifying bully who claims his father owed him money.Sig knows where his father has hidden the gun, but weighs his options while trying to figure out his father's past.A great book that shows the power of a gun.Sedgwick's sparse language mimics the cold landscape. Very well written and deserving of the Printz honor that it won.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book begins in the year 1910, in a cabin set in the remote town of Giron, 100 miles North of the Arctic Circle. The reader is instantly pulled into the freezing, solitary world of Sig Andersson, an adolescent boy who is mourning the tragic death of his father and who is forced to deal with the consequences of both his father's life and death. The story flashes back to a decade earlier, when Sig's family traveled North during the Alaskan Gold Rush. They began their journey with an optimism that most felt as they antipicated fortune, yet their journey would ultimately lead to disappointment and despair. Along the way Sig struggles with the lessons his father taught him, and must make a choice between doing what he thinks his father would want and following a faith he is not sure he has. Sedgwick does an excellent job of pulling the reader into Sig's world, where we can almost feel the cold as Sig feels it; we can experience the loneliness and wildness of the Arctic, and question for ourselves the importance and power of the Revolver.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked the story, but not how it was told. Sedgwick seemed to get in his own way. He'd start to build tension in a scene, and then tangent to a flashback, killing the suspense. He did it too many times for it not to have been deliberate. I found it frustrating.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was hoping that this book would be more suspenseful than it was. It's a great idea. The characters didn't really come to life for me, though. A quick read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Overall the book was well written and the characters were well rounded. The book, for the most part, revolves around a 36 hour period that occurs after Sig's father is found dead on the lake. There are also several chapters that look back at events that occurred earlier in Sig's life to help the reader understand what has led to the visitor's arrival. I feel like teen boys that enjoy reading about history and guns would enjoy the book. Although not my typical type of book, it did hold my attention to the very end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A brilliant, edge-of-your-seat thriller that adults as well as young people will also enjoy. The villain is so very villainous, and Sig and Anna just the right combination of brave and uncertain. The author was able to incorporate the Arctic setting and the facts about guns beautifully into the story, and I liked how he sort of let the reader make up their own minds as to whether guns are good or bad. I would read this author again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sig's father died trying to cross the ice. Now a man who has been stalking him has trapped Sig and his sister Anna and is threatening them. He claims that their father cheated him out of gold ten years ago and he wants it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    PLUS - * This interesting story is unusual in that one of the main characters is an object (a gun), and another is already dead at the beginning of the book.* There are two interlinked plots - the story of Sig, as he spends time in his family's cabin, first alone and then with a mysterious and threatening stranger after the death of his father, and also the story of his family's time at the centre of an Alaskan gold rush ten or so years earlier. * The tension runs really high throughout the book, and the writing is so atmosopheric. There's real sense of place and time.* It created lots of interesting points about the use of guns, both historically and today. MINUS - * It's a novel written for teenagers, and it is an excellent read, but it has to be a fairly committed and seriously teenager to really appreciate it. A lot of the teenagers I work with would go for something far more snappy than this. OVERALL - * A thriller, but a psychologial one rather than an action-packed one. Well worth a read and will be enjoyed by thoughtful young readers and adults alike.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read this book as part of the Carnegie shadowing and thoroughly enjoyed it. The setting is unusual, the Arctic, and the characters really well realised. The story takes place over a couple of days in a cabin isolated in the woods. The main character's father has died by falling through the ice of a frozen lake and is lying on the kitchen table awaiting help to come because the ground is too frozen to bury him. During the wait for help, a truly frightening character arrives who has been stalking the family for ten years as they have moved around the Arctic. He believes the father has gold which belongs to him and he wants his share. The revolver appears throughout the story, both its history and its use and is woven into the story in a multitude of ways. The way this is done is thought-provoking and adds additional interest to the story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It have me the uncomfortable, krizzly feeling in my stomach when reading about mean, awful adults bullying kids, the icky, shivering feeling when reading about the brutal cold of the polar regions, and the uneasy, creepy dread when it becomes apparent that a kid has to use violence to defend himself.Taking place during the Alaska gold rush, this book focuses more on the fringes of the event. This is a terrific book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sedgwick writes primarily for the young adult audience, but his books have much wider appeal and are always thought-provoking reads for adults too. I loved one of his other titles, Blood Red, Snow White, and I also really enjoyed another of his which I read last Easter, Kiss of Death. So I was really looking forward to reading his latest book.Revolver is the story of a boy and a gun – a Colt forty-four forty revolver to be precise. It’s set in the Arctic north, where three continents meet around the North Pole. It starts in the northernmost town in Sweden, Giron (Kiruna), and Sig Andersson is sitting alone at home, except for the corpse of his father, who died falling through the ice that day as if he was running away from something, or someone.Sig’s sister and step-mother had gone for help, leaving the young teenager to think about his father and their hard life up in the Arctic, but also his late mother. When Sig was little, they had lived in Nome, Alaska during the gold-rush of 1899; Sig’s father Einar was an assay clerk in the claims office. Einar’s most prized posession is a Colt revolver – it lives in its original box in the storeroom, and needless to say, Sig has always been fascinated by it...." ‘A gun is not a weapon, Einar once said to Sig, ‘It’s an answer. It’s an answer to the questions life throws at you when there’s no one else to help.’Sig hadn’t understood what he meant by that. Not then."While Sig is mounting his vigil over his father’s body, there is a knock at the door. But it’s not the help he was waiting for, it’s a giant of a man who has come looking for Einar, to claim back what he thinks is his. Wolff knew Einar back in Alaska, and has a tale to tell of gold and the corruption and lust it brings. Now Sig knows why Einar kept a gun; if only he could manage to get it out of the storeroom. Einar had let him and his sister shoot the Colt just once to know what it was like."He tried not to smile, for Anna’s sake, but inside he felt the best he’d ever felt in his whole life. It had felt amazing, incredible, indescribable. It hadn’t been frightening at all."The only frightening thing was how easy it had been, but it would be years before he understood that."The tension rises with each short chapter, and there is a definite frontier feel to this novel with its themes of gold and guns. The far north too has never seemed as cold as when Einar is explaining about the effects of sub-zero temperatures on gunmetal – as always, Sedgwick’s research is top notch. Ultimately though, Sig’s dilemma over whether or not to use the gun is the most fascinating part of the story and makes this short novel a great little thriller making it my first 10/10 read of the year.

Book preview

Revolver - Marcus Sedgwick

1

Wash Day, dusk

Even the dead tell stories.

Sig looked across the cabin to where his father lay, waiting for him to speak, but his father said nothing, because he was dead. Einar Andersson lay on the table, his arms half raised above his head, his legs slightly bent at the knee, frozen in the position in which they’d found him; out on the lake, lying on the ice, with the dogs waiting patiently in harness.

Einar’s skin was gray; patches of frost and ice still clung to his beard and eyebrows despite the warmth of the cabin. It was only a matter of degree. Outside the temperature was plunging as night came on, already twenty below, maybe more. Inside the cabin it was a comfortable few degrees above freezing, and yet Einar’s body refused to relax from its death throes.

Sig stared and stared, in his own way frozen to the chair, waiting for his father to get up, smile again, and start talking. But he didn’t.

They say that dead men tell no tales, but they’re wrong.

Even the dead tell stories.

2

Wash Day, night

If.

The smallest word, which raises the biggest questions.

If Sig had been with Einar that morning, what then?

If Einar had been more honest with them, what then?

And what if, what if Einar had taken the Colt with him? Would he still be alive?

Questions began to surface in Sig’s mind. The death-spell was breaking. He shivered once, violently, and saw that the stove was nearly out.

He cursed with a short old word, the sort of word his father would have used, but only when his new young wife, Nadya, wasn’t around, because she was very strict about these words. And if Anna had heard him, she too would have given him a stern look.

Father!

Then she would have laughed. Of course she would have laughed, for she was always laughing, unless she was singing. Unless she was singing, or fighting with Nadya.

Sig waited, though he did not know what he was waiting for. Perhaps a sign of some kind, perhaps even just one single sound, but nothing came, and the only thing he could hear was the sound of his breathing, the breath on the back of his knuckles as he pushed his fist against his lips. Finally he moved from the chair and realized that the shadows had crept across the room and draped it all in darkness. The cabin glowed softly in the light from the single oil lantern hanging from a stout metal hook in the center beam of the roof.

Their cabin. Their entire world, a single room, twenty-four feet by twelve, plus the four feet square of the entrance hall, where the boots and coats waited until it was time for them to work again, and the larder room, which was behind the other inner door in the hall. The larder room, which as well as holding all their food, candles, soap, tools, and spare cloth, was at night home to Sig, who’d taken to sleeping curled up on the sacks of flour. At least it was a little inside space of his own. Outside, there was always all the space in the world; outside, there was nothing but the wide and empty cold of the North. The lake, the forest behind, the mountains in the distance.

Sig lit a taper from the embers of the fire, moving around the table, trying to decide whether he should look at his father or not. He supposed that when he started thinking of his father not as his father but as a body, that would be the time to stop looking.

He lifted down a smaller lantern from the long shelf over the main window and magicked a flame alight with the taper, which he threw back into the belly of the stove.

In the hall, he pulled on his reindeer-skin boots and gloves, and though he didn’t realize it, just the touch of the soft fur of the inverted skin made him feel better.

He shut the inner door to the cabin, put his gloved hand on the outer one, and then hesitated. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the assault.

He tugged the latch, and before he’d even stepped outside the cold had him, grasping him, squeezing his chest and biting his face. The wind clawed at his mouth and nose, but a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, Sig had learned the trick of holding his breath inside until he knew which way the wind was attacking. Still it stole up the backs of his legs and over his face, finding a way in to drain him of his heat.

Dipping his head, he hurried across the newly fallen snow to the log pile and grabbed half a dozen pieces of wood. On his way back, he saw the lake, shining in the light from a bright moon. Somehow he’d expected it to look different, marked by his father’s death, but it didn’t. He’d seen it look like this a hundred times, and then he understood what was hurting him. It looked commonplace when life had just become anything but. It didn’t even occur to him that come the spring when the ice melted, the place where Einar died would disappear completely and become gentle wave crests of the wind-whipped lake once more. But then, when snow covers everything and the mercury shows dozens of degrees below zero, any season but winter is a memory impossible to summon.

As Sig stumbled back into the hall, dropping the logs and pulling off his boots, the question of the lake nagged at him. He gathered up the wood and bumped the inner door of the cabin open, his skin tingling from the sudden increase in warmth.

He made up the fire, wheeling open the air vents to allow the belly of the stove to suck in as much air as it could. Within moments the embers were glowing fiercely, and in a few moments more, they caught some curls of birch bark and the resin underneath almost exploded.

It reminded Sig of what his father had told him once, about what happens in the gun, deep inside the gun, inside the brass casing of the cartridge, when it’s fired.

But the ease with which he’d lit the fire also reminded him that his father had failed to light one, which was why he lay frozen behind him on the cabin table.

Why had Einar gone across the lake?

He’d taken the four dogs and the small sled to Giron as usual that morning, following the track around the head of the lake, in and out of the trees, snaking around, making the journey from the shack to the town six miles when a crow would have done it in two.

It was Wash Day, and though the miners themselves would work six days, Einar’s work for Bergman at the Assay Office occupied only five. On Wash Day, however, Einar always had some business or other to attend to: discussions with Per Bergman, the owner of the mine, or drinks at the bar of the Station Hotel before heading home to his family for what remained of the afternoon.

Sig loved those Wash Day afternoons. His memories of his real mother he could perhaps count on one hand, but his father’s new wife, Nadya, would get all the washing and cleaning and other housework done. Then, like Vikings of old, they would take their weekly bath. Nadya and Anna boiled buckets and buckets of water on the stove, and Sig and Einar would make trip after trip to the pump for more. Einar would fetch the tin bath from the hook on the outside back wall of the cabin, while Nadya strung a blanket over a line across the far end of the

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