Hild has been the perfect book for my work towards reinvigorating my long dormant reading habit. I highly recommend it to everyone looking for a solid work of fiction, especially if you’re into historical fiction or works like A Song of Ice and Fire.

The book jacket summary pretty much works, to know broadly what you’re in for. Honestly, what drew me to it was the blurb from Neal Stephenson, and the promise of a good story about realistic medieval life from a girl’s point of view. I’d have slogged through it by now if that was all there was to this work, but it’s been more

Hild is a thick book, filled with deeply researched details and descriptions that not only bring the world alive, but assumed I was keeping up and wasn’t afraid of looking up a detail on google. It requires attention and time, but not so much that I’d lose track of what’s happening if I put it down for a day when life intervened. As Hild herself grows into herself and in her relationships with others, learning to use her weirdness and the rumors about her to shape her life and her destiny, I find myself growing with her and appreciating my own gifts and weirdness, which makes me anticipate and enjoy the times I spend in her world.

It’s the combination of the length of the book and the rewarded investment that I find perfect for exercising my reading habit. I’ve read other excellent books, but they’ve been with a goal in mind - for my book club, or for work, or because I thought I should read them and was pleasantly surprised. Or they’ve been smaller books in series - The Witcher series, for example. With the smaller books, the size becomes a distraction: however good the book is, I want to hurry up and finish so I can move on to the next one I feel I should be consuming. If it isn’t entertaining or immediately clear, I just need to slog through it and get my reward so I can get to the next book, rather than engage with the author and the work. Hild is big and rewarding enough that I can savor it, and there is no goal in mind, just a book that looked interesting, and with that combination, my attention and habit get stronger.

I’m on the last 150 pages. I’m not sure what I’ll read next; there’s a sequel, which I’ll likely pick up. Even if I reach for a shorter or more goal-fulfilling work, though, I’ll approach that with a different mindset, thanks to my experience with Hild.  📚