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Aurora #1
Kong Krøbling
Kong Krøbling er en genfortælling af folkeeventyret “Kong Lindorm”. Den er skrevet af af Trine J. Cederlöf med moderne temaer og twists om fysisk handicap, ordblindhed og LGBTQ+.
Som førstefødte søn er prins Vincent arving til kongeriget De Blå Bjerge. Men at være bundet til et liv i kørestol giver ham udfordringer socialt og med selvtillid. Sammen med sin fysisk perfekte tvillingebror, Niklas, vokser han op isoleret og beskyttet. Men som de bliver ældre, bliver det tydeligt for kongeparret, at drengene har behov for at integrere sig med børn og unge på deres egen alder. Som unge voksne begynder de på hver sin rejse; Vincent som akademiker og Niklas i militæret. Deres største udfordring kommer med de prinsesser, som deres mor prøver at arrangere ægteskaber med, og hvor besværligt livet kan være, når man ikke helt er samfundets version af perfekt.
Som førstefødte søn er prins Vincent arving til kongeriget De Blå Bjerge. Men at være bundet til et liv i kørestol giver ham udfordringer socialt og med selvtillid. Sammen med sin fysisk perfekte tvillingebror, Niklas, vokser han op isoleret og beskyttet. Men som de bliver ældre, bliver det tydeligt for kongeparret, at drengene har behov for at integrere sig med børn og unge på deres egen alder. Som unge voksne begynder de på hver sin rejse; Vincent som akademiker og Niklas i militæret. Deres største udfordring kommer med de prinsesser, som deres mor prøver at arrangere ægteskaber med, og hvor besværligt livet kan være, når man ikke helt er samfundets version af perfekt.
144 pages, Hardcover
Published April 18, 2024
8 people want to read
About the author
Trine Johanne Cederlöf
2 books6 followersHalf Danish, half Finnish, born i Canada, currently living in Norway, Trine Johanne Cederlöf is a true child of the North.
She lives in a tiny library with plants, cats and a large sweater collection.
Living it up in the quiet life, Trine aims to be a role model for rascals and misfits everywhere.
A social educator and an anthropologist, with neurodiversity and a large appetite for learning, she writes with the purpose of telling stories with main characters, who have often been side-lined.
Classic fairytale style with modern themes and witty social commentary is the way to go.
Trine is reluctantly on social media as @tantetrineseventyr and has the ghost website blogs www.tjcedar.com and www.worldofaurora.org
Inactivity is vital for marketing and promotion...
She writes honest and sassy reviews, because she treats authors and readers like friends.
She is comfortable writing about herself in third person perspective, as one would be, when one is she.
She lives in a tiny library with plants, cats and a large sweater collection.
Living it up in the quiet life, Trine aims to be a role model for rascals and misfits everywhere.
A social educator and an anthropologist, with neurodiversity and a large appetite for learning, she writes with the purpose of telling stories with main characters, who have often been side-lined.
Classic fairytale style with modern themes and witty social commentary is the way to go.
Trine is reluctantly on social media as @tantetrineseventyr and has the ghost website blogs www.tjcedar.com and www.worldofaurora.org
Inactivity is vital for marketing and promotion...
She writes honest and sassy reviews, because she treats authors and readers like friends.
She is comfortable writing about herself in third person perspective, as one would be, when one is she.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 12, 2024
Nowhere Book Bingo: Disability rep
Disclaimer! The author is a friend of mine, but I paid for my own copy of the book and my opinions are my own. (Hope she'll still be speaking to me after she reads this).
In the fairy tale kingdom of The Blue Mountains, the king and queen try for many years, but the queen fails to have any living children. She encounters a witch who calls herself the Queen of Bees, who offers her a solution to her difficulties. Giving her a seed, which she must water with her tears, a plant will grow, with two flowers - one will give her a boy, the other a girl. The king and queen are desperate, so the queen eats both, and nine months later, two boys are born. The first is small and misshapen, with eyes in two different colours. The second baby is perfectly formed. The staff are worried when the firstborn, the heir, is born with physical disabilities, but the royal couple are equally delighted with both their boys. They name the eldest Vincent and his twin Niklas.
The twins grow up being treated exactly the same, and are pretty much inseperable. Vincent has to use a wheelchair, but excels in the lessons their tutor assigns them. His brother, who is handsome and healthy, struggles with understanding all the reading they are assigned. He manages to teach Vincent to swim and ride, because these are abilities important for a prince to know. Vincent helps Niklas realise that he's by no means stupid, he just has reading difficulties, so Vincent sums up their lessons to him with visual aids and helps him do his written homework. It takes their parents and tutor years to figure out their scheming, but once they do, the conclusion is that Niklas has dyslexia, and their parents realise the princes are probably old enough to go to school with other children, which means the boys start to make friends. Vincent is the more introverted and bookish one, Niklas is extroverted and excels at anything physical. Once they get older, Vincent goes to university, while Niklas joins the royal guard.
Then their mother announces that they are old enough to get married. Both princes need wives and heirs, and so they need to visit with princesses from nearby kingdoms to see whether they suit. While Vincent is well-loved and popular in his own kingdom, his visible disablilities create difficulties once the queen starts matchmaking. It turns out his perfect match is closer to home than he realised.
This story is a retelling of a very well-known Danish fairytale called King Lindworm. Growing up, I loved mythology and folklore, and have read fairy stories from a lot of different countries. The story seemed vaguely familiar to me, but having read a summary of the original, this is not really a story that's very popular in Norway or Sweden. It also means that this book introduced me to a new (and kind of weird) fairytale, as well as a very entertaining middle grade book.
While this is aimed at a younger audience, as all the best books for children, it doesn't underestimate them or talk down to them. A number of serious issues are touched upon, such as infertility (this led to a very interesting discussion during our book club chat about this book), physical disabilities and dyslexia. At no point are the boys bullied or mistreated in their own kingdom by teachers or peers. The twins have a really close relationship, and while it's mentioned that they fight a lot as children, they always present a united front against others. Without Niklas, Vincent would not have challenged himself physically, and would have been much more limited by his disabilites. Without Vincent, Niklas would have convinced himself he was stupid and useless, and good only for grunt work. There are also several examples of openly queer characters, so while this is set in a sort of vagely 18th Century time period, there is no discrimination or prejudice (in The Blue Mountains, at least).
While I try to challenge myself to read in Swedish a couple of times a year, so I don't forget how to, this is the first time in a very long time I had to read a whole book in Danish. To non-Scandinavians, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish would not appear to be very different from one another, and the most commonly used form of written Norwegian is directly derived from Danish. A lot of the language is therefore not that challenging, but every so often, there will be a word or expression in Danish that means something entirely different in Norwegian, and it took me out of the story for a moment. Thankfully, the book has a fun and engaging plot which moves at a nice pace, and once I actually set down and concentrated, it didn't take me long to finish the book.
To me, the opening difficulty with infertility obviously affected me greatly. Among the topics we discussed about this book is how many stories in myth and folklore involve parents who struggle to concieve or have living children, and how common infertility difficulties are, yet very rarely talked about. My little boy is the result of several long gruelling years of IVF treatment, and I feel very lucky to never have suffered a miscarriage during my many years of trying. If medical science wasn't advanced enough, would I have made a deal with a mysterious old woman in the hopes of having a baby? I suspect I would.
Because this is the first book in a planned series, the author already has several other books in development, all focusing on different kingdoms in this fictional world. We get a glimpse of some of the neighbouring kingdoms, and one of our major complaints when discussing the book with the author was the lack of a map. The book should absolutely have included a map at the beginning (so Trine sat down and drew one for us during the meeting). Having heard her talk about her ideas for future books, and some of her influences for the various kingdoms and peoples, I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her stories.
So why only four stars? I wanted more! This story was great, but I wanted more time with these engaging characters, and I would especially have liked to know more about the Queen of Bees.
Judging a book by its cover: I really love the simplicity of this cover, with the wheelchair which plays such an important part of the plot (and Vincent's life) front and centre. The various shades of blue are also lovely, no doubt picked because the book takes place in the fictional country of The Blue Mountains.
Disclaimer! The author is a friend of mine, but I paid for my own copy of the book and my opinions are my own. (Hope she'll still be speaking to me after she reads this).
In the fairy tale kingdom of The Blue Mountains, the king and queen try for many years, but the queen fails to have any living children. She encounters a witch who calls herself the Queen of Bees, who offers her a solution to her difficulties. Giving her a seed, which she must water with her tears, a plant will grow, with two flowers - one will give her a boy, the other a girl. The king and queen are desperate, so the queen eats both, and nine months later, two boys are born. The first is small and misshapen, with eyes in two different colours. The second baby is perfectly formed. The staff are worried when the firstborn, the heir, is born with physical disabilities, but the royal couple are equally delighted with both their boys. They name the eldest Vincent and his twin Niklas.
The twins grow up being treated exactly the same, and are pretty much inseperable. Vincent has to use a wheelchair, but excels in the lessons their tutor assigns them. His brother, who is handsome and healthy, struggles with understanding all the reading they are assigned. He manages to teach Vincent to swim and ride, because these are abilities important for a prince to know. Vincent helps Niklas realise that he's by no means stupid, he just has reading difficulties, so Vincent sums up their lessons to him with visual aids and helps him do his written homework. It takes their parents and tutor years to figure out their scheming, but once they do, the conclusion is that Niklas has dyslexia, and their parents realise the princes are probably old enough to go to school with other children, which means the boys start to make friends. Vincent is the more introverted and bookish one, Niklas is extroverted and excels at anything physical. Once they get older, Vincent goes to university, while Niklas joins the royal guard.
Then their mother announces that they are old enough to get married. Both princes need wives and heirs, and so they need to visit with princesses from nearby kingdoms to see whether they suit. While Vincent is well-loved and popular in his own kingdom, his visible disablilities create difficulties once the queen starts matchmaking. It turns out his perfect match is closer to home than he realised.
This story is a retelling of a very well-known Danish fairytale called King Lindworm. Growing up, I loved mythology and folklore, and have read fairy stories from a lot of different countries. The story seemed vaguely familiar to me, but having read a summary of the original, this is not really a story that's very popular in Norway or Sweden. It also means that this book introduced me to a new (and kind of weird) fairytale, as well as a very entertaining middle grade book.
While this is aimed at a younger audience, as all the best books for children, it doesn't underestimate them or talk down to them. A number of serious issues are touched upon, such as infertility (this led to a very interesting discussion during our book club chat about this book), physical disabilities and dyslexia. At no point are the boys bullied or mistreated in their own kingdom by teachers or peers. The twins have a really close relationship, and while it's mentioned that they fight a lot as children, they always present a united front against others. Without Niklas, Vincent would not have challenged himself physically, and would have been much more limited by his disabilites. Without Vincent, Niklas would have convinced himself he was stupid and useless, and good only for grunt work. There are also several examples of openly queer characters, so while this is set in a sort of vagely 18th Century time period, there is no discrimination or prejudice (in The Blue Mountains, at least).
While I try to challenge myself to read in Swedish a couple of times a year, so I don't forget how to, this is the first time in a very long time I had to read a whole book in Danish. To non-Scandinavians, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish would not appear to be very different from one another, and the most commonly used form of written Norwegian is directly derived from Danish. A lot of the language is therefore not that challenging, but every so often, there will be a word or expression in Danish that means something entirely different in Norwegian, and it took me out of the story for a moment. Thankfully, the book has a fun and engaging plot which moves at a nice pace, and once I actually set down and concentrated, it didn't take me long to finish the book.
To me, the opening difficulty with infertility obviously affected me greatly. Among the topics we discussed about this book is how many stories in myth and folklore involve parents who struggle to concieve or have living children, and how common infertility difficulties are, yet very rarely talked about. My little boy is the result of several long gruelling years of IVF treatment, and I feel very lucky to never have suffered a miscarriage during my many years of trying. If medical science wasn't advanced enough, would I have made a deal with a mysterious old woman in the hopes of having a baby? I suspect I would.
Because this is the first book in a planned series, the author already has several other books in development, all focusing on different kingdoms in this fictional world. We get a glimpse of some of the neighbouring kingdoms, and one of our major complaints when discussing the book with the author was the lack of a map. The book should absolutely have included a map at the beginning (so Trine sat down and drew one for us during the meeting). Having heard her talk about her ideas for future books, and some of her influences for the various kingdoms and peoples, I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her stories.
So why only four stars? I wanted more! This story was great, but I wanted more time with these engaging characters, and I would especially have liked to know more about the Queen of Bees.
Judging a book by its cover: I really love the simplicity of this cover, with the wheelchair which plays such an important part of the plot (and Vincent's life) front and centre. The various shades of blue are also lovely, no doubt picked because the book takes place in the fictional country of The Blue Mountains.
July 25, 2024
I'm going to be honest, I'm slightly biased, since I wrote it...
Having loved the folk tale "King Lindworm" since my schooldays, I wanted to rewrite it and give the title character a better life. I wanted him to grow up loved by his family, not cast aside for his able-bodied (human) twin brother.
While I had a general storyline set, the characters often had a mind of their own as I wrote their dialog and actions, and there are scenes that still make me sad, proud and happy, and sometimes surprised.
With all the rereads that is done in the editing process, the story eventually becomes separate from something "I did". As if it's something real.
I'm very proud of Vincent and Nicholas and the young men they become. I want to be friends with Sapphire and Beatrice, Punch, Hawk, Silver and Chase. I want to learn from the queen mother. And I want to study the detailed history of the Scarlet Guard. I want to travel to the Blue Mountains and the city of Stoneburg. I want more...
I enjoyed writing this story and hope you enjoy it too.
Having loved the folk tale "King Lindworm" since my schooldays, I wanted to rewrite it and give the title character a better life. I wanted him to grow up loved by his family, not cast aside for his able-bodied (human) twin brother.
While I had a general storyline set, the characters often had a mind of their own as I wrote their dialog and actions, and there are scenes that still make me sad, proud and happy, and sometimes surprised.
With all the rereads that is done in the editing process, the story eventually becomes separate from something "I did". As if it's something real.
I'm very proud of Vincent and Nicholas and the young men they become. I want to be friends with Sapphire and Beatrice, Punch, Hawk, Silver and Chase. I want to learn from the queen mother. And I want to study the detailed history of the Scarlet Guard. I want to travel to the Blue Mountains and the city of Stoneburg. I want more...
I enjoyed writing this story and hope you enjoy it too.
July 25, 2024
Great childrens book with awesome characters. It
works really well as a read along with the child, as it will give great oppurtunities to explain and talk about real world concept like equalitiy, handicaps, sexuality and acceptance in an easy, age approproate way :)
works really well as a read along with the child, as it will give great oppurtunities to explain and talk about real world concept like equalitiy, handicaps, sexuality and acceptance in an easy, age approproate way :)
December 7, 2025
Jeg nød virkelig at følge denne fortælling fra start til slut. Der var både noget genkendeligt og noget helt og aldeles nyt i historien. Den er elegant sammensat og tegner et portræt af et rigtigt eventyr. Glæder mig til den næste i serien.
July 9, 2024
I love this book, the story and the characters are charming, i am looking forward to the next one.
July 9, 2024
Fantastic book and story. I read a chapter a night for my 5yr old girl. She loved it and has had a bunch of questions and reflections afterwards.
I would recommend it for kids from 6 to 16
I would recommend it for kids from 6 to 16
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews